On May 8, 2018, Design Thinking Roadshow was successfully held at the lobby of School of Entrepreneurship and Management.
Product prototypes developed by 21 groups of students that came from various schools of ShanghaiTech were displayed on Design Thinking Roadshow, competing for the visitors' “investment coupons”. Finally, “Cubot Game for the Blinds”, “Tianchaochao Quick Breakfast” and “White-Color-Friendly-Chair” won the highest amount of “investment”. The winning teams all reveal that user sensing, product testing, and rapid iteration were the three most important factors that led to their success.
The “Visitor-Investors” from various schools were all impressed by the competing groups' excellent sense of entrepreneurship and abilities to define problems and develop products. Students presented their product concepts with full passion and confidence by demonstrating the product effectiveness via quantitative data and vivid demonstration. The road show exhibited the great potentials of science-and-technology students in business innovation when they combine their competence of mathematics, model building, and logical thinking with learned business knowledge.
In Professor Zhou Haotian's opinion, creativity is the hallmark of this event. Students were given the opportunity to experience the most crucial step in the journey of a new venture. The importance of the ability to connect with people and the skill to present ideas is often underestimated. Many people believe that ideas are crucial to the success of a startup. In fact, whether people can be persuaded and impressed is also the key. This is why our school places great emphasis on psychology education.
Xue Chen, the instructor of Design Thinking, thought this course helped the students to develop products and solve problems through the processes of sensing, define, create, develop and iterate, which showed the power of integration of cross-disciplines knowledge, idea brainstorming, meeting “business partners” from different backgrounds. Later, their projects might participate in Business Competition, and intend to find the real investors. As an introductory basis for other SEM courses, Design Thinking offers a novel way for science students to think and solve problems in their research work.
Professor Ding Lu，Vice Dean of SEM, said that he was inspired by the students' fabulous innovation and creative ideas embodied in so many novel product designs. “I'd like to give special thanks to the instructors and the teaching assistants who guided the students in their exploration,” said Lu. He praised the displayed designs as evidence that the students have learned to apply critical thinking in detecting the problems, identifying the opportunities, and solving problems through innovative designs with imagination and technical details. He was glad to see that some of the products were designed for the handicapped and aged people, a demonstration of the students' sense of humanity and compassion, which is indispensable to the core values and philosophy of ShanghaiTech University and the School of Entrepreneurship and Management. He encouraged the students to keep observing, imagining, creating, and designing, making the world a better place with practical skills and actions.
Scene of DT Roadshow
Product Demonstration by Students
Winner Team of “Cubot”
Professor Ding Lu is listening to the student’s presentation
Design Thinking Roadshow Video
