Uli Weinberg, Hasso Plattner Institut School of Design Thinking, Germany

Envision an institution where instead of lecture halls, you will find creative labs, and no student is ever individually assessed. This is the potential of studying, in the hub of Design Thinking at Europe. Uli Weinberg, director at Hasso Plattner Institut‘s School of Design Thinking, answers our questions.

The PIE: First of all, can you explain what style thinking is and how you’re involved with it?

Uli Weinberg: How we frame design thinking here in the Hasso Plattner Institut is that we are saying there is a set of different procedures and approaches to address complex issues.

We’re focussing to a multi-disciplinary approach so it’s not just one individual who’so doing the research, but actually a bunch of individuals. And it’s also about constructing prototypes, to talk about those with the possible consumer to get feedback and around [employing] a pragmatic approach, making it better and better till you could actually go into production.

The PIE: And how do you actually teach style thinking?

UW: The first core component is the focus on collaboration and not competition. I began calling this the ‘team of teams’ manner, it’s not just one team developing a solution but actually several teams are approaching the same problem and at a really collaborative manner.

In our school, we skipped human evaluations in the very first second, since we wanted to concentrate on collaboration, not competition. Since we began 12 years ago we have not quantified any person activities.

The PIE: That’s interesting!

UW: I think it’s among the largest issues in our education system: to conquer the idea of human evaluation.

The PIE: Ok, and do last. .

UW: The second element in our design thinking learning approach is truly the physical area [to learn].  We discovered 12 years ago [when the school was set up] that there isn’t any place for collaboration, particularly in a college. A lecture hall is not built for teamwork.  A lecture will be to get a group of people listening to a single person yourself and taking notes. What we needed, we found out, is more of a lab setting.

“The initial core component is the focus on collaboration and not competition”

We’re a sister institution of Stanford University and they also did experiments spaces and began constructing their own furniture, a kind of prototype of pubs and whiteboards and they had been trying different things.

It’s this sort of setting [shows office through Skype] we came up with. We’ve got a top bench table on wheels, which means people are at the stand up position. The whiteboard is a bit bigger than normal ones, it’s likewise movable on wheels. Along with the table has an extremely practical storage area underneath.

The PIE: Do you stand all day to work?

UW: Yes, I have a little table that I can lower and lift higher but most of the time I’m standing. 

The next way [we teach design believing ] — is actually about the procedure, which is a one.

The method helps you to create tons of ideas. Usually, we choose the best two ideas and construct prototypes, which we examine with real users. The important element of this advanced procedure is the iteration, which means to do this over and over again.

It’s moving away in a waterfall or inherent working version which asks one to define the outcome in four decades from today and then define milestones.

“It is these three center matters – individuals, place, procedure – that is what we are practising with our pupils ”

This machine such as [reveals his smart phone ] is fabricated. Nevertheless, the interesting portion of this machine really isn’t the physical part, but it’s the program on the machine, the apps. And they are never completed, they are constantly under further improvement.

The PIE: So the process of designing means that development as continuing …

UW: This really is a fundamental paradigm shift in the thinking of products. We have to begin thinking in versions. And even in the event that you build a vehicle, today , it’s not a byproduct anymore. Tesla is demonstrating that every evening — the improvements they make on their automobiles are using the software updates.

Therefore it’s those three center things — people, place, procedure — that is what we are practising with our students and ’s how we frame design thinking. It’s the opposite of our children are still trained at schools and universities.

The PIE: Are you seeing a increase in international student programs in addition to German pupil enrolments?

UW: We now have about 120 students every semester representing roughly 70 different disciplines, roughly 60 distinct universities and roughly 20 different nations.

The PIE: I wanted to ask you too about online instruction, I think you said you had 600,00 online. Is that right?

Yes, the system is called Open HPI, also you may easily get it.  All in all there are approximately 600,000 people registered for a vast variety of classes. We have Design Thinking classes running because 2017, the previous one began in May together by 3,500 registered individuals from all around the world.

The PIE: So would you think a great deal of individuals are using that as a taster for the manner in which you teach and how you understand?

UW: This is truly the first time that we did so kind of more high level design thinking workshop online since the learning procedure has to be physical, because it’s so different. What we are doing here, we call it a “de-learning procedure ”. We wish to make people aware that the way they usually learn things can also be a mind and behavior conditioning procedure, and the majority of people cannot think of a different way.

And slowly but certainly, they understand, “Oh, that’s just conditioned behavior ”

Our students in addition to the pros we train, still act like human opponents when they begin our apps. And slowly but certainly, they understand, “Oh, that’s just conditioned behavior. Therefore I don’t even have to be this way”. It is a procedure, which you’ve got to understand physically.

Therefore, we view the course we are offering [online] as an inspiration for people to really attend a physical design thinking app at HPI.

The post Uli Weinberg, Hasso Plattner Institut School of Design Thinking, Germany appeared on The PIE News.

Buy Tickets for every event – Sports, Concerts, Festivals and more buy tickets