February 10, 2021 Reflection: Innovation, Design Thinking ...and Mayor Nenshi! (Copy)

Life is full of surprises. We all seem to be aware of this truth, but how often do we find ourselves, well, surprised when something unexpected happens? It’s only human to experience this, yet we constantly search for ways to decrease risk and increase clarity in our lives. One of the ways we are learning to do just this is through a tool called Design Thinking. In our class today, we were visited by Erin from Calgary’s Civic Innovation Lab, who walked us through how to use Design Thinking and what it is!

After learning about the concept of design thinking, City of Calgary UX Researcher, Murray Thompson walked us through the practicality of running a User Test–let’s just say we all got to hit the ground running with hands-on work. It was awesome!

To put the icing on the cake, we were all surprised to find our very own Mayor Naheed Nenshi waiting for us upon our return from our breakout rooms. He generously shared his time with our class to inspire us and encourage us on our journey to making the lives of Calgarians better every day–a motto which he embraces with conviction.

Dawson D.