Franka Grünewald holds a Master of Science in Computer Science specializing on digital media, which she researched and practiced on in England, New Zealand and Namibia. She acquired her PhD at the Hasso Plattner Institute in 2014 with a topic at the intersection of e-learning, user-centered design and the Semantic Web. In that time she also graduated from the Design Thinking Basic and Advanced Track program of the HPI School of Design Thinking, held seminars and workshops in internet technologies and systems as well as usability.
As post-doc Franka worked in the position of a project coordinator for an interdisciplinary e-learning project at the University of Potsdam. There she researched and developed personal learning environments using user-centered design and agile development. Besides, she was responsible for project management, team development, as well as the organization of workshops, scientific symposia and conferences.
Presently, besides coaching Design Thinking at the HPI D-School, Franka works for a German federal authority in IT project and product management. There she focuses on introducing more and more agile and innovative working methods.
When using Design Thinking, Franka is especially fascinated at how everyone gets in a maker-mode, active and has great ideas so easily and how the collaborative thinking and hands on prototyping so quickly generates a large bunch of feasible ideas while having a lot of fun at the same time.
Topics that interest her most are the working- and learning-environments of the future, the gender gap in work life, sustainability as well as projects in the public sector.
