Nesta’s Innovation Growth Lab (IGL) has published a report on Experimental innovation policy for SMEs: findings and recommendations. Within this report results from three Horizon 2020 Work Programme (INNOSUP-06-2018) completed projects are presented, one of them being 200SMEchallenge. 

According to the report, the way the evaluation has been implemented in 200SMEchallenge project showed that participation in the UX Challenge led to significantly increased knowledge and ‘know-how’ about the design sprint method, and possibly (though less obvious) to improved attitudes towards design thinking. However, there is no clear evidence to support greater adoption of design thinking and user-centred design techniques within SMEs that participated in the UX Challenge and their readiness to absorb and apply knowledge from outside the organisation.

Report suggests to continue with observations and, if possible, to test the UX Challenge at even a larger scale to get more decisive results. 

Join us for our final event on 7th October, 2021, at 9:00-13:00 CET. Participants in the event will have the opportunity to:

• Learn insights from the 200SMEchallenge project : Boosting innovation
  capacities in SMEs with an Open Innovation contest for User Experience in 7
  European countries
• Hear about European innovation trends
• Participate in our workshops on innovation contests, Design Sprints, User
  Experience and much more
• Network with innovation actors from all over Europe.

More detailed program along with the registration link will be available in September here.

The event will be held online.

A second part of the scale-up workshop was organized on 21^st May, when representatives from various Innovation Agencies joined the consortium to discuss the possibilities of adopting innovation contest approach in their innovation support activities.

At first, Innovation Agencies were presented with the 200SMEChallenge project, its major goals, activities and findings. Later, they also received an introduction to the RCT study implemented by the project and learned about the forthcoming innovation support initiatives from the European Commission. Finally, the representatives were divided into working groups in accordance with their field of expertise and were set to discuss on three major questions in their groups respectively:

1. Did you understand the main concept of the UX Challenge? What parts are you more interested in?
2. Do you have any experience of running innovation contests? How would you compare it/them to the UX Challenge?
3. How you think you might be interested in running an innovation contest? At what conditions (targeted companies and challenges, partners, funding, …)?

At the end of the event insights from each group were presented in a joint session, showing some possible perspectives for scaling up and adopting the UX Challenge initiative. For instance, some representatives suggested to adopt an innovation contest as a mean to solve an unemployment issue where winning solvers would get a job with the company instead of just a prize. Other representatives discussed the possibility of adopting an innovation contest to a specific artificial intelligence challenge or more into a manufacturing, biotech and other domains rather than just as a digital challenge.

All in all, participants showed great interest in the initiative and came up with different ideas to adopt it even further. And now, only time will show if they proceed with them and if they succeed.

During the planning stage of the project, a two-day workshop was foreseen for partners and stakeholders (innovation agencies that would like to adopt the UX Challenge initiative to some extent) to discuss the ways to transform this initiative into a widely accepted innovation support mechanism for companies. Unfortunately, due to COVID-19 restrictions, this plan had to be rethought and two separate online workshop sessions have been set for instead.

The first session took place on 28 April 2021 with project partners sharing their insights into the ins and outs of the initiative, what could work and what should be avoided in order to attract other innovation agencies to utilize it. Different ideas have been presented: from changing the theme or the subjects of the initiative (not focusing on UX and digital products or SMEs only) to going more internationally.

All the partners have expressed willingness to continue with the initiative, however, the lack of resources has been universally declared as one of the biggest obstacles to move forward with more UX Challenges in the future.

What is more, the online format of the UX Challenge events has been seen as a bigger advantage rather than a disadvantage, as it allowed solvers from the whole country to take part in the initiative since they did not have to travel to the event. It was also considered to be easier to manage than the event with people in some venue.

It was also noted that the experiment part of the UX Challenge, where companies had to voluntarily participate in the Random Control Trail in order to be able to get solution for their UX challenges, made it more difficult to attract companies and convince them to sing up for the experience.  

Once partners shared their experiences and insights from organizing UX Challenges, some thought patterns have been indicated and chosen for further discussion with stakeholders that is planed for 19 May 2021.  

With all the partners finishing their UX Challenges, the most complex phase of the project has started. Partners now have to use all their negotiation and convincing skills to gather feedback from companies through the Follow up Survey (FuS). In order to have valid data about the effects of UX Challenges on the SMEs, the FuS has to be filled out not only by the companies that participated in the UX Challenge events (so-called Treatment Group), but also the ones that applied for it but were not selected (so-called Control Group).

There were 192 companies applying for the UX Challenge initiatives in 7 project countries in total. 60 out of them have been selected to take part in the UX Challenge events, whereas the remaining 132 have been considered as a Control Group. This particular cohort of companies is the most difficult one to deal with. SMEs that have not participated in the UX Challenge event have little or no incentive to take part in FuS as they were not subjects to the experience and any of the benefits that came from it. However, the project is offering companies, that applied for the UX Challenge but were not selected, to take part in the Design for Business Seminar that has been scheduled for 26 May 2021. This seminar is dedicated exclusively for this particular group of companies and is a rare opportunity to have well-recognized CEO of Danish Design Centre Christian Bason to share his insights and experiences about the design with such a limited number of companies in one session.

