Why we’re spending 3 months travelling the Philippines teaching kids about UX and Design Thinking
3 months ago we were approached by Smart Communications who had seen my co-founder (Russ Morgan) and I presenting a passionate justification of why Service Design and the delightful customer experiences it brings are important to the world and the country we care so much about: the Philippines.
We spoke for 30 minutes and explained that in 2015 and onwards, the companies who will differentiate themselves from their competitors are those who will be able to deliver delightful customer experiences. And these experiences can only be created if we use empathy to understand the customer and their needs and problems. In short, we re-think the traditional approach and instead put the customer first and build services around them.
At the end of the talk, we did a 60 minute workshop with the attendees and showed them how to use Design Thinking to quickly create imaginative problems to real world problems.
What we didn’t know was that in attendance was someone from Smart who was apparently looking for a team to help out on their Smart SWEEP program which encourages university students to create startups where students can win up to 300,000PHP.
A week or so after our event, we received an email from Smart asking if someone could drop by the office and when Michelle Bayhonan did and explained the idea of Smart SWEEP to us we couldn’t have been more delighted.
For the past 3 months, we, that’s Christine Balatbat and I, have been travelling the country from Manila to Laoag to Cebu to Davao and in 2 hours time (writing this from the airport), we’re flying to Naga.
We’re delighted to have the chance to do this and so happy that we’re spreading the word about UX and Design Thinking to the next generation of people who, in a few years, will be making their own products and experiences. We hope that when they do, they remember the UX & Design Thinking workshop they attended and remember to first understand the person, understand the problem and build a solution that solves it.
After spending 6 years working on “campaign based” projects for an agency, it’s these types of make-peoples-lives-better projects that excite me and the rest of the team at On-Off & UXMNL.
We’re looking forward to spreading the word further about UX and on July 27, we’re bringing this FREE workshop to companies in Manila and we’re excited to be starting with the awesome Klaseko on Monday!
Follow @uxmnl on Instagram and Twitter for more pictures.
On Off HKis hiring for positions in Manila and Hong Kong so if you’re looking for a career in UX, get in touch: www.on-off.com.hk/careers/
Shout out to Mark Colentava, past winner of Smart SWEEP, who’s been joining us on the roadshow and has been doing an awesome job at exciting audiences with his brilliant presentation about his Smart SWEEP story.
