UNAA Design Studio: Creative Solutions by Youths

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Twelve participants, in four teams of three, spent five rigorous days in UNAA Design Studio, facilitated by GerHub. Their task for the week was to develop services that can contribute to addressing mobility challenges in the ger areas. At the end of the week, the class presented their solutions to the administration of Khoroo #31, Songinokhairkhan District, including the Khoroo Governor.

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 The five-day was built around the steps of Design Thinking, a creative problem solving approach developed by d.School, Stanford University. The teams experimented this unique approach through empathizing with users, coming up with creative solutions, prototyping their solutions, and re-iterating them through numerous review sessions.

 
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Design Thinking, adopted by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, Stanford University, is one of the popular methodologies for user experience design or participatory design process. Designers and users work together throughout this re-iterative process and its characteristics include empathizing users, challenging assumptions, and “failing” faster. 

 
 

Their field work combined empathy walks around one of the project sites–territory of Khoroo 31 and 43, Songinokhairkhan District, and interviewing ger area residents to better understand their mobility needs. Additionally, guest speaker sessions laid the foundation about ger area as an integral part of Ulaanbaatar, its challenges including transport and mobility, the concept of sustainable transportation and global trends, and findings from the UNAA survey at three project sites.

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The teams developed four different solutions that spanned from creating unions for informal taxi drivers to conducting a public awareness campaign for promoting behavioral change.

“The most impactful part of the Design Studio was interactive exercises and games that tested and improved the teamwork.”
“In five days, all participants managed to get the overview of the ger area challenges and potential solutions. I learned how to analyze data in a short time in order to come up with solutions.”