Studio Experience

Applying design thinking in the branding strategy for a 3D bioprinting company Cellink. The integrated project is a collaboration between a masterclass of Business Designers from HDK Academy of Design and Crafts and a handful of local companies in Gothenburg area, Sweden. This blog belongs to Studio Experience, a team consisting of Tehilah Auramo, Ronald Clays, Kevan D'agostino and Raeyong Kim. This blog will take you on a journey of our weekly progress. Enjoy! 

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Methods: Business Model Canvas

Believe us, once you have a grasp of how to use this tool, it is more than helping. Business is super complex, but it is remarkable that it can be briefly fitted into this simple table, which consists of the basic and essential elements of the business. Rather than starring at a company’s website and going through texts trying to understand, a 30 minute exercise with this tool within our team made us quickly learn how this company runs, what the key components are, and what their main assets are. 

Even though our company, Cellink, is an actor within the 3D bioprinting industry which could feel quite complex and inaccessible to understand, the use of business model canvas helped Studio Experience extract the essence of the business in a short period of time. Especially, it successfully shows you how the value is transmitted into product or services, how it is delivered to the customer, and how it regenerates into revenue. Of course, we cannot comprehend everything through this process, but at least it gives you a big picture of what it looks like, and stimulates you to dig deeper. 

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Methods: Actor Network Mapping

Actor Network Mapping, is for us, the first necessary stage of a project. It is a common method that uses brainstorming to generate ideas for the diverging part of the double diamond model. It is used to know what your client (company) looks like, what kind of stakeholders and actors are involved, and mapping them quickly out. It is an agile tool that you can revisit every time you need a simple, easily-comprehensible image of the company, keeping yourself in the right direction.

In order to fully immerse ourselves within Cellink’s world, our group started by creating a mind map that outlined the different stakeholders and partnerships. Each team member was encouraged to put ideas or thoughts on the board using post-its. By doing so, we were able to create themes that helped divide Cellink into the its five key categories (academy/community, product, service and bioverse). This method helped us quickly understand Cellink’s position within the 3D bioprinting industry and gave us insight in where to look next.

It is a good way to start off a team project, everybody standing and discussing in front of a white board, feeling energetic and motivated. :)

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Testing our own method

We are extremely proud to present to you, the ‘MERRY GO ROUND METHOD’. Studio Experience have come up with this new experimental method, which basically means we all take turns in having a role within the team. It is a mixture of randomness and responsibility. 

In the morning, before teamwork is about the begin, (of course while having coffee) we will draw a ladder, intuitively adding connected lines. As seen in the photo, one team member will choose a number, follow the lines until the bottom. The roles we took were: facilitator, time-keeper, mood manager, and note taker. And or course, if you were extremely tired or in a bad condition, all team members will encourage you not to be a facilitator nor a mood manager. Its all for good purposes, so the method can be generous from time to time :) 

Even though you were so fond of your role for the day, it is important for you to feel responsible whatsoever, and take it as your fate of the day. By doing so, teamwork processes were able to be highly efficient, effective and also resulted in positive team dynamics. It resolves the problem of downward periods, when everybody is feeling less motivated, and also when every team member has too many ideas that nobody is keeping track of time or documentation. 

We are still testing the method, and so far, this method has been very beneficial for the team. We shall be proud enough to establish as our own method, as soon as this exciting project has ended. 

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April 19, 2016 Bespoke visiting HDK Academy of Design and Crafts. The workshop was about identifying potentially upcoming challenges in the project and seeking for strategies to overcome these in advance. Bespoke guys Rune and Nicolas are magicians in workshop facilitation! Video by Sofia Wallgren. BR/Tehilah

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April 18, 2016 … Hello peeps, so our first week i.e. last week, of the integrated project was little bit of a struggle. But first, how did we come to that point? We had an initial meeting with our client Adicals to agree on the contents for a brief on Tuesday, April 12. Before the meeting we started our project by studying what strategic briefs are about. For this purpose we watched the video Briefly by Bassett and Partners (https://vimeo.com/107567840) where founders and managers of some of the world’s leading design agencies, such as Frank Gehry, explain what makes a good brief i.e. a strong vision. Additionally, to better orientate ourselves to the task ahead, we shared with each other some of our favorite advertisements of all times, our favorite brands and companies that inspire us and what methods we’d like to learn better during this project. Since our client was asking how to prepare for the meeting on Tuesday we asked them to prepare a list of favorite ads, brands and companies and a clearer message of what they are expecting from us. Tuesday was a catastrophe. Even if the guys had had good time to prepare themselves, the meeting seemed very improvised, and they asked us to do everything for them, even if they themselves lacked a clear vision. We came to the conclusion that without a clear vision and industry experience from their side, without secure finances from their operations with a postponed event, we couldn’t learn anything from them and would be better off by either working for ourselves or changing to another project. After the meeting, we decided to bring this up as a possible challenge in our tutoring session on Wednesday. On Wednesday, together with our tutor and teacher we decided to terminate the project and seek for alternatives. Our group handled this very well! During Wednesday and Thursday we brainstormed for alternative companies and interesting projects to engage on. During a first round over ten possible alternatives were presented, these were voted down on three strongest alternatives Digitas, Cellink and ODD company. With the help of SWOT analysis and further discussions within the team we pre-voted for the winning company, and finally voted for Digitas on Friday morning. See the video attached from our pre-voting session. We then created a brief around VR studies and sent this to our contact person at Digitas hoping for a positive answer on Monday for an eventual meeting… BR / Tehilah