Päivi Pöyry-Lassila

Supporting Empathetic Boundary Spanning in Participatory Workshops with Scenarios and Personas

This paper examines the employment of design methods in combination with SimLabâ„¢ process simulation method in the context of developing IT-based support and processes for the fuzzy-front end innovation in a real-world organizational setting. The authors bring together theories and concepts from the fields of design studies and knowledge management across boundaries. They use these theories, rooted in the practice-based perspective, as analytical lenses in the case study. Acting at the interface of different knowledge domains, the authors look into the role of empathy-laden boundary objects as potential enablers of boundary spanning. The authors present empirically grounded findings from an ongoing research project with an emphasis on the methods and techniques employed. Their empirical data consists of recorded and transcribed group discussions from a participatory workshop, and individual thematic interviews have been used as raw material for constructing the process map, personas and scenarios (the boundary objects). The data was analyzed applying qualitative content analysis with an interpretative approach. Their findings are explored more closely in the article.

Co-creating Networked Educational Innovations via Process Simulations

Three facilitated, discussion-based process simulation workshops were arranged to enable the actors of an emerging school network to co-develop their educational processes. The workshops applied specific visual boundary objects in subsequent phases. The workshop data and the follow-up interviews show that the workshops supported a stepwise double co-creation of novel ideas for educational innovations, and of the necessary ties for their successful implementation. More analysis of the longitudinal data is still needed to refine and test this hypothesis.

Supporting empathy in business process simulation with scenarios

This paper examines the employment of scenario-based design approach in combination with SimLab business process simulation method in the context of studying the fuzzy-front end innovation process in a real-world technology business setting. In this paper we aim to show how these divergent techniques of inquiry can be combined in order to produce knowledge on the one hand about peoples experiences, feelings and practices, and on the other hand, about the business process, its bottlenecks and improvement opportunities. Furthermore, our objective is to study how these different modes of knowledge can complement each other in creating an understanding about innovation-related activities as well as in facilitating the building of a shared vision among project participants. Our primary interest is in exploring if scenarios, combined with small-scale personas and business process simulation method have the potential to evoke empathy in a co-design setting. In this paper we present early insights from an ongoing research project with an emphasis on the methods and techniques employed.