Design Thinking challenges: From Theory to practice

Twenty persons mentored by eight mentors from four countries participating in the DTRaIN project www.dtrain.eu participated in four Design Thinking workshop sessions. They worked together on four real market situations of companies in the agri-food sector in their countries in the context of the DTRaIN project. The Design Challenge reports produced describe the steps followed by each team in using the Design Thinking methodology for reaching a solution in a specific situation the companies are facing.

Each of the Design Challenges report produced, served as a reference for the development of a “serious game”, to increase learners’ motivation and to enhance their ability to recall and retain the already owned knowledge got by attending the DTRaIN course. The participants of the challenge workshops who acted as members of Design teams were persons who had already finalized their training in Design Thinking for Entrepreneurship in Agri-food Sector, via the DTRaIN e-learning platform https://dtrain.sqlearn.com/.

Design thinking in the agri-food sector can make use of new ways of solving problems that are not necessarily connected to the way that we incrementally perform better a product or service, but rather, how can we radically change the way that we do and perform activities. The design thinking approach method that was used by the working teams in dealing with the challenges, is the “four steps design process” which is a more direct and straightforward one, as the participants learned in the DTRaIN course. Observation, Ideation, Prototyping, and Testing.

Πρόγραμμα κατάρτισης: Σχεδιαστική Σκέψη για την επιχειρηματικότητα στον αγροδιατροφικό τομέα

Στα πλαίσια του Ευρωπαϊκού προγράμματος DTRaIN, καλούνται επαγγελματίες, φοιτητές, εκπαιδευτές, φορείς να παρακολουθήσουν διαδικτυακή ασύγχρονη εκπαίδευση πάνω στην εφαρμογή της Σχεδιαστικής Σκέψης (Design Thinking), ως μεθοδολογίας επίλυσης προβλημάτων, αξιοποιώντας τη μεθοδολογία της Σχεδιαστικής Σκέψης. H συμμετοχή των συμμετεχόντων είναι δωρεάν.

Το εκπαιδευτικό υλικό είναι στην ελληνική και αγγλική γλώσσα και αποτελείται από πέντε θεματικές ενότητες (Προκαταρκτικά βήματα, Παρατήρηση, Ιδεοποίηση, Προτυποποίηση και Δοκιμή).

H ενδεικτική διάρκεια της εκπαίδευσης είναι δύο εβδομάδες, η οποία μπορεί να επεκταθεί ή να συμπτυχθεί, ανάλογα την διαθέσιμη ώρα του κάθε καταρτιζόμενου.

Οι ενδιαφερόμενοι μπορούν να εγγραφούν και να παρακολουθήσουν το εκπαιδευτικό πρόγραμμα δωρεάν, ακολουθώντας τον σύνδεσμο  https://dtrain.sqlearn.com/.  Μετά την επιτυχή ολοκλήρωση του προγράμματος εκπαίδευσης, οι συμμετέχοντες θα λάβουν Βεβαίωση Συμμετοχής.

Το ευρωπαϊκό σχέδιο «DTRaIN» (www.dtrain.eu), συγχρηματοδοτείται από την Ευρωπαϊκή Ένωση στα πλαίσια του προγράμματος Erasmus, και στοχεύει στην αναζωογόνηση του αγροδιατροφικού τομέα, προωθώντας την απόκτηση δεξιοτήτων υψηλής ποιότητας για τη βελτίωση της προώθησης των προϊόντων και της διαχείρισης των επιχειρήσεων του τομέα.

Στο σχέδιο συμμετέχουν επτά εταίροι από τέσσερις  χώρες (Ελλάδα, Ιταλία, Ισπανία, Γερμανία).

Περιφέρεια Κρήτης (EL) – (συντονιστής εταίρος)
Πανεπιστήμιο του Βαγιαδολίδ (ES)
Μεσογειακό Αγρονομικό Ινστιτούτο Χανίων (ΜΑΙΧ) (EL)
Eυρωπαϊκό Κέντρο Κατάρτισης για την Απασχόληση (ECTE) (EL)
SQLearn (EL)
Centro Machiavelli (IT)
LDI Berlin (DE)

The Design Thinking mindset for Disruptive innovation

“The farms and factories in the agri-food sector, must implement disruptive innovation and smart technology applications in a human center approach, move very fast embracing the fourth industrial revolution opportunities”

Design Thinking is the core of disruptive innovation.

