There are many reasons why the Rotman MBA is an awesome experience, but I think one of the key reasons is because it teaches you to think and do. It's not enough to just learn something helpful and new, if you don't know how to put it into practice. With that in mind, Rotman DesignWorks hosted its first ever Business Design Hackathon, and they got things off to a creative start with students submitting 60-second video pitches applying to be a part of this challenge.
Over the course of three days spread out over two weeks, we used design thinking principles to solve a live problem for the Rotman Marketing Team. The overall challenge pertained to, "How might we redesign the digital student experience at Rotman?" covering three different areas - Internal Communications, Ambient Experience, and Non-Academic Student Culture. Our team tackled the Ambient (Physical) Experience, with the more focused challenge of, "How might we help students be more informed when it comes to initiatives on the Rotman campus?" We went out and interviewed students in the full-time and part-time programs, to gain deeper insights into their views on learning about school initiatives, good & bad experiences, and the role of different technologies in their lives. The helpful creatives at DesignWorks helped us to synthesize our findings, journey map, ideate and prototype, although just when you think you're done, it's time to iterate! While iterations can be mildly frustrating, they're inherent as part of the business design process, and are stepping stones on the way to helping you build better, more effective & relevant solutions. We capped off this experience by presenting our multi-faceted proposed solution, the Rotman Huddle, to the Rotman Marketing Team and other Senior Rotman Directors. Here's a peek at our solution's intro!
The Business Design Hackathon was a great way to combine my passion, energy and curiosity, with a collaborative, experimental mindset, to gain practice in applying the principles of Business Design, and have some good fun along the way!