Digital Innovation Project

Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs

Timeframe: 6 month

Challenge:

The German Ministry for Economy is communicating via digital channels and through content specific online platforms. But

  • is challenged by on-going changes of user behavior, voter attitudes, new technologies and evolving political agendas
  • it faces difficulties to orchestrate its expertise and align efforts through its many on- and offline service offerings
  • it is supposed to address ALL German citizens, yet also journalists, foreign investors, entrepeneurs, research institutions and others.


    • Approach:

    The design thinking project brought together public administration employees and relevant external stakeholders, in order to:

  • create added value for crucial information gate keeper (journalists) or central target groups of political agenda (entrepreneurs)
  • derive design principles for a next generation of online communication and suggest several detail solutions for specific challenges.



    Case outline:

    We started with an extensive ecosystem exploration, stakeholder profiling, call for participation and organized on-side visits and user interviews. The teamwork was ignited by a 2 day initial Design Thinking Workshop gathering internal stakeholders and external experts (journalists, entrepreneurs, online communication experts). The four teams worked remotely to test assumptions and first ideas to gather feedback during the next 2 weeks.

    During a next workshop the teams analyzed insights, aligned the feedback, iterated the first prototypes, tested and presented their solutions to the group. After another 2 weeks of testing, refining prototypes and documentation the 4 final prototypes were presented to the ministry officials and project sponsors. To smooth the handover tiefenschärfe developed an extensive multimedia documentation to brief the implementing online-communication supplier. In spring 2015 the new online agency took 2 prototypes to the next level integrating them into the relaunch of the website.