IxDIA Lean UX Canvas Workbook
As part of my role as a Smith Center Innovation Fellow Assistant, I helped design a physical and digital innovation workbook that supports interdisciplinary collaboration between business, engineering, and design students. The workbook guides teams through idea development, problem framing, assumption testing, and pitch preparation, helping students turn early concepts into actionable solutions for real world problems.
This project focused on creating an innovation workbook for the Smith Center for Private Enterprise Studies at California State University, East Bay. The workbook was developed in collaboration with the Head of the Art and Design Department and designed to support students during Ideathons, Innovation Festivals, and other interdisciplinary entrepreneurship events hosted by the Smith Center.
The goal of the workbook is to help students from business, engineering, and design backgrounds collaborate more effectively. These groups often approach problem solving from different perspectives, so the workbook creates a shared structure for moving from an initial idea to a more developed, evidence based concept. Inspired by the Lean UX Canvas and traditional physical workbook models, the experience helps teams clarify problems, identify assumptions, map conflict, gather evidence, and prepare a concise pitch.
The system includes both a physical workbook and a digital workbook. Each version can be used independently or together as a cohesive learning tool. The physical workbook is designed to help students quickly get ideas onto paper, sketch, discuss, and make decisions as a team. The digital workbook expands on that process by allowing teams to organize, refine, and continue developing their work online. Together, the two formats support different collaboration styles while keeping the overall process consistent.
The workbook includes activities such as a conflict map, assumption cards, an evidence log, and a 60 second pitch exercise. These activities were created to encourage discussion, reduce ambiguity, and help teams connect creative thinking with practical validation. Each activity was designed to support the online workbook model while still remaining useful in a live, hands on workshop setting.
My role included design research, workbook structure development, activity design, visual layout, user testing coordination, and iterative refinement. Over a six month process, the workbook was tested with CSUEB students from different educational backgrounds to understand how well the activities supported collaboration, clarity, and idea development. Feedback from these sessions helped refine the language, pacing, visual structure, and balance between guided instruction and creative freedom.
The workbook is currently in the refinement stage and will be sponsored by the Smith Center Foundation and CSUEB. Once finalized, it will be used at future Innovation Festivals and Ideathons hosted by the Smith Center. This project strengthened my experience in UX research, educational tool design, workshop facilitation, interdisciplinary collaboration, and creating design systems that help groups translate ideas into meaningful outcomes.
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