Design Sprints in Shanghai

Challenge

A few years ago we helped Volvo Cars to start up a Lab in our facilities in Gothenburg. The Lab has since experimented around problem spaces and big issues affecting society as a whole, generating several major innovation initiatives. Our main focus was to develop a team with the skillset and methods to work agile and user-focused with prototypes and MVPs. Recently Volvo got back to us with a request to spread this way of working to their Shanghai office.

Process

We suggested (as we always do) a learning by doing approach. We define an opportunity space, start working together and learning the methods will come as a side-effect. Said and done, we set up a four day co-lab event focused on ’life conveniences for Electric Vehicle customers’, and formed a mixed team of design sprint specialists and UX/UI-designers from Humblebee and local business professionals and engineers from various fields.

So the project had two purposes, give employees at the Shanghai office hands-on experience of the playbook we developed for the Lab in Gothenburg, and also take the first step towards new service offerings for electric vehicle owners. new and existing partners.

Results

In just four creative, intense (and fun!) days the team:

• shared insight and created consensus about challenges
• narrowed down the opportunity space to focus on aspects of the charging experience that best corresponded to company strategy and user needs
• designed a digital prototype
• set the plan for several rounds of user tests and iterative development

And perhaps even more importantly 20 employees got hands-on training in a set of methods for design thinking, service design and agile digital development. The feedback was overwhelming and we can’t wait to come back and see our new friends at Volvo cars APAC HQ.

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