Design Thinking & Coach Camp: The Best Of Both Worlds

Early August, the SAP Design AppHaus hosted a different kind of workshop experience: A Design Thinking (DT) and a Coach Camp in one event. For the first time, the SAP Design AppHaus blended those two experiences into one, offering students and employees from SAP a unique way of learning by doing.
Located in Heidelberg’s historic Landfried tobacco factory, the participants had the chance to either get in contact with the Design Thinking methodology for the first time or deepen their knowledge by taking over a coaching role.
The whole workshop was planned and organized by students of the SAP Design AppHaus who wanted to introduce mainly new employees to the DT methodology and further challenge new junior coaches to take over a coaching role in a DT process. They could gather feedback from the experienced coaches Jochen Guertler and Edda Mann of the SAP Design AppHaus to better fusion the two workshop styles.
Within the three days in the beginning of August, the challenge for the 17 contributors was to design an analog element which helps to further evolve the culture at the SAP Design AppHaus. All contributors had three days to run through the whole Design Thinking process, supported by Jochen and Edda as experienced supervisors and head coaches.

The content hereby followed mainly the structure of a Design Thinking camp and was led by the Discover, Design, Deliver approach. The difference was here, that the groups weren’t led by experienced coaches. New junior coaches worked in pairs of two and had the chance to plan their whole group activities independently, to integrate their group into a proper DT experience.

Commonly they developed three prototypes which gave an overview of the mood of the current team. The analog element also shows possible activities which can be done in pairs of two, to improve the atmosphere in the SAP Design AppHaus.
“I really loved the Design Thinking and Coach Camp experience. We had the possibility to discover a new creative technique to develop an innovative product and to therefore support the corporate culture of the SAP Design AppHaus. We could learn way more than the theory behind Design Thinking. The key was here to experience and live the practical innovative method by working jointly with unknown people, that later became friends.” — Christian Gier, DT participant & SAP student (Cooperative State University)

“It was a great experience to coach in this workshop! I learned about new methods and the interaction with my colleagues. The feedback loops with the participants in our team helped us a lot. We received honest opinions on our first coaching experience and could reflect perfectly on our work to really develop our skills within the three days. The new workshop format helped both parties to commonly learn from each other.” — Jasmin Obert, coach & working student at SAP Design AppHaus



Chance to participate
Missed the Design Thinking and Coach Camp? No worries! The next camp will take place next year during July and August. We will keep you posted on our Facebook page!
Never heard about the SAP Design AppHaus? Take a virtual tour or contact us to set up your appointment for a live experience: AppHausHD@sap.com. Follow us on Facebook and see what our upcoming projects will be about!
About SAP Design AppHaus
The SAP Design AppHaus team collaborates with customers by focusing first on users and their experiences. We guide customers and SAP to apply design methodologies in daily business and establish a collaborative spirit while optimizing the usage of SAP solutions for the end user.
Our approach is grounded in fostering creativity in three key pillars: people, process, and place. We help organizations drive innovative cultures by designing and establishing processes that remove obstacles to creativity. We also support our customers through the creation of innovative spaces, which enable people to do their best work.

