Content
Introduction to CSE and project management course
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Impact Experience Design (IED)
The learning unit introduces the importance of experience design to achieve impactful solutions. As described in CSE competencies ¨Facilitating thinking outside the box¨ is precisely one of the biggest needs of our Century. Innovative solutions came from innovative ideas and to do so, fostering creativity and collaboration among transdisciplinary perspectives needs to be encouraged. The learning unit tends to embrace creative thinking and innovation to learn how to recognize the difficulties of CSE projects and provide innovative and efficient solutions by identifying the interrelationship between social entrepreneurship and the design thinking methodology.
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Introduction to Design Thinking
The development of Design Thinking
CSE and the principles of Design Thinking
Empathise
Define
Ideate
Prototype
Design Thinking
Social Business Finance
This learning unit introduces learners to Social Finance and the social economy. The focus of this learning unit is to understand the opportunities of Social Entrepreneurship, Social Business, and Non-Profit-Organizations. Competition among different actors is high, and communication has changed through digital transformation. Marketing strategies have become key points in reaching target audiences and funds. Apart from focusing on the social business economy, the module aims for the students to develop their skills in Marketing. As defined in the CSE Personal & Professional Skills ¨Creating a vision based on anticipated futures¨ including strategy for achieving long-term resilience, the three elements highlighted embrace the initiative (vision) the application (strategy), and the stability (resilience). Furthermore, students will acquire knowledge about accounting concepts and principles of different types of financial statements through examples located in sustainable social business.
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Introduction to CSE Project management
• Incorporate digital tools and best practices to improve the work dynamic of the Startup. • Internal plan, compiling a plan that includes risk, time, monitoring, and evaluation strategy
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Business Ethics and Intercultural management
• Intercultural SWOT analysis • Intercultural plan management • Brand strategy and long-term objectives.
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CSE and project management

Once explored the world in which our users are moving and after interviewing our users. The next step will be to define the problem statement. What is a problem statement? A problem statement can be defined as the meaningful challenge you and your team are trying to solve identified during the empathy phase.

Commonly, in this stage, after analyzing and synthesis the insights gathered, we would have a solid hypothesis. But in essence, how do analyze and synthesized the information?

There are almost unlimited ways to visualize the data obtained. For the purpose of this course, we would focus on ¨User needs statements¨ & ¨Value Proposition Canvas¨.

User needs statements: A user need statement is an actionable problem statement used to summarize who a particular user is, the user’s need, and why the need is important to that user. It defines what you want to solve before you move on to generating potential solutions, in order to 1) condense your perspective on the problem, and 2) provide a metric for success to be used throughout the design thinking process (Sarah Gibbons, User Need Statements: The ‘Define’ Stage in Design Thinking, 2019).

An example of a user need statement would be:

In the example provided, improving ¨his health¨ is very generalist, therefore, we might ask ourselves but ¨Why does he wants to improve his health¨? Sometimes, the insights that we will obtain will not be as insightful as we would like to be. However, a good technique for getting deeper into insights and obtaining quality information from our users is the technique of the 5 Whys.

Source: extracted from Kanbanize (https://kanbanize.com/lean-management/improvement/5-whys-analysis-tool)

 

As we have seen in the image, the root cause is different from the first why we received it. Apparently, the causes that we see and observe are just on the surface, to explore the root causes, the technique consists of asking 5 times Whys, to ensure that you have understood where the origin of the problem begins, and ultimately, came up with an idea to solve it.

For creating the user statement, a good start is creating a user persona. A user persona is a simulation-based on actual users to identify the different types of users or clients that could benefit from your service. Exploring the following videowill help you to understand the process of how to create a user persona. In the previous task, we interviewed our users and the elements obtained will help to navigate and describe our user personas. The strongest point of creating user personas is that it will allow us to share the results with our teammates or future stakeholders.

 

Task 3: Structure the information

1º Organize the notes obtained from your interviews.

2º Create a user persona template and complete the template with the information obtained. An example of user persona template can be found here:

https://www.justinmind.com/blog/user-persona-templates/

3º Define your user statement.

 

Value proposition Canvas: The Value proposition Canvas is a practical tool that allows you to empathize and understand the value of your proposal. Once you have obtained data from the interviews, organize your user personas and the user statement. The next step will be to validate your idea to see if it is feasible and realistic.

Watch the following video about Value Proposition Canvas

The Value Proposition Canvas is composed by two parts:

Value Map: 1. Product and services: list the ideas of products/services your value proposition builds. 2. Describe in which way the products and services you expect to create are pain relievers and ultimately, will make the life of our users ¨easier¨ 3. The gain creator will create customer gains, in which way your idea/service/product will benefit your user? In this section, include desires, expectations, cost savings, etc, everything that will benefit your final users.

Customer value: it helps to understand the people who you are creating for. In this section, although is explained as ¨Customer¨, it can be ¨User¨ ¨Beneficiary¨ ¨Stakeholder¨, etc. The section is divided into three areas.

  • Gains: Describe the outcomes and benefits your customers want
  • Pains: Describe anything that annoys your ¨customer¨ before, during, and after trying to get a task done.
  • Customer Jobs: Describe the things your customers or users are trying to get done in their work or in their life. What tasks are trying to complete? What problems are trying to solve?

The next example is a case study dedicated to ¨Healthcare innovation generation¨, which had the goal to introduce new innovative teaching in Egypt to identify current healthcare problems and subsequently work on creating innovative solutions. The medical technology equipment is developed in the first world and therefore, is cost expensive. The article explains how they wanted to address the need of developing medical technology products and services that solve local problems.

After addressing how the students perceived the challenges and problems in the Egyptian healthcare system by using a SWOT analysis, the students identified:

  • Disease problems (Liver Cirrhosis, Breast Cancer, Parasitic Infections)
  • Healthcare challenges (Training of medical stud, Empathy and Motivation, Hospital Related Issuers, General HC problems).

Based on the information obtained, students were asked to provide ideas for products and services with a particular focus on understanding the customer (Who is the healthcare customer actually?) and to analyse and understand their needs (What is the job that the customer has to complete? What are the current Problems-Pain?

The example provided ¨Portable Dialysis Unit¨ has many potential users/customers/stakeholders such as nephrologists, pharmacists, hospital administrators, patients, and healthcare providers.

Source: extracted from Friebe, M. (2017) Healthcare Translation and Entrepreneurial Training in and for Egypt—Case Study and Potential Impact Analysis.

 

The solution, whether it is accurate or not, it represents how a user’s need can fit with the development of a product. By using the Value Canvas Proposition, you will end up with a solution that flexible, feasible and human-centered orientated.

 

Task 4. Define your idea

  1. Create a Value Proposition Canvas with the information obtained previously from your interview.
  2. Define a possible solution or possible solutions for your users.
  3. Use the following templates to inspire yourself while creating the Value Proposition Canvas:
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