Today I had the chance to attend a very intersting workshop about design lead innvoation or sometimes as well known as user centered design brought to us by the Design Services Team of SAP. This approach is mainly focussed on the user which is in the center of all activities. The task we had to fulfill was to (re)design the coffee corners here at SAP. So we had to go out, observe the “end-users” of the coffee corners and interview them. The next step was to cluster the information gathered into different focus areas. The last and most exciting step was the actual brain-storming. Here we tried to develop new ideas that would help to redesign the coffee corners followed by some important rules like:
- Defer Judgment
- Encourage wild ideas
- Be visual
- Build on the ideas of others
The ideas are always noted on colored post-its. The result was brilliant and really interesting. We came up with good ideas that were possible to implement. After brainstorming, every member of the group had five picks to vote for a solution that would be then implemented as a prototype.
As a result I can say that this was a tremendous experience that every software developer should have. This workshop should be a must in every university and even for experienced developers this could help to evolve. As I just saw Thomas has even further information about the work of the DST.
