Dear readers, in my previous blog post, I discussed my story with service design and design thinking and how I conducted a part of my MSc. study on the understanding and using of design in different businesses in Slush 2013. After 6 years, I plan to come back to Slush 2019 to conduct a similar research. If you may not know about Slush, it is the biggest start-up event in Nordic countries which focuses on innovative business sectors.
Not only start-ups but also several corporates present there to showcase their business excellence and to look for business opportunities with start-ups and other stakeholders. Hence, Slush is a great event to take part in because, in such a short period of time, one can see and experience a lot of happenings in contemporary business and meet many key players in the field. I decided to take part in Slush this year for several reasons, and one of them is to meet companies and do interviews with them.
My objectives for this research are to explore what companies are thinking about design (or service design particularly) and to understand how they use it in their business process, operation and strategy. More interesting, I can use the data from this study to reflect on my previous study 6 years ago and see how things have changed or improved.
I want to take this opportunity to go to Slush, which is a big, safe and interesting event to meet and talk with as many businesses as possible.
Why is this sort of study needed and why do I need to do it at Slush? I remember 6 years ago when I entered Aalto MSc. program to study business design, my professor told me that we needed to understand how companies understand and use design because there had not been any studies about it. Until today, there still is no study for it. I have collected 175 articles on service design and none of them looks at how companies really understand and use service design in their business. I want to take this opportunity to go to Slush, which is a big, safe and interesting event to meet and talk with as many businesses as possible to explore that research question. Furthermore, I can use this event as a trial for further studies. For example, follow-up interviews can be appointed for further in-depth interviews with the companies I meet during the event.
On December 2019 I will have a conference trip to NYC and I consider meeting some businesses there and discuss with them about this topic. Learning how business in different territories and backgrounds understand and use design can be a very interesting thing. I am having an open mind, so if you have any suggestions or interests in the topic, I am ready to talk with you.
Dao Phuong
Doctoral Student
Photo: Slush.org