Can corporate design work & academic research go hand-in-hand?
Sharing my experience of working as a research assistant & visual designer for 2 different projects at the same time.
Last year February 2020, there was a sudden change in my career path. Earlier I was part of a big corporate setup where we had the same project for months together, same entry and exit timings, same lunch hours, same schedule to follow, same transportation to go to the office and the list goes on. And everything changed when I accepted two part-time jobs at Aalto University.
I had the feeling of standing at a railway station, where everything was moving so fast. Either I take the train that was standing right in front of me or stand by the platform and miss this wonderful opportunity. And as soon as I took the train I could sense the positive and energetic spirit around me.
I was a bit nervous before joining Aalto Startup Center & a research project in the computer science department. The feeling of being nervous arose from the fear of leaving a well-settled pay-check, fear of coping up from a big corporate setup to a startup accelerator, and fear of conducting academic research — all at the same time. I was not even sure what kind of work/tasks I will be given ?!. But just like the play — All’s Well That Ends Well by William Shakespeare, I am happy to say that this was the best decision I have taken as it pushed my career in a forward direction.
The Startup Center journey begins…
At the beginning of March 2020, Startup Center was swamped with the arrangements for Demo Day. It is an event that is organized every year to help startups build their network and showcase their products to a larger audience. Now, this was a great opportunity for me to learn about Startup Center, incorporate their vision, meet external stakeholders, and build a relationship with everyone in a short period of time. I and Alessia Menegolli (my solid teammate) started by understanding the design needs and assisted the team with everything that was required. Indeed, the event was successful. The following week on Monday, we gathered around to reflect on Demo day. I was surprised to see the deep level of discussions we had with the entire team. We went through each category, shared positive and negative points, our individual reflections, and collectively decided the next steps to improve both our and the attendees’ experience.
By mid-march, the global pandemic situation has hit the world and all of us were instructed to work from home!
I was a bit worried about how the design team would work effectively because we recently joined and did not get enough time to know all our teammates and startups. With the lockdown, we started working together online. As I am a people person, I would usually just walk to someone’s desk and ask them doubts rather than booking a meeting. But with the help of online tools and amazing support from the team members, we have been closely working with each other. Tools like Microsoft teams, WhatsApp, zoom, emails, and weekly team meetings helped us easily reach our team members and stay up-to-date.
Everyone was open to help and support each other, the team was just one call away. Being in a design team was super beneficial too. We brainstormed, discussed, reflected on our tasks, and helped each other to grow. Our key responsibility focused on supporting startups and Startup Center staff with all the UX/UI design and service design needs.
In order to help the startups, we started with the very first phase of the design thinking principle - Empathy & understanding. We achieved this by conducting interviews with our startups.
The interviews were entitled “Design is calling”. We interviewed the startups in a semi-structural format. The interviews were held online and focused on knowing the startup, their current status, strategy in terms of business and design, their expectations from in-house designers, and also validating our idea about the Design Clinic.
The startups happily responded with positive feedback. Some knew what they were looking for and some did not. In both cases, the interview turned out to be fruitful as the goal of getting to know each other was fulfilled.
We utilized this opportunity to validate three things:
1. Design-related needs of each company at the moment.
2. Opportunity for Design Café, Design Clinic.
3. Opportunity for partnership with Tokyo club(a club where a pool of Aalto University students are mentored).
Overall, the journey has been great working with startups and Aalto Startup Center team members. The work culture, positive vibes, support from all the team members, challenging yet interesting work, and an amazing design buddy, Alessia Menegolli did not make me realize how four months passed by!
One of the tangible outcomes was the creation of an animated video for Aalto Innovation services and a follow-up video for the Aalto Startup Center. The process was super fun and an excellent learning curve for me. Thank you @Dimitra for being a wonderful teammate.
Lessons learned —
Continuous Engagement
During the quarantine, when everyone worked remotely it was important to engage with our users by continuous interaction method. In our case, the design team had to support both startups and Aalto Startup Center members. Thus, we were in constant contact via programs such as design cafe, design clinic, survey emails, newsletters, and digital community channels. We tried to make sure people know where they can find us and what tasks can we help them with. We also sent an infographic describing our skills and competencies so the start-up got an overview of the design team. All these activities helped us to build a strong, confident, and trustworthy relationship with our users. The method has also aided us to improve our skills and ways of working.
Design Thinking as a service
We used design thinking to provide services to our startups. Through friendly interviews and deep analysis of these interviews, the design team gathered a couple of insights for each start-ups. It was surprisingly a good feeling to layout the design status for each startup by just getting to know them better. After consulting with the advisors and the rest of the team, we started organizing a design cafe and design clinic. Now, these projects were not the solution for all problems faced by the startups but they turned out to be a pretty effective channel to communicate with the startups. Each session was targeted to solve a problem faced by a specific startup also making sure the sessions were interactive while keeping the audience engaged. We had peer-to-peer sessions, hands-on experience, and pep talk sessions too.
Read more about my experience as a research assistant in an academic research project at Aalto University.
Source for the videos —
https://innovation.aalto.fi/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/innovation_services_video_04.11.2020.mp4
