APJ: Design Thinking Workshop for Tongji University, Shanghai, China, 18th Oct 2015

Last week Sunday, around 30 students from School of Software Engineering, Tongji University met at the DT space at SAP Labs Shanghai for a whole day Design Thinking Workshop. The aim of the workshop is to expose students to Design Thinking for coming up with creative problem solving.

As a member of SAP University Alliances, School of Software Engineering in Tongji University and SAP University Alliances co-organized the DT workshop. Benny Sun from UA directed the workshop, with five coaches Josie Guan from UA, Olivia Sun from GRC, PI Innovation China, Megan Liang from T&L T&LT&L, Forrest Weng from TQM team,  Adam Xiao from SGM, also with the help of Chen Xin from CI&SP, Nick Luo from Successfactors and other DT volunteers as observers.

Coach: Forrest Weng                                      Coach: Megan Liang

Coach: Adam Xiao                                                 Coach: Olivia Sun

The participants were fresh and sophomore students that most of them didn’t know much about Design Thinking. It was a good chance to deliver the methodology to them to help them deal with the challenge “How might we inspire young people to cultivate their creative confidence?”

Students from Tongji University

After a warm welcome and an introduction, the event started with a presentation about the main concepts of Design Thinking by Josie. Then Benny introduced the challenge and the six main steps of Design Thinking approach: Understand, Observe, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

Introduction of Design Thinking by Benny and Josie from UA

These young students were very engaged in the workshop and involved in the tasks requested by the challenge. Although the first three steps were a little hard for students to understand, they were smart and innovative to redefine the issue. They finished the reframing part before noon, and then conducted interview during the lunch. Under the guidance of coaches, each team put forward the POV. After that, ideation was proceed through brainstorm, share, cluster and vote.

Team Working on the Task

At last, there were 5 minutes for each team to make the presentation and got the feedback. Storyboard and role play were usually the most popular way chose by participants, so were the students. We were inspired to found their ideas like building a platform, developing an app, seeking university-enterprise cooperation. What’s most fascinating part was the Q&A process, for the students had a heated discussion between the teams. They gave advices and shared opinions with each other positively.

Presentation & Feedback

We were happy to see the students enjoy themselves and had gain in the DT workshop. Besides, the students felt interested in SAP. They would like to know more about SAP’s culture and working environment. Big “thank you” to all the volunteers of Design Thinking supporting such a successful program.