Campus news
Second place in the Royal Roads Design Thinking Challenge
April 4, 2019
Julien Galisson, Leina Diaw, Stéphanie Leverdier, Florence Normandin and Simon Clerc.
The HEC Montréal team of BBA students Simon Clerc, Leina Diaw, Julien Galisson and Florence Normandin took second place in the Royal Roads Design Thinking Challenge. The second edition of this design thinking interuniversity competition, organized by Royal Roads University, in Victoria, was held in British Columbia from March 18 to 22, 2019.
Two mandates
The participating teams, from nine universities and colleges across Canada, were given two specific challenges in the competition. In keeping with the spirit of design thinking, the teams were allowed and even encouraged to consult and share ideas with each other.
The competition was broken up into a number of stages:
- From February 19 to March 4, the teams had to produce and share an online video outlining their solutions to the first challenge: how to get people back downtown in their respective cities (Montréal, in our team’s case).
- The participating delegations and jury members then had until March 17 to view and comment on all the videos.
- When they got to Victoria, on March 19, the competitors received the jury members’ comments and had to be ready to deliver a reworked and enhanced solution the following day.
- They then had 24 hours on site to come up with a strategy to address a real problem in the city of Victoria: how to offer an experience for downtown workers who don’t like to linger there after working hours and who don’t live there? To do so, they consulted with target audiences in different Victoria neighbourhoods, including downtown.
The HEC Montréal team was trained and coached by Stéphanie Leverdier.
What is design thinking?
Design thinking is an innovation management approach calling for co-creation. Users are consulted frequently about the proposed solution throughout the process.
