NORDICHI 2014 WORKSHOP INNOVATION IN HCI: WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM DESIGN THINKING MOTIVATION FOR THE WORKSHOP The importance of innovation is commonly acknowledged. As stated by the innovation theorist Chesbrough: “companies that don’t innovate die” [4]. At the same time, concern has been voiced on the failure of design processes currently applied within the field of HumanComputer Interaction (HCI) to support breakthrough innovation [3]. In particular, HCI design processes are held to lead mainly to incremental innovation and small changes [8]. In parallel with the critique of the lack in innovative power in HCI design processes, design thinking has emerged as an area of humancentred research and practice that is argued to be geared towards breakthrough innovation [2]. Design thinking is seen as a humancentred innovation process concerning complex real world problems, which are solved through empathy with users, rapid prototyping and abductive reasoning [6]. Successful educations applying design thinking, such as the one by d.school at Stanford, also show that design thinking goes beyond a designer alone, engaging competent multidisciplinary teams in innovation through design processes, making sure that innovation is feasible, viable and addresses human values. At the surface, the design processes rooted in design thinking and HCI are seductively similar. To exemplify, a model design processes for both HCI and design thinking can look the same. Arguably, the differences between service design and HCI must be sought at different levels than at the level of a highlevel design process. This format is to be used for submissions that are published in the conference publications. Key to design thinking is the capacity to generate and explore design alternatives, to reason as to which of the alternatives are worthy of being continued, as well as to be able to combine parts from different design proposals into the best solution to the problem [6]. This same problemsolving procedure, it is argued [2], may be applied to design of anything from designing organizations, to designing products, services or systems. Furthermore, while HCI design processes rarely aim to bring about organizational changes, a design thinking approach to innovation can affect the whole organization [2,7]. Culén and Kriger [5], in their framework for longterm competetive advantage of ICT intensive organizations, consider design thinking to be an important factor for creative leadership, organizational vision, values, culture, and knowledge distribution. 1