Applying Design Thinking
Design Thinking can make sense on paper but it can be challenge to adopt it in an environment where it’s never been seen before. This quick 90 minute exercise takes pairs of participants through the steps of empathy and prototyping. What I’ve found is that not only do the participants come away with some great ideas, they also develop some faith in Design Thinking itself.
To begin, identify an experience you wish to improve. The classic example of this exercise is by d.School, the Design School at Stanford. In their exercise they focus on the gift giving experience. This experience is universal so everybody present can act as both designer and user. You may prefer instead to focus on an experience that is common to the team you have assembled. This will give the team something more tangible to pursue.
Begin by dividing the participants into pairs. Ask them to gather feedback from each other in turns and to propose steps to improve the chosen experience. Guide them with the following steps.
Step 1: Interview
Partner A interviews Partner B – 4 minutes.
Partner B interviews Partner A – 4 minutes.
The goal of this step is for both partners to have a chance to learn about the experience from each other. This creates the empathy that is vital to Design Thinking. All questions are valid, but the following are useful if anybody gets stuck:
"What is this experience like now?"
"Why is this experience important to you?"
"What should this experience look like in two years?"
"How impact does this experience have on you and others?"
"When is this experience difficult and when is it a pleasure?"
"What question am I missing?"
Step 2: Dig Deeper
Partner A interview Partner B – 3 minutes.
Partner B interview Partner A – 3 minutes.
In this step, encourage the participants to continue their interviews to get more detail of how the other feels and why. This second iteration is useful because people may find inspiration in the questions posed by their partners during their interviews. Avoid delving into solutions at this point. The goal is to uncover what feels good and bad about the existing experience.
Step 3: Capture Insights
Participants working on their own – 3 minutes.
As individuals, the participants take three minutes to write down their insights from their interviews. What are their partner’s goals and wishes? What insights into their partner’s experience have they discovered?
Step 4: Take a stand with a point of view
Participants working on their own – 3 minutes.
Instruct each participant to pick the most compelling expression of their partner’s needs.
My partner needs a way to _ because (or but, or surprisingly) ____________.
The goal is for each participant to produce a problem statement that describes what their partner wants and what is between them and their goal.
Step 5: Sketch at least 5 radical ways to meet your partner’s needs
Participants working on their own – 3 minutes.
The goal is to come up with a broad range of ideas, not just the right one. This gives your partner a chance to choose from a wide variety of ideas.
Imagine the goal was to choose lunