Designing a Visual Tool for Teaching and Learning Front-End Innovation

• Main Authors: Priscilla Kan John, Emmaline Lear, Patrick L’Espoir Decosta, Shirley Gregor, Stephen Dann, Ruonan Sun
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Carleton University 2020-09-01
• Series: Technology Innovation Management Review
• Subjects: design thinking; evidence-based learning; evidence-based teaching; front-end innovation; problematisation; visual tools
• Online Access: https://timreview.ca/timreview.ca/article/1386

This paper presents work on the design and development of a guided visual tool, the project client map (PCM), which is intended to assist students in their class projects solving real-world problems with industry clients. We use a design science research approach to contribute to existing knowledge through the design of an artefact (the PCM) that has a clear educational and learning goal, and that provides utility. Circumscribing a problem is an essential step to seed the ideation process in front-end innovation. While this step can employ existing tools that focus separately on the organisational, environmental, and human contexts of the problem under scrutiny, there is no formalised roadmap for how to integrate these tools. The PCM addresses this gap. We present a first version of the PCM in this paper, which will be refined in further work.