Assiniboine students compete in national Design Thinking Challenge

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Assiniboine students compete in national Design Thinking Challenge

A team of five second-year students from Assiniboine Community College’s School of Business competed for the first time in this year’s Royal Roads Design Thinking Challenge, which ran March 5th to 8th , placing 7th in a competitive field.

The challenge put in front of teams this year was to address the real-world problem of the impact COVID-19 has had on the adventure tourism industry. Twelve college and university teams from across Canada and one team from the USA participated across three rounds and were expected to leverage design thinking methods to develop a solution.

Students Mike Peters, Leo Dias Pereira Filho, Filecia Davis, Michalina Lojek and Patrick Pittet worked together under the guidance of lead coach Amy Doerksen and capstone instructor Leanne Zamrykut.

Team Assiniboine submitted an eight-minute video and infographic explaining their recommended solution to the judges, which included three rounds of solutions. Identifying a variety of product packages to meet different stakeholder needs, including providing virtual experiences/content, leveraging the RV trend and offering new services to accommodate them and additionally introducing bubble tents to product/service offerings.

"The Challenge has been intense and this group of talented students have put in some seriously long hours over the past three days. It has been amazing watching them come together to tackle a real business problem and their understanding and execution of Design Thinking principles is phenomenal,” said Lead Coach Amy Doerksen. “It is an absolute pleasure and honour to be coaching them. I will be sad to see it end for selfish reasons only in that it means our time together wraps up. This group has so much to be proud of, they have represented not just ACC but Manitoba well in a tough national competition."

Reflecting on the challenge, Business Administration (Human Resource specialization) student Filecia Davis said they learned a lot from participating.

“This journey has taught me a lot of lessons which are applicable to real life situations. I am glad I was able to experience this once in a lifetime opportunity while working with an amazing team. I will forever stand by the philosophy; we are stronger than we could ever imagine,” said Davis.

Fellow team member and Interactive Media Arts student Michalina Lojek enjoyed the level and diversity of competition.

"It's been a wild ride with the most supportive group of people I've ever worked with. The challenge was tough, we competed against teams with much more experience in the subject, but we had a chance to learn so much more than we could ever hope for."

Critical to this project was developing an individual’s ability to work as proactive team member, student Pat Pitte, specializing in Financial Services has developed invaluable skills from this exercise.

“It was truly an amazing experience to come together in such a short amount of time, we all had each other’s backs and were there to lean on when somebody stumbled. I think the business community can learn a lot from the design thinking process, it can be tailored to suit their needs.”

The Royal Roads Design Thinking Challenge is about making society better, working with others to understand their context and the people who are impacted.