The We Can Be Heroes Academy is a unique combination of education and business. The students/staff all work 4 days a week on client projects, and 1 day a week they are actively taking part in a training programme for interactive marketeers. They regularly invite professionals and innovators in to give guest lectures and facilitate workshops. STBY was invited by director Marlon Heckman to give a workshop on service design and design research.
Geke van Dijk and Maaike Schuiteman prepared a programme that included a brief introduction on our approach to service design and design research illustrated by a series of concrete examples from recent client projects. As a taster for the workshop we offered a collection of assorted data from an inspiring case study and challenged the students to use this as a stepping stone for some creative thinking.
Well, they really rose to the challenge. Both groups of creatives were very energetic and exploratory. They came up with a long list of concept directions and innovative ideas. We shared those between the two groups and then had a very interesting wrap up discussion to reflect and synthesise some learnings. An intense but very satisfying morning.