Innovation camp @ Kunstenniemi

 Back from the woods !

The 24 hours spent in Kunstenniemi were very intensive and educational in many sense. We really enjoyed our stay and our team spirit raised step by step. It was great to see how far we have come during the past weeks and how much readier we were to implement different kinds of tools and methods during our innovation process. We had the patience to pay most of our attention to the solving of the problems before the ideation part. At the same time we noticed the fact that the ideation part is the easy one – it is much harder to find out the underlying problems and causes of the problem. As expected, during these 24 intensive hours we had all kinds of feelings from frustration to success. During the innovation process we took short breaks every time it felt like we were going nowhere, we stuck on something or otherwise frustrated. It really worked and it was great to see that we had learned to face the frustration and get over it. 

 

 

Something that turned out to be very helpful and what we were very pleased with was the fact that we had different kinds of personalities and one person with different educational background than most of us – economics students combined with furniture designer student. It really helped us to look at the situation from different kinds of perspectives and there was many situations when we discussed our viewpoints and realised that we had “wrong” or too “strong” perspective on our problems or ideas. All in all we enjoyed and had great time together and not only in our team but with other teams too. It was nice to get to know each other, help with others problems and get some help, opinions and criticism from other teams too. Also the coaches helped us to review our outcomes and gave some new reasons to think. 

 

 

 

As presented in our earlier post, our task was basically to help a new start-up with a new kind of food product and create a world around it. The product itself is not public yet so we are not going to present our ideas here. During the innovation process we had a ton of ideas ranging from small improvements to huge future plans. Our idea as a whole was to give the company a whole picture of what the future may bring – “idea pyramid”. We divided our ideas in too sections: The first was all about product development where we presented our ideas on product itself and the second was about the creation of a phenomenon. The information that we had gathered in the field before the camp turned out to be very helpful and we were able to implement the incoming trends and happening in our innovation process. When it comes to cooking making together, back to basics, seasoning, freshness and localisation are some of the main points. 

In the presentation session it seemed like our client was happy with the results and said that he got a plenty of new ideas to think about. He agreed with many of the points we had taken up and was very fascinated about one or two ideas we had come up – the ideas we were very proud of and excited. We really hope he could implement these in addition to company’s product development and hopefully he is able to pick up as much as ideas as possible from the whole idea scale we had. Our purpose was to be able to provide him with ideas that are more down to earth, ideas that could be used almost already and at the same arise thoughts of cooking industry in the future. In order to be successful you always have to be one step ahead of others!

Problems, thoughts and ideas hanging on the wall. Some food for thoughts!

Pine cone describing our journey

We are ready from next weeks kick-out! 

Final task

Hellou!

At the moment we are busy with our last assignment. Yesterday we had the first working day and we we gathering information by conquering the city and using our tools from early morning to late evening. From the first moment we got our assignment, we were positively surprised and really willing to help. Our task is to help a new company with a new product launch in the food industry. Not more about the task or the possible product now ;) Lets just say that everything is possible!

We have been brainstroming like crazy, used various tools like PSI, mindmapping and six thinking hats. It has been awesome to see how far we have come to during this course. I think we have by now realised the importance of problems, problems, problems. We have really concentrated on these first, the ideas come later and are relatively "easy" to find once we have found the PROBLEMS. 

We have spent the whole day in the field, had a meeting with Heirol, visited food stores and intervjued chefs and so on. We have tried to gather as much as different kind of information, perspectives and visions. In the evening we had a last brainstorming session in one of our group members flat and we tried to identify the key points of out task journey this far. We have also tried to work in different kinds of environments and that has been helpful. 

We are excited and head out to Kunstenniemi NOW! 

Portfolios

Here are our group members' portfolios:

Eetu: http://prezi.com/5tvpvvmoxt56/inno58h/

Ida:  https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1BtEc9pZOEsM191d2ZLOURFcms/edit?usp=sharing

Jutta: http://prezi.com/w2rppxd0tzbz/innoraptors/

Milla: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1BtEc9pZOEscmVJanFfUGJlQnM/edit?usp=sharing

Tette: https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BxnT3cQVvSpqU0RNX1ZneG1mMFk/edit


See you tomorrow! :)  

"Forget the destination, enjoy the ride"

Never mind the Turku buses, welcome to the Turku communal transportation!

Under the last workshop before innovation camp in Kunstenniemi we were supposed to be more innovative than we had been before and we were assigned to identify the underlying problems more deeply. During the workshop we had times when we felt very frustrated, but that seemed to be a good thing after all. Collaborating and brainstorming helped us to get more into deep. We admit that the problems and ideas that we came up earlier are more or less "common", but something that we really see as a problem and there is a possibility to improve these things. Then the question is, why these things are still as they are?

