Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by José António Baldaia on March 28, 2011 at 17:40

Olá Pedro!

Talvez seja bom também colocar este texto em http://www.linkedin.com/groups/Service-Design-Drinks-Lisboa-3723023... . Penso que também não há problema :-)

Jose Baldaia

 

Permalink Reply by Jose Manuel dos Santos on March 28, 2011 at 18:30

Good news indeed Pedro!

What exactly would you expect from a Design Thinker in a company like Novabase?

Take care,

Permalink Reply by Filipe Lima on March 28, 2011 at 20:01

Hi Pedro,

You can also post your text in this linkedin group (http://www.linkedin.com/groups?about=&gid=37821&trk=anet_ug...). You will probably find some candidates over there.

Just like Jose remembered It´s important to know your expectations for this job…  

Best regards

Filipe

Permalink Reply by Pedro Janeiro on March 28, 2011 at 20:04

Obrigado pela dica José!

 

Why a Design Thinker for an IT company (to avoid direct advertising...)? 

 

A big IT company like the one I work for, with 2.000 employees, has projects in the largest companies in all industries in Portugal. A growing number of these projects has 2 characteristics:

- IT is redefining the way services are delivered

- IT is redefining the business process model

 

In order to do this with higher quality and more differentiation from big multinational competitors, we are making an effort to apply Design Thinking, with good results.

 

Let me give you some older examples of projects with high impact: CASA PRONTA and AUTOMÓVEL ONLINE. These 2 projects made the official registration of these transactions (buying or selling houses and cars in Portugal) much simpler, easier, faster and cheaper. Nowadays, more than 95% of all car transactions in Portugal go through the web. This is a massive transformation of the old processes and old business model.

 

Unfortunately, most IT projects don't work that well and in my company we believe we can make a great impact by applying Design Thinking to our traditional project approach. We are still learning how to do it, but we know it produces very good results.

 

 

Permalink Reply by Jose Manuel dos Santos on March 28, 2011 at 20:22

Pedro, thanks for the answer and for the examples.

 

You ended up justifying design thinking in any organization, and this is good.

 

It would be interesting to see what fundamental differences design thinking brings to a large company and more specifically to an IT project, apart from the typical areas where design already has an impact.I am sure IT is the means, you are focused on the user and that is not only design thinking but business thinking. When you state "simpler, easier, faster and cheaper" that is also sort of in the design agenda. And I am sure you do a lot of 2.0 and prototyping in order to get things well done. But what exactly do you feel design thinking per se brings to your organization and projects?

 

I am particularly glad that there is a discussion taking place, and that we can use this platform to share ideas about how things can work in different latitudes and sectors.

Permalink Reply by Pedro Janeiro on March 28, 2011 at 20:20

Now, aiming directly at what Design thinkers do at NOVABASE. Storytelling might be the best approach to explain the expectations.

We are designing the electric mobility processes for the portuguese network. How will people use Electric Vehicles? How will fleet management make sense? What additional services can be attached to the electric mobility network (ex: paying for the car parking; getting restaurant recomendations in the area where I parked near lunch time; free charging at specific car parks such as big retailers, or restaurant chains, etc.) 

Smart grids - what services can be derived from having smart grids in place? Can I know if my kid is watching TV by the "consumption signature" monitored by the smart grid at my house? Can a City Council do the same to monitor if traffic lights are working or if Public illumination needs maintenance?

Justice system - how can judges work better with tecnology? Our recommendations are already approved by the Council of Ministers and if our country sorts out the current treasury and political crisis, everyone involved believes that our Justice System will have great improvements.

We have several projects running, but we are still very low profile in this matter. We want to build a stronger team and more references before making a lot of buzz.

I hope this has helped! We are actually surprised at how far we can stretch Design Thinking. It seems to work for so many things!

 

Permalink Reply by Nuno Rodrigues on June 20, 2011 at 12:03

HI there. New to this group. I can't believe only recently i came to know about it!

 

I didn't even imagine there was a group dedicated to Service Design or Design Thinking here at Portugal until i did work, twice as freelancer, with Anabela's team on Web UX. it is really great to know that there is at least a major corporation that realized that Design Thinking is the way to go and is focused on delivering great experiences.

 

Have NOVABSE and the SD/UX Team done any new interesting work that we can see in the public domain? :)

Permalink Reply by Pedro Janeiro on June 20, 2011 at 12:40

:) Public domain... no, not really. Some of what we've been doing for the Electric Mobility came out in limited foruns and the work done for the Ministry of Justice was commented in a few newspapers but we are really playing low profile right now for a couple of good reasons. We want to make sure our clients have real benefits before coming out in the public space publicizing our work and we need to consolidate our expertise. We are in a very fast learning curve, which is a good indicator that we still have much more to learn. 

On a broader scope, we invited Tom Kelley from IDEO to our N-Talks conference in the beginning of June and it was a discrete and non-intrusive way to show our clients what we want to do in the future. We will be incorporating Design thinking into our way of working, but it will certainly take time. 

I guess that towards the end of the year we will present some of our work in public audiences, and we might invite people from this forum to be present. We may also do it in Porto Uni, with the help of Prof. Lia Patrício.