Last Friday I’ve got an urgent email requesting for my attendance in an innovation workshop with Google Singapore. It was an opportunity not to be missed! I mean, after all, how often do we get such a chance?
Google Reception
The host brought us around for a quick tour, and true enough, the Google office is Amazing, and like A Maze. You walk from room to room with different designs and layout. We saw how Fun was integrated with Work. The pool table, gym, arcade, pantries, meeting corners, massage room etc etc, at every corner, you’ll see something that doesn’t remind you of work! They have lots of physical breakout rooms, or private corners. I saw a lot of room for collaboration, I saw lot of space for innovation and creation.
An e.g of a fun space
A creativity wall
Of course, we were mostly impressed with the canteen (and their free breakfast and lunch). We were joking that if we ever come to Google for an interview (in our wildest dreams), and we were asked why do we want to join Google, we are going to say “Oh, because of the canteen!”
The canteen that resembles a coffeeshop in the 60s. I was told that not every Google office has a canteen, only those with more than 200 employees have.
Happened to see the Halloween Decor the next day
Ok, enough of the craze and childish infatuation. Back to the workshop.
It turned out that this workshop was covering Design Thinking. It was part of Google’s efforts to train their employees in Design Thinking, and this time round, the case in point used for the workshop involved Singapore Airlines, henceforth this learning collaboration. I was very excited. Having read up about Design Thinking since more than a year ago, I finally get to hear, learn and practise the concepts and methodology behind Design Thinking.
The trainer was an ex-IDEO employee, and she shared so much valuable insights, tips and guides on how to approach Design Thinking. You can actually get the materials online from Stanford D School (http://dschool.stanford.edu/). She stepped us through the process of Collecting Stories through interviews, Downloading the Data and making sense of it, Creating a Point of View, Ideation Process, Prototyping and Testing. These are very interesting steps. The key thing is to get a really good story first (don’t care about the hard statistics first!).
Having tried out this methodology, it certainly opens up the way I see things, frame my questions etc. And I am beginning to make sense out of the things I have read, gathered and heard so far.
Great workshop!
The ideation process
CYMONSPACE 