The Design is changing the manner in which a company or a leading organization makes value. The focus of innovation has moved from engineering-driven to design-driven, from product-driven to client-driven, and from marketing-focused to user-experience-focused. When design thinking principles are applied to innovation and strategy, the success rate for innovation significantly improves.

The difference between what is called incremental and disrupting innovation, is the culture that you develop within your organisation and the people working within the organisation when they basically want to take up the challenge. An incremental innovation examples focuses on cost or feature improvements in existing products or services. A disruptive innovation example is one that creates a dramatic change that transforms existing markets or industries, or even creates new ones, by introducing groundbreaking new products.

A design thinking approach turns traditional innovation on its head. It starts by evaluating what customers want as opposed to developing a new product and then trying to sell it. And it works.

Design thinking mind set principles

In the past months, ECTE and LDI Berlin partners in DTraIN project have worked for developing among others the pre-steps module of the Design thinking course. Breaking out the conventional mind-set is the outmost for having effective results. By marrying deep customer insights with an understanding of shifting technology and market forces, they can reimagine how they interact with customers, effectively putting themselves in their customers shoes and the customer journey at the center of the design process. They don’t focus on what product or service they want to develop, but on solutions they can create to solve customer problems or ease pain points. As a mindset, Design Thinking is characterized by several key principles:

-Innovation is made by humans for Humans.
-Use of a combination of divergent and convergent thinking.
-Fail often and early” facilitates human learning. -Design Thinking is based on experimentation with many new ideas.
-Build prototypes that can be experienced.
-Test early with customers that is closely related with prior principles.
-Design never ends, meaning that work must proceed iteratively in cycles, and finally,
-Design Thinking needs a special place. To conduct Design Thinking projects successfully, special spaces are required: designed according to the teams’ needs and equipped with the right materials.

Art Connects Mental Health: A Time to Breathe

Art Connects Mental Health: A Time to Breathe is a two-year European wide transnational partnership project that provides education, training and awareness-raising at national and European levels using creative processes to promote positive mental health and emotional wellbeing with youth.

Six partner organisations come together to create a Europe-wide Creative Arts for Health and Well
Being hub, a new online, interactive, learning resource centre that supports the role of the arts to promote physical and emotional positive mental health and well-being for all.

A challenging event like the COVID-19 (coronavirus) pandemic can affect everyone’s mental health. Each of us is doing our best to look after ourselves however young people may need extra attention and support. Building synergies between the arts, youth education, and health and well-being, this project supports the role of the arts to promote positive mental health and emotional well-being, to overcome stress and anxiety and to build resilience across Europe, strengthening links across Europe in relation to the arts, education and positive mental health and well-being with and by young people.

A Time to Breathe is supported by Erasmus+. The partners are Smashing Times International Centre for the Arts and Equality, Dublin, Ireland (lead partner); Ente acli istruzione professionale piemonte, (ENTE) Torino, Italy; Euroreso, Naples, Italy; European Centre in Training for Employment, Rethymno, Greece; Fundacion Intras, Valladolid, Spain and Youth Peace Group Danube, Vukovar, Croatia.

RESTAT project TN meeting in Rethymno, Crete

After a long break from attending Transnational Meetings due to the COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, the consortium of the RESTAT project met in Rethymno, Crete, Greece on July, 22-23 2021.

The scope of the 3rd Transnational Meeting held in Rethymno, Crete was to validate the produced educational material on Accessible Tourism and to set the path for the smooth completion of the next Intellectual Output, namely “Boosting Employability and Job Mobility of Tourism Professionals – Career Guidance Tool”. The consortium discussed in detail the results from the Pilot Tests conducted in each partner country and evaluated the modules for the training of Tourism Professionals.

Further, partners from the RESTAT Project set the goals for the next period of implementation of the project which covers the development of profiling methods and jobs analysis and development of career-matching method.

The consortium of the RESTAT project is comprised of Comune di TUSA (IT), New Horizons (IT), ECTE (EL), FUEJI (ES), ROGEPA (RO), Handy Club (CZ) and it is implemented with the funding of the European Union, under the Erasmus+, Key Action 2, Strategic Partnerships for VET | Innovation – Project Code: 2018-1-IT01-KA202-006891.