Safia’s Design Thinking Mindset paper published
The latest paper from Dr Safia Suhaimi, titled ‘Design thinking mindset: a user-centred approach toward innovation in the Welsh creative industries’, is now published Open Access in the International Journal of Design Creativity and Innovation.
The article presents how our Media Cymru-dedicated team engages with the Welsh creative industries to nurture a better understanding of R&D and innovation. Specifically, we discussed how we introduce a different framing of R&D terms and processes to change people’s perceptions of innovation. Our findings show that this engagement has prompted creative practitioners to challenge the traditional notion of ideas and what ‘innovation’ means, frame failure differently and understand the importance of focusing on process over solutions. As part of Media Cymru's wider aim of increasing innovation in the Welsh Creative Industries, we discuss how these ‘mindset shifts’ are valuable in building individual innovation capacities in non-design industries.
The research presents the findings of the Innovation for Creatives and Ideas Lab training series, delivered as part of our user-centred design interventions in Media Cymru. It describes the framework that we use to introduce R&D processes to the creative practitioners, including different user research tools and techniques that are used in design-led innovation.
Professor Andy Walters, a co-author of the paper, said:
"The companies and practitioners we engaged with through this research were usually naturally innovative, but often didn't see how their work would fit with traditional ideas of R&D. We were able to help them to make use of design tools to understand their end-user needs, and communicate to other stakeholders, including funders and investors, how they were developing new ways to meet those needs."
Link to article:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/21650349.2024.2383410
Read more about PDR International Centre for Design and Research's involvement in Media Cymru's Innovation Pipeline here:
https://media.cymru/our-projects/