I was preparing in the last hours for the Human-Centered Design for Social Innovation Workshop that I will have with my group this evening and decided to share some thoughts before leaving home. I am not an expert in writing blogs as some SCN members, it always takes a long time for me to write the first sentence..but somehow this DT with SAP Place (Space) has been making me feel more comfortable to write...Today I just had the idea and started it.
I will be the Weekly Leader of the Workshop this week, so I need to be prepared to lead the discussions and activities. Each week we have one member who is the leader, other is the enthusiast, and other is the nagger:
- Weekly Leader: responsible for keeping everything organized and leading the team
- Enthusiast: inspiring the team with big dreams
- Nagger: making sure things keep moving forward
As we are a group of 4, the 4th one is responsible for selecting the wine :smile: . A glass of wine helps to open our minds...
One of the things the Human-Centered Design training teaches is that "it's important to embrance your 'begginer's mind' to approach problems as novice even when you already know a lot about them. Your begginer's mind is eager to learn and willing to experiment." This sentence can be linked to SCN blog Listening for the solution where I wrote a comment using another sentence I learned.
Because of this training I have been reading a lot about Human-Centered Design and have been checking the Design Thinking at SAP space very often, looking for more information, different perspectives and to meet new people that are also interested in this subject. Suddenly today I started to feel some nostalgia. In Portuguese I would say: "Saudade" instead of nostalgia, because it defines more truly the feeling, but we don't have this word in English. SAP TechEd is close and it always brings me the memories of my first contact with Design Thinking during TechEd Madrid 2011 and the enjoyable moments I had with my group during that workshop. I felt "Saudade" of our conversation and a strong need to read again the blogs by otto.gold describing the workshop, his point of view about the theme and the event, and our experience. In case you haven’t read his blogs, these are the links:
http://scn.sap.com/community/design-thinking/blog/2011/11/10/embracing-inclusion-with-design-thinkin...
http://scn.sap.com/community/design-thinking/blog/2011/11/10/embracing-inclusion-with-design-thinkin...
http://scn.sap.com/community/design-thinking/blog/2011/11/10/embracing-inclusion-and-design-thinking...
Unfortunately I haven’t met some of the members of my first DT group after that TechEd and did not hear if they had a chance to practice Design Thinking in their daily lives, private or professional, or if they continued searching for more information.
After 2 years I would really like to know what happened to each of them and also to the other members who were in that workshop or in any other event or training, what they learned and how it changed their lives, if so. I can say that it opened my mind, showed me the importance of being multidisciplinary, taught me the benefits of seeing the problems with the user’s eyes when looking for a solution, helped me to meet fantastic people, start new friendships and see things in a different perspective.
If there is a place to share experiences, thoughts and feelings about Design Thinking in the SAP world, the place is here.
