On February 7, 2020, over 50 undergraduate students from the Ivey and Smith (Queen’s U) schools of business attended Deloitte University in Toronto to explore Human Centred Design with a focus on fintech. This event was sponsored by the Scotiabank Digital Banking Lab and included students from Ivey faculty member Chuck Grace's HBA2 Fintech Business 4628 course.
An important component, and unique aspect, of the day was a two-hour "trade fair" with Apple, AWS, Salesforce, Stack, Wealthsimple, Lending Loop and Bloq. During the trade fair the students explored their preliminary Fintech ideas with the industry participants and received real-time feedback on their ideas plus some technology suggestions as well.
Above: Representatives from Lending Loop were on hand to provide feedback on the students' ideas. Left to right: Rachel Lorimer, Ryan Watkins, and Brandon Vlaar. Brandon, co-founder and CTO of Lending Loop, is an Ivey alum, HBA '14.
Following the trade fair the students worked in mixed teams to frame, discover, analyze, create and then prototype their ideas. The day ended with team pitches, and the depth of the insights and the innovative approaches to the issues being presented were impressive.
Above: student teams present their ideas at the Future of Family Finances event held at Deloitte University in Toronto.
The feedback from the students on this event was positive, with one student commenting: "Just wanted to thank you for taking us to Deloitte today, giving us the opportunity to learn about what goes into human centred design and giving us the chance to meet some really cool people. I was on the fence about taking this course, but wanted to challenge myself in my last semester to break out of my comfort zone. Today did exactly that, but in the best possible way. I was scared of Fintech before, and now I'm just excited about it.”
A big thank you to Chuck Grace for organizing this event!
(PS: To find out more about Lending Loop's story and discuss it in the classroom, check out Ivey Publishing's Lending Loop case.)