Transforming Lives Through Innovation - Dundee Virtual Design Sprint. Professional Doctorate module RD63001

I was given the opportunity to assist Dr. Mark Passera with the Design Sprint element of the Professional Doctorate module RD63001 - Transforming Lives Through Innovation. Due to COViD 19 the module was delivered virtually, via the Blackboard interface.

The doctoral group comprised of approximately 15 attendees and the session ran for about an hour and a half. The group were mainly from health and business backgrounds and my role today involved some ice-breaker creative thinking activities, user experience and persona slides. Starting with a simple cartoon sketch of Einstein to encourage everyone to relax about the creative process. We played 'what can you see?' and all attendees were given 30 seconds to write down their observations and thoughts about three shapes on the screen. There were no wrong or right answers - simply individual perspectives. Answers included a stomach with unusual contents, a toxic dust cloud, honeycomb, covid10 molecule, adventure game plastic Dracma currency and a variety of no entry signs. Some participants felt the no entry sign was not correct, as it wasn't red. The next activity involved the group, as a collective, grabbing objects close to hand and creating a linked, collaborative story - which included a bangle, bag, lip gloss, pritt stick, a robbery, a banana skin for diversion, glass sucker pads to enable escape through a shattered window and a prof doc owl for moral support.

The final group activity was inspired by the Researcher Launch Pad OPD session and we brainstormed the research scope of planning a bank robbery. No ethical approval was applied for, or obtained for that activity!

The second part of the session comprised of screen share slides outlining 'User Experience' and 'Personas'.