While Design Thinking is not rocket science, it is a process. It is not an art, but it does involve creativity. Work together to understand what design thinking is, how to fail fast, and apply it to a learning example and explore the phase of design thinking. In the end you’ll talk about how this is about people and design, not about systems and technology (but how to use them to your advantage!).
3. Why is Design
Thinking
Important?
• Today’s reality demands
innovation
• It’s always about people
• Allows you to Fail Fast
• Breaks you out of the box
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
16. Lead with empathy
• Listen more; talk less
• Immerse yourself in how
others experience your
program
• Adopt a beginner's mind
• Use all of your senses to
notice what's happening
around you
• Not everything looks like a
nail
19. NEW SKILLS
• Critical thinking
• Empathy
• Active learning
• Complex problem
solving
• System analysis
20.
21.
22.
23.
24. Sarah Jacobs
Age: 28
Work: Bank Teller
Location: Melbourne
Education: working on
MBA in Business Admin
Apps
Preferred Learning Methods
25. Persona Topics (to start with)
1. Persona goals - concrete objectives
2. Persona demographics - age, place, role name
3. Persona pain - frustrations, concerns, barriers, challenges
4. Persona media & device preference - most used sources or devices
5. Persona image – photographic impression
6. Persona role & responsibility - reports to, seniority on job
7. Persona biography - narrative of daily life or past events
26. Sarah Jacobs
One of my frustrations is not being able to find a job at
different levels. I have my papers, but most jobs expect 2-5
years of experience. But how am I supposed to get experience
if I can't get a job?
I would like to be a bank manager one day
running a large bank in Sydney or in Seattle,
Washington.
When I was 21, I climbed Mount Everest. Not metaphorically—I
literally climbed the highest mountain on Earth.
While I was hiking, I thought about quitting approximately 5,000
times. (And that’s a lowball estimate.) But despite the high
winds, low altitude, mental and physical fatigue, and trail mix
overdose, I kept going. I’m that person. Once I say I’ll do
something, it will happen.
Now, I put that perseverance to work as a senior teller for Polar
Bank. I don’t have to climb any mountains…but I do have to
move them.
Age: 28
Work: Bank Teller
Location: Melbourne
Education: working on
MBA in Business Admin
Apps
Preferred Learning Methods
• Podcasts
• Reading
Manager mentoring
27. How Could Design
Thinking Be Used to
Improve Employee
Experience?
This Photo by Unknown Author is licensed under CC BY-SA-NC
33. Resources
• Stanford — d.school and the The Bootcamp Bootleg
• IDEO — 'Design Thinking for Educators' and the Design
ThinkingToolkit
• Business Innovation Factory — 'Teachers Design for
Education' and the TD4Ed Curriculum
• Research — Design Thinking in Pedagogy — Luka, Ineta
(2014). Design Thinking in Pedagogy. Journal of Education
Culture an
34.
35. How to Connect with Me
E: darren@degreed.com
M: +01 206-409-3691
Li: linkedin.com/in/dnerland
@dnerland
Notes de l'éditeur
If you’ve been following us recently, you’ll notice that we have been writing a lot about Design Thinking. We are gearing up for our Design Thinking for Innovation and Business Growth event which will be held in June. We have a fabulous line-up of speakers (and only one more day to book at Early Bird pricing).
Design Thinking is a systematic process of thinking which empowers even the most traditional thinker to develop new, innovative solutions to the problem at hand. Everybody can be creative by following this process – it’s human-centred creativity with purpose.
So, why is Design Thinking important?
If you’ve ever spent any time around a three year old, you are no stranger to the question “Why?” Let’s momentarily unleash that inner curiosity and explore WHY we need design thinking.
Today’s reality demands innovationThe times that we live in demand innovation. It is impossible for a business to really make waves without innovating. Design Thinking is the tool kit for innovation. And yet, it’s laser targeted to focus on the core problem. Too many once massively successful companies have disappeared into oblivion by believing what worked before will work. Times have changed. Customers have changed. Lifestyles have changed. The way we communicate has changed. In order for a business to stay current, they must move with these changes. It’s impossible to predict the future. Design Thinking is like a map…you may not know from the beginning exactly where it will take you, but you can be confident that the destination will be innovative, relevant and amazing!
Faced with an insurmountable task?Understanding the need to innovate is one thing. But being tasked with the challenge of doing it is another. It can seem insurmountable and overwhelming. Like telling a novice to climb Mt. Everest. Design Thinking takes the challenge or problem and drills it down into small bite-size pieces, enabling you to drill down to the core issues. From there, you can see clearly and piece together the most critical aspects to devise a strongly relevant solution.
