Design Thinking Training for Young Swiss IT Elite
Can you design the perfect Christmas market experience? This was the Design Thinking Challenge that was given to twenty Swiss IT Academy students and their managers when they came to the SAP headquarters in Walldorf, Germany, for Design Thinking Training.
The participants are part of the IT Academy, formed in 2018 by Swiss Post in cooperation with SBB and Swisscom as a reaction to the empty market for senior in-house consultants in Switzerland, as a 10–12 months special SAP training for hand-selected graduates of business administration or informatics between the ages of 23 and 30. The trainees get on-the-job training guided by assigned mentors, combined with openSAP and Learning HUB online trainings for 6 months in their company, before they rotate to the other partner companies. The program has proven successful as these young talents are able to provide very valuable contributions to their respective companies within a short time frame.
On December 10, 2019, the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg and the Experience Center jointly worked on a challenge to design the perfect Christmas Market experience in a one-day training workshop.
In order to warm-up for the task ahead, the group played a quick game of pantomime with words related to Christmas. This led to some hilarious moments that helped everyone activate their senses before the training session began.
Michaela Epp, Program Manager at the SAP AppHaus Heidelberg and an experienced Design Thinking Coach started the day with the explanation of the basic principles of Design Thinking and why companies like SAP need this method and mindset. She was joined by Daniela Preiss from the Experience Center and Jamila Schon from SAP UX to coach the team in applying Design Thinking Tools that would lead them to innovative Christmas market solutions. This included interviewing passers-by on the SAP campus in order to create a Christmas market customer persona and a point-of-view. After an intense brainstorming session, various ideas were voted upon, and a prototype was built for selected solutions. Feedback was collected in order to iterate the prototype. At the end of the day the final solution was presented to the entire group.
The training was held in the Design Thinking Room “Jupiter” of the SAP Experience Center, located in the newly constructed Building 49.The SAP Experience Center provides customers with a space to meet, be inspired, and engage with SAP to learn more about our innovation story. The Design Thinking Room itself has the perfect set-up and atmosphere to foster collaboration, productivity and creativity, which is the type of environment needed to encourage you to let your ideas fly.
“It has been a perfect finish to the year for our first generation of young consultants to stay in Walldorf in this extraordinary building and to learn more about the design thinking methodology. We are very thankful to SAP for the hosting the day,” was the underlining statement of Christian Wiedmer, who is responsible for the IT Academy for Swiss Post and the team lead of an SAP consulting team.
Authors: Stephanie Müller and Michaela Epp
Photography: Stephanie Müller
