“In everything I have conquered in my professional life, SUGAR played a main role.”
Bárbara Queiroga in an interview with Maia from the SUGAR Network.
In 2015/16 Bárbara decided to move from Brazil to Ireland to attend Trinity College Dublin to take part in the SUGAR course under Prof. Kevin Kelly. For over 9 months she found herself as part of the Swisscom challenge to define “New ways of leveraging backup power supply”.
She worked on this project within a very diverse team of Brazilian, Irish and German students in the areas of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering. The recurring interviews combined with testing of the prototypes with users, changed her mind-set to approach wicked problems and gave her the necessary confidence to introduce design thinking in highly traditional companies as a young professional in Brazil.
At first sight, this challenge seemed anything but easy and that’s how it was. In her first internship after returning back to Brazil she was confronted with a lot of disbelieve and doubts in the company. It was a traditional mining company. Would her approach through design thinking lead anywhere close to a solution? As soon as she finished her internship, she got a call from her boss reporting the huge impact she left behind once she finished her internship. Based on her findings in the interviews and testing of multiple prototypes, she wrote a paper with many recommendations, which the company ended up implementing.
She moved on to 3M as a product manager and also there she could set a lot in motion with her design thinking experiences. They were faced with the difficulty to sell equipment for truck drivers in a market where they could not lower the price anymore. Barbara proposed to her boss that she wanted to spend time with the truck drivers, experience their highs and lows of their job and find solutions through applied design thinking. Field research at its best!
At the time, all the 3M clients were older than Barbara. All her colleagues were older than her. Nevertheless, Barbara’s confidence did not let her doubt herself and she was able to receive the approval to spend the next months in close relation to truck drivers and experiencing first-hand how they communicate and value.
The plan worked out. She used her insights to propose a new business plan that was very well accepted by her clients. Barbara’s story continues now at Z-Tech (ABInbev) as a product manager.
Especially beneficial for this success story was that our network had really worked out. She has been in continuous contact with individuals from the network like former global teaching team members, fellow students from the home university or from all the other network universities. When she needs professional advice, she can count on receiving the support. And that is one of the reasons why she would like to give back to the network.
Note from the interviewer:
This project was part of the SUGAR Network: the largest, global innovation network that brings together multidisciplinary students from different universities and challenges them to solve real world product development challenges sponsored from a real corporate partner. The spark in her eyes when sharing her story was heartwarming. All the credit goes out to the SUGAR faculty who put so much passion and dedication towards the course every year!
If you are a SUGAR alumni in any form (student, teaching team, corporate partner), please support our initiative to connect the huge group of alumni from around the world by filling out this survey.