What if there is no market?A common concern in developing a new product or service is “Will there be a market?” Design Thinking involves the market from the get-go. In fact, before you even think about developing a product or service, you are spending time with the market, understanding their needs and the realities of their world. In essence, your market is working in tandem with you throughout the whole process – from zoning in on the real problem, to tweaking the solution throughout development. The problem of having a market isn’t a problem at all with design thinking. This is because design thinking begins with, and is rooted in, people.
It’s always about peopleStatistics and market research can give you certain insights, but when an engineer gets out and spends time with the end-user, the insights become far more tangible. Beginning with a thorough understanding of the people and problems you are developing for empowers you to create and solve on an entirely different plane. Now, you aren’t targeting faceless 35 year old women, but Lisa, a 35 year old professional, mother and wife, with real needs, challenges – and a real voice. Design Thinking is empathetic and personal in nature and doesn’t exist without people. Design thinking keeps you in tune with the real customer with real problems, empowering you to create real solutions.
Fail Fast8 out of 10 businesses fail. Design Thinking eliminates the risk of ultimate failure by encouraging failure. Sound counter-intuitive? The truth is, we learn far more from failure than we could ever learn without it. Design Thinking is systematically developed to encourage experimentation, coupled with prototyping and feedback, allowing you to fail and fail fast, leading you to recognise and eliminate the weak areas so that you can ultimately succeed.
Breaks you out of the boxDesign thinking breaks your preconceptions of what a good solution would be and unleashing new undiscovered possibilities. A good example of this is Proctor & Gamble who initially set out to develop a better cleaning detergent. Design Thinking led them to realise customers didn’t need another detergent on the market – but did need a faster, easier way to clean. The result was the Swiffer, a revolutionary new mop which proved to be massively successful for them.
Design thinking is a powerful process of problem solving that begins with understanding unmet customer needs. From that insight emerges a process for innovation that encompasses concept development, applied creativity, prototyping, and experimentation. When design thinking approaches are applied to business, the success rate for innovation improves substantially.
Common Misconceptions About Design Thinking Using a design process helps us look at what currently exists, move towards imagining future possibilities and then implementing what worked after running experiments and testing prototypes. There is a common misconception that design thinking is an ideation and brainstorming method. While idea-generation is an important part of applying design thinking, don’t start with brainstorming. A better place to start is with curiosity and empathizing with the people who are seeking some problem solving.
Design Thinking is a mindset and approach to learning, collaboration, and problem solving.
In practice, the design process is a structured framework for identifying challenges, gathering information, generating potential solutions, refining ideas, and testing solutions.
Design Thinking can be flexibly implemented; serving equally well as a framework for a course design or a roadmap for an activity or group project.
Empathy is, of course, the root of human-centered design. Leading with empathy builds on the classic definition of "walking in someone else's shoes" to get us out of our own heads and into the lived reality of others so that we can understand the implicit needs and root causes of the situations in which we work. Leading with empathy means pushing yourself to get closer to people, and to do so consistently, publicly, and with conviction.
How do you do it? Listen more; talk less. Immerse yourself in how others experience your school or program. Adopt a beginner's mind and use all of your senses to notice what's happening around you. At the d.school, we believe in these practices so much that we're issuing a Shadow a Student challenge from our School Retool project to illuminate the power of leading with empathy. If you want to step into empathy, it will be a great way to get started.
Empathy is, of course, the root of human-centered design. Leading with empathy builds on the classic definition of "walking in someone else's shoes" to get us out of our own heads and into the lived reality of others so that we can understand the implicit needs and root causes of the situations in which we work. Leading with empathy means pushing yourself to get closer to people, and to do so consistently, publicly, and with conviction.
How do you do it? Listen more; talk less. Immerse yourself in how others experience your school or program. Adopt a beginner's mind and use all of your senses to notice what's happening around you. At the d.school, we believe in these practices so much that we're issuing a Shadow a Student challenge from our School Retool project to illuminate the power of leading with empathy. If you want to step into empathy, it will be a great way to get started.
Empathy Map is a tool used by Design Thinkers and Agile practitioners to capture
the needs of the person(s) for whom you are designing.
It is a visual tool used to
articulate what we know about a particular person to create a shared understanding
of needs, and aid in decision making.
It is a simple tool which captures a lot of
complex information in a single sheet of paper. You can use a template as shown
below, or simply draw 4-quadrants and label them Think, Feel, Say, Do.
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To build a new future of our workplaces every element of the employee
experience is being questioned, deconstructed and rebuilt. I have met people
and culture leaders who have thrown out old, archaic approaches and built
new prototypes with a human-centered design approach.