Group design-thinking project

This project is suppose to showcase our “21st century skills”, containing the four C’s:

1. Communication, 
2. Collaboration, 
3. Creativity and 
4. Critical Thinking

The first C, communication, was regularly used. We started out be trying the discover what the problem is with tourism in Suriname. As a group we went out on the streets and took interviews of tourist, hotel personal, taxi drivers, tour operators etc. Here are some samples:

After the interviews we used the "Design Thinking" method to arrive at our problem statement. To be more precise, we used phase 1 Empathize, this is the part were we conducted the interviews and phase 2 Define, with the use of “Affinity mapping” we sorted and categorize the problems discovered in the field.

In an interview taken by one of our group members a important statement was made by Victor Lesperance, consultant at “VEM Travel Consultancy" He said:

"The tourism sector will surely grow in Suriname if we promote it properly.”

Thanks to these methods we formed our problem statement which is:

"Suriname, not being promoted enough"

In phase 3 Ideate, we used different brainstorming session like Decision Matrix and 6-3-5 method  to come up with solutions to our problem. Through background research we decided to build a website where many to all the tour operators, hotels, restaurants and club are linked together. 

This provides the tourist one point destination where all the information of Suriname as vacation destination is available. The website will than be promoted on several tourist hot spot, airport and travel agencies through an attractive QR code poster. 

A little more about the poster

The poster came to be thanks to a collaboration of group members using the DeBono thinking head system and the 6-3-5 brainstorming session. My role in this system was the black hat and the green hat. The other group members had different hats too. The black hat role was to positive criticize what already has been done and with the green had think of new creative ideas. This is how I presented the QR code (Quick Response Codes) for the poster to help increase the change of promoting the website. In the brainstorming session many examples for the poster were presented until we all agreed on one.

In the test phase we decide also to launch a Facebook page and create a Facebook account. This so we could get more feedback from our public. The Facebook page is called, "SURINAME THE EXOTIC BEAUTY". Please visit us and leave a comment.

The other side of this project is that as ICT in education teachers we wanted to give our website educational value. Therefor we added educational videos to the website which were made by one of our group members.  My role in this was to conduct the presentation while filming. These videos set our website apart form other website with the same concept to promote Suriname. You can view these videos by visiting our website at https://promotingsuriname.wix.com//promotingsuriname. 

Other interesting presentation concerning our project are:

1. A Videoscribe presentation of our project. 
2. A Prezi presentation of our project