SIC holds one-day Design Thinking workshop
KUCHING: Sarikei Innovation Centre ( SiC) which was officially launched in September last year has continuously organised programmes to prepare the people in Sarikei and the surrounding areas to face and solve challenges of this digital era.
The latest programme, a one- day workshop on Design Thinking held last Saturday, was well received by participants from diverse backgrounds including students, civil servants, business owners and retired professionals.
This workshop, aimed at building creative confidence in problem solving, focused on the concept of Design Thinking in generating innovative ideas.
Strategic manager of iCube Innovation Sdn Bhd, Malcolm Wu said the participants were from Sarikei, Sibu, Meradong, Bintangor, Julau, Saratok, Kapit, Pakan and Daro.
During the workshop, participants were given a task to design a solution based on the problem statement identified by the facilitator.
They were then required to obtain feedback and validation from real customers around Sarikei town.
“By doing this, participants are able to experience the importance of data (feedback) collection from real users to help them further improve the solution. In general, Design Thinking is for anyone who is willing to rewire their thinking process about challenges and problem solving in creating something new.
“Anyone in an organisation can master Design Thinking approach to collaboratively generate ideas to innovate how they work and what they create.
“Innovation is a positive change and Design Thinking is the catalyst of such change,” he said.
The facilitator of the workshop, Chuah Kee Man from Universiti Malaysia Sarawak, indicated that he was pleasantly surprised with the enthusiasm of those who attended the workshop.
He shared how a group with members from different fields such as forestry, land and survey and education, managed to collectively construct a creative solution to the given design challenge.
“The group is a clear example of what design thinking is all about, focusing on radical collaboration of multi disciplines in uncovering the best solution for a problem,” he said.
One participant, Patricia Sima who is an administrative staff in a private college, stated that the workshop provided opportunities for participants to think and make decisions as a group.
“It also builds their confidence. I hope we can attend such workshops again in the near future as it is really useful,” she said.
A school headmaster Tiong Thai Yii shared that throughout the session, they learnt the most important steps of Design Thinking namely empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. “These allow us to make better decisions in future,” he added.
Meanwhile, SiC will organise a series of workshops on introducing Alibaba.com and other e- commerce platforms to local SMB, especially for those proprietors of small and medium businesses ( SMBs) on Oct 19 and 20. Wu said this workshop will be about utilisation of e- commerce platform to sell online.
“This is a seminar that will provide better insight on e- commerce. We will be introducing Alibaba.com as one of the platform.
“Admission is free and seats are limited,” he said, adding registration can be done online through http:// bit. ly/sic- ec.