Now it is up to the partners to remind companies about their commitments to the project and uplift some of the SMEs with additional incentives to do so.   

Three more partners have concluded their UX Challenges this week thus finalizing the whole 7-event endeavor that was moved to the online format due to corona virus pandemic-imposed restrictions.

Danish Design Centre, Espaitec and Steinbeis Europa-Zentrum have each accommodated 8 companies to a three-day design sprit-based experience to acquire UX solutions for their digital products. Each partner has provided companies with a team of solvers – young professionals and students in the field of UX – who’ve been also advised and supervised by a number of designated mentors. The solutions conceived by the solvers have been additionally tested by potential product users thus enabling or disabling the usability of the solutions.

Many companies have expressed their satisfaction with the experience and expressed their willingness to take part in this type of initiatives in the future. The majority of them have been struck by the level of professionalism coming from the younger specialists and the set of ideas they’ve been able to come up in such a short and restricted time.

Seeing the benefits of the UX Challenge, Espaitec even has decided to organize another one in autumn 2021 inviting the companies that have previously applied to event but have not been randomly selected.

Read more about the last three UX Challenges here:

Danish Design Centre

Espaitec

Steinbeis Europa-Zentrum

Four partners have now completed their UX Challenges with one more having it this week and other two planned for the following week. Even though there is no full picture of the effects of the challenges on the companies yet, the partners who already had their events held, say that they received mainly positive reactions and feedbacks from all participants involved.  

“The event went smoothly and everyone was very pleased with it”, says Kadi Villers from Technopol, who just had the UX Challenge held last week.

“We have at least three companies that were so happy with the solutions provided by the solvers that they decided to continue working with the teams privately in order to further develop their ideas. I consider this to be a major pay off from the event and all the hard work that was put in while making it happen”, says Vitalija Kolisova from Lithuanian Innovation Centre, who organized the event in February.

The high level of satisfaction after the events are finished is especially noticeable with the three partners who have no prior experience in organizing UX Challenges. Unlike HIT – Hub Innovazione Trentino (HIT), the partner with the most experience in this matter within the consortium and the whole concept and framework for the implementation of UX Challenge, Busines Oulu, Lithuanian Innovation Centre and Technopol had their first ever UX Challenges organized. Thus, for them the success in the events is even more valuable, even though HIT is very pleased with the outcome of its UX Challenge as well.

Learn more about each UX Challenge organized by clicking on the links below:

HIT – Hub Innovazione Trentino (HIT)

Business Oulu

Lithuanian Innovation Centre

Technopol

After a short coronavirus-related recess, partners are coming back on track with the innovation driven UX Challenges. Three partners, HIT – Hub Innovazione Trentino (HIT), BusinessOulu (BO) and Lithuanian Innovation Centre (LIC), will have their UX Challenges already held this week.

HIT has chosen to organise a five-day online event with design sprint sessions split equally per each day on 15-19 February, 2021. BO has also slightly changed the initial plan and opted for a three-day online hackathon on 16-18 February. Whereas LIC has decided to stick to an original schedule and organise a two-day online event with design sprint sessions held on 18-19 February, 2021. HIT and LIC will have their final events held on 19 February, 2021, while BO will have its on 18 February, 2021. For more information about the final events, please check HIT final event, BO final event and LIC final event.

HIT has selected 12 companies with digital products to take part in UX Challenge, whereas BO and LIC will attend to 8 SMEs. Companies had to apply for the event with their UX challenge, and then, the eligible ones, had to go through a random selection process to be able to present their UX challenge to a team of solvers (students or early professionals in the field of UX, design, psychology, etc.).

During these events, experienced UX and design sprint mentors will guide solvers towards the best solutions possible, which then, will be tested by the pre-selected potential product users. During the final events, challenges and their solutions will be presented to the public and the jury will pick the winning solvers’ team.

Partners from Finland, Denmark, Italy and Lithuania have shared their takes on UX trends in their countries respectively in a series of articles “Thinking outside the box” launched by Mittelstand 4.0-Kompetenzzentrum Usability.

The first article provided by the partner from Finland BusinessOulu dvels on measurable benefits in UX design by student collaboration. It has been written by Tiia Juntunen, a marketing manager at Tecinspire and a student at University of Oulu Information Processing Science. The article is available here.

The second article has been provided by Vitalija Kolisova, the Head of Communications at Lithuanian Innovation Centre. It is based on an interview with Vaidas Gecevicius, Creative Director at Gluk Media, and covers the topic of UX trends in VR. The article is available here.

The third article in the series has been provided by the lead partner HIT – Hub Innovazione Trentino. Nicola Doppio, project’s coordinator, shares his insights into organizing a #UXChallenge. The article is available here.

Links to other partners’ articles will be listed once available.