Presentation of the results and the final deliverable Design Options Paper (DOP) of DestinationUX project
The project “DestinationUX” brought three innovation agencies together, to jointly seek for a process for the improvement of Innovation Support Programmes by applying the Design Thinking methodology.
The three partners – Business and Cultural Development Centre (KEPA), Cardiff Metropolitan University (PDR) and Polish Agency for Entrepreneurship Development (PARP) – have a long-standing experience in rendering services to SMEs, as they manage national and regional programmes to reinforce entrepreneurship, as well as in Design Thinking, a methodology for tackling challenges by placing people at the heart of the whole process.
During the 18-months implementation of the project (from September 2019 to February 2021), the partners followed a certain procedure that was based on Twinning+ methodology, which led them to the final outcome of a pilot tested service for improved and user-friendly innovation support programmes.
More specifically, the project partners peer reviewed and assessed existing services and respective innovation support programmes, based on Design Thinking methodology, proceeded in synthesizing a new process not only for the improvement of existing programmes, but also during the design of new ones. The pilot application of the suggested methodology followed, during which each partner worked on a specific innovation support programme, focusing on how these could be improved and become more user-friendly.
All the above-mentioned activities ended up to the formulation of a guide on how innovation support agencies can contribute to the improvement of innovation support programmes, so they attract more beneficiaries, and to the improvement of the users’ experience, in order to facilitate the implementation process for the programme as a whole. This Design Options Paper (DOP) contains the standard procedure deployed into phases and stages of implementation, a series of suggested tools to be used, and also the outputs from the pilot testing on existing innovation support programmes.
The project’s results and the DOP were presented at the online final event that was held on 26.02.2021.
The final version of DOP is being published and becomes available to anyone interested, with the present article.
The final deliverable of DestinationUX project can be found here: Design Options Paper
More information on DestinationUX.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 853668.