Tutorial
Enhancing Agility in Business Model Design using Digital Twins: The Scene2Model Approach to Design Thinking
The rise of disruptive business ecosystems introduces new challenges in the development and operation of information systems. Managing change across multidisciplinary teams and leading innovation at a global scale requires new approaches. Design thinking serves as a key instrument to address this complexity, leveraging designer-driven problem-solving techniques for agile ideation, prototyping, and testing. Through stakeholder co-creation, it fosters innovation by visualizing different aspects of a problem within a structured solution space, where collaboration is central.
However, traditional methods are often constrained by the physical presence and availability of stakeholders. Absent participants must be informed later, which is not always seamlessly supported. This hands-on tutorial introduces OMiLAB’s Scene2Model, a software tool that enables the creation of digital twins of design thinking artifacts. These digital representations can be shared across globally distributed teams, information systems developers, and stakeholders, maximizing the potential of collective intelligence and an innovation-driven mindset in the digital age.
In this context, digital twins act as conceptual models that can be refined, enriched with domain knowledge, and integrated with existing business assets. By combining conceptual modeling with design thinking, Scene2Model bridges the gap between freeform design artifacts and structured formal abstractions, enhancing digital agility and fostering innovation in digital product/service development.
Organizers
About the organizer: Dr. Wilfrid Utz received his PhD from the University of Vienna, Research Group Knowledge Engineering in the field of metamodel design and conceptual structures. He has been involved in international research and innovation projects and gained experience in the field of modeling method conceptualization, meta-model design, and implementation of modeling tools using ADOxx in various application domains. His research and professional interest relate to the knowledge representation using meta-modeling concepts and platforms.
About the organizer: Iulia Vaidian received her master’s degree at the Vienna University of Economics and Business in Supply Chain Management and gained experience in design thinking, business process management, and conceptual modelling concepts and technologies in her responsibilities as part of the Research Group Knowledge Engineering from the University of Vienna and the OMiLAB team. She is responsible for the organization of the NEMO Summer School Series, has been involved in various EU funded projects, and coordinates the OMiLAB Community of Practice.
Goal and specific area of interest
The tutorial will introduce participants to storyboards as a selected design thinking method. A use case is chosen for the participants to work on during the tutorial. Haptic paper figures (SAP Scenes) are used to develop innovative ideas and build a visual storyboard of the identified challenge and proposed innovative solution/offering. Participants will observe the end-to-end process of a tool-supported transformation from haptic scenes into digital twins of the realized design artifacts. The representation of digital twins as conceptual models from a haptic design is input for a detailed analysis on different levels of abstraction: business, organizational, and technological aspects to be assessed on the design level before experimental validation.
Tutorial format
The tutorial will be held as a 90 min session with physical presence of participants. The tutorial combines theoretical and practical work sessions in teams, as follows:
Theoretical Foundations: Design Thinking in the Digital Age (15min)
The design thinking concept, its characteristics, and selected methods are discussed, to establish the participant’s common knowledge of the topic. The motivation to integrate design thinking among software-intensive businesses and benefits for managing change in innovation-led projects is discussed as well, along with the relation to Digital Innovation Environments.
Practical session: Digital Twins in Design Thinking (75min)
The participants form groups, develop collaboratively an innovative idea and start creating haptic scenes using SAP Scene. The transformation of the design thinking artifacts into digital twins is performed by the participants, using the Scene2Model software tool, with guidance and support from the organizers. Model-value concepts, as well as LLM-based object description and attribute generation are introduced to support the digital agility of businesses.
Participants
The tutorial targets students, researchers, and practitioners who have a research interest in conceptual modeling, and business ecosystems, as well as software developers and software users within digital transformation initiatives. The tutorial is for design thinking beginners and experts alike. Even though no prior knowledge is needed, interest in design thinking is desired and a basic background in business administration/business informatics is recommended as the hands-on session will introduce design thinking techniques.
During the tutorial, participants are challenged to experience and work hands-on on an innovative design challenge in a specific domain. As such the theoretical foundation of design thinking is translated into a well-defined methodology and applied throughout the session practically. The participants will gain knowledge in different ways about how disruptive business models can be designed, and the capabilities provided by the chosen environment – the Scene2Model software tool – through the use case from the practical part and the value of transforming design artifacts into digital models.
Required infrastructure
Material and interactive elements are provided by organizers throughout the tutorial. Participants are required to install in advance the Scene2Model software tool, available as an open-source implementation on their laptop/notebook, to follow hands-on the practical session.
For more details on the tutorial, you can download the PDF guide here.