Design Thinking and Service Design at Jam in Munich

Design Thinking and Service Design have bewitched me since I discovered them.

If you have read a bit of me and you’re following me online, you certainly know that last week I went to Munich for Gov Jam.

Design Thinking and Service Design

Do you know what is a Jam? They are Design Thinking and Service Design courses which take place through events around the world and teach by a funny way the use of these techniques.

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The days in Munich began with people who told about a series of problems in the public field, from school to the green areas as far as voluntary work.

I ended up – a bit by chance and a bit by choice – in the group dealing with digitalization of school.

We started from the school’s problems analysis, the question about how school could be digitalized and we threw our all our ideas using the brain storming techniques.

Design Thinking: the Jam’s secret theme

Then we passed to the Jam’s secret theme.

Every Jam has a secret theme that is different every time. But don’t think about a video or a writing.

When I was in Ljubljana – as I’ve already told you – the secret theme to start from to understand and develop the theme was a book opened on the opposite.

This time the theme was an audio trace beginning with the noise of the urban traffic and then turning into birds singing, sea, and everyone had to associate the noise to what he/she preferred and create some questions starting from there.

Many questions went out and then we voted them. So we had to work about this: how can we make the places where we learn digitally public?

Jam’s works

Divided into groups and working in very short times with 8 minutes slots, everyone had to draw on a paper 8 different ideas of a  possible solution. Then he/she had to tell about it to the others and after that he/she had to look for the design and the idea that he/she liked most among the other ones.

This done, we had to give to another member of the group the idea we liked most, the design we preferred and this person had to get inspiration and use it as a base to create another one completely unlike.

At the end to this idea a title had to be given and it had to be positioned in a Cartesian plan keeping in mind these parameters: high impact, high feasibility; low impact, low feasibility.

You think what a great satisfaction it was when our group chose my idea.

Design Thinking: our Experimental Box

We worked to make it the most beautiful possible and my name from Exploring Box was turned into Experimental Box.

The idea is to give these boxes around the town in the places where people wait, in the squares, in the playgrounds for children, on the public means, in all the several urban public places.

The aim is to give people waiting and so wasting time the chance to optimize this time learning something. The material inside can be used by an adult, by a youngster, by a parent with the kid, by everyone.

Inside these boxes there are tools for scientific, robotic, coding, mathematic, history, art experiments…really everything can be put for all sorts of and captivating tutorials.

An app on the smartphone allows to open the box, choose the category and gain access to the instructions.

Prototyping of our idea

In the second part of the design thinking and service design ’s Jam, we start to prototype to pass from the idea to reality and so give users the chance to try and touch by their own hand our object.

So at this point we went around Munich with other designers of the institute hosting the Jam. After have acquired the several feedback by the passers-by who offered to do this, we improved it for the final presentation of our project in front of Jam’s other competitors.

The works lasted two days. They were a serious thing, but were done through opportunities of play, joke, fun, laughs…we spend really very beautiful moments together.

Meet people from all over the world

In my group a girl came from Colombia, one from Poland and another one from Argentina: they were in Munich to study design.

There were people who had spent a year in the United States to learn well English, who had already worked as User Experience (do you remember it belonged to one of the Jobs of the Future among the most requested ones?).

I love Service Design!

It’s always interesting meeting people and with so different backgrounds. The joining of such different personal experiences to work together at the same project is one of those characteristics which create always worth.

Of course, they are always a chance to practise English.

Guys! These meetings are free!!! Enlist and try.

Some of them, always in English, are made also in Milan!