Abstract
Design thinking has recently emerged as a powerful approach to innovation. Its ability to transform products, services, and organizations has been broadly discussed in the literature. However, how to implement the approach in organizational settings has not been sufficiently understood and addressed, especially when it comes to developing in-house design capabilities. Libraries, like many other public-sector organizations, often depend on the engagement of external design consultancies to guide their transformational and innovation processes. The development of in-house design capabilities could empower an organization to more actively engage with transformational processes and sustain design-led innovation and strategy building over time. This thesis explores, both conceptually and practically, such processes in an academic library. The Research through Design (RtD) approach was used to design and implement a series of design interventions. They mostly took the form of design workshops. All interventions were based on the real-life concerns of the academic library and, over time, contributed to the increase of in-house design thinking capabilities. The methodological approach, RtD, helped to formulate and allow discussion of a framework consisting of three inter-related components: temporal aspects, openness, and dialogical spaces. The thesis provides a set of guidelines that aim to help academic libraries develop in-house design capabilities using design thinking.
List of papers
Paper 1: Culén, A., & Gasparini, A. (2014). Find a Book! Unpacking Customer Journeys at Academic Library. In ACHI 2014, The Seventh International Conference on Advances in Computer-Human Interactions (pp. 89–95). The paper is included in the thesis. |
Paper 2: Chasanidou, D., Gasparini, A., & Lee, E. (2015). Design thinking Methods and Tools for Innovation. In A. Marcus (Ed.), Design, User Experience, and Usability: Design Discourse (pp. 12–23). DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-20886-2_2. The paper is not included in the thesis. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-20886-2_2 |
Paper 3: Gasparini, A., & Chasanidou, D. (2016). Understanding the role of design thinking methods and tools in innovation process. In Proceedings of The XXVII ISPIM Conference 2016. Porto, Portugal: Lappeenranta University of Technology, 1–11. The paper is included in the thesis. |
Paper 4: Culén, A., Gasparini, A., Minaříková, P., Novotný, R., Pandey, S., & Zbiejczuk Suchá, L. (2016). When Designers are Non-designers: Open Endedness vs. Structure of Design Tools. In Proceedings of the International Conference on Interfaces and Human Computer Interaction 2016 (pp. 3–11). Madeira, Portugal. The paper is included in the thesis. Also available in DUO:
http://urn.nb.no/URN:NBN:no-54151 |
Paper 5: Gasparini, A., & Culén, A. (2017). Openness and Design Practices in Academic Libraries. International Journal of Multidisciplinarity in Business and Science, 3(4), 76–83. The paper is not included in the thesis. |
Paper 6: Gasparini, A., & Culén, A. (2017). Temporality and Innovation in Digital Humanities: The Case of Papyri from Tebtunis. Interaction Design & Architectures(s) IxD&A, (34), 161–184. The paper is included in the thesis. |
Paper 7: Gasparini, A. (2019). Building Design Capabilities in Academic Libraries. In Conference Proceedings of the Academy for Design Innovation Management: Research Perspectives: In the Era of Transformation (ADIM), London, England, 2(1), 1069–1083. doi: 10.33114/adim.2019.04.376. The paper is included in the thesis. |