 

As said, after all the discussions and new tools, like cause-method, we got a new perspective to Turku Public Transportation. We identified a problem: No personal connection. The truth is that if you get a person to feel something, you have been successful, that's the starting point. As you can see from the videos below, we think that the concept Turku buses should be changed. Why to stay in the same habit of traditional buses? We suggest a step towards Turku communal transportation. The whole word bus is boring and old-fashioned in many situations.

 

We think that Turku Public Transportation needs an image. At the moment there is actually no image, it is not visible enough. The new concept would be based on the slogans "Forget the destination, enjoy the ride" & "Matkusta raikkaasti Turussa". Our idea is to combine the popular bike riding with buses. Turku Public Transportation could have rentable bikes on bus stops as a part of the communal system. That would facilitate moving around in Turku and make it easier to change bus lines. Bikes could be rented with the bus card, which would increase the use of bus cards - simply: Multiple ways of travelling in Turku with one card. As a part of this whole concept change we suggest an introduction of a center ticket: special price for only short trips. A facelift is also needed. New layout in buses: 2 to 2 seats, seats in a row like in metros, single seats. That would increase the feeling of community and space on the one hand, and also give the freedom on the other hand. Moreover, a movement towards freshness: no smell or noise, clean seats etc. is needed.

One of the main points of this concept change is the creation of a cohesive image about Turku mass transportation. More colour and personalisation is needed. We want to create "The Face of Turku transport" by using a driver centered concept. Drivers should be used in marketing, in the buses could be personal information on "Your driver" -cards. These would bring the driver closer to the customers. In that sense, good working conditions and work satisfaction of the drivers are an essential part of the concept. 

Branding and image! Turku Public Transportation needs badly a face. A good brand always helps a company even though everything wouldn't always go as planned or as smoothly as possible (benchmark VR).

 

Our ideas on videos below: 

 

 

Next week we head out to Kunstenniemi. Our group will be working with theme cooking and food industry. Excited to see what the task and company will be! :)

Top 3 Turku Public transportation ideas

Hejaa, we have not disappeared!

 

The previous working day on Valentine’s Day was a lot of fun and gave even more inspiration than we had expected. We facilitated our own ideation session and used our innovation tool PSI which seemed to work quite well both in our own group as well as in other groups. We got also familiar with other groups’ methods – mind mapping and six thinking hats – which were useful and enabled us to look at the situation from different perspectives and think outside the box. While working, we had also crazy timeouts from alternative disco to art tours and statue creating. Another good day!

We believe that the biggest problem and challenge for Turku Public transportation is connections (covering routes, timetables and clarity). Behind this is the issue that we Finns are car people and are more than used to drive a car and it is, indeed, quite a challenge to change this attitude, not only in Turku region. However, we suggest that more attention should be paid to making connections clearer, smoother and more reliable so that the customer can be sure to get from point A to B in time without stress and without being an expert in using buses.

Here presented our top three Turku Public transportation ideas:

Idea 1: "It’s all about colours": We think that there is a need for making the Turku Public transportation clearer and in that way easier to use. Our idea is to create different routes defined by different colours, e.g. blue line, red line etc. and draw clear line maps which would be easy to follow and find everywhere, both concretely and electronically. Further, the buses working certain lines should indicate clearly the line it belongs to (a stripe on the side of a bus, coloured light in front of the bus etc.) and bus stops should also indicate the lines that bypasses the stop. That makes it easier to get from point A to B even if you are not used to use buses. Last but not least, we came up with an idea that the different corners of the square market could be named by different lines/colours, e.g. red corner, blue corner etc. There is many different bus stops near the market square area and in that way it would be possible to simplify the whole system. 

Idea 2: "Easy to reach": We think that one of the biggest challenges for Turku Public transportation is to be able to increase the feeling of certainty. We want to make the service more transparent and help Turku Public transportation come near the customer. The idea behind Brahe-reittiopas is rather good but it does not function as effectively as possible. We would like to create a well-working and user-friendly mobile application/flash that would help the customer reach certain timetables independent of time or place. We came up with an idea that this application could possibly be processed by some university students and be part of some course or thesis work in order to reach minimum extra costs. Additionally we would suggest a GPS-system that would function together with this application enabling the customer to follow the journey and certain bus stops in real time. That would make it a lot easier to know when to leave the bus and make it “safer” to travel. 

  

Idea 3: "Bus journey as an adventure": We think that it is important to create a more positive image for Turku Public transportation by providing customers with something little extra, something that would make the bus journey more special and would also make the life a bit easier. That’s why we think that it would be good with small take away coffee machines and snack machines in some buses. Think about a situation when you are rushing to the job in the morning and you have two alternatives: either to drive a car or take a bus and drink a cup of coffee and eat a ready-made bread. There could possibly be different kinds of tickets which would provide a good deal when the customer buys the journey and a cup of coffee at once. 

A bit video material too !

 

We are looking forward to the upcoming challenges. 

Vi ses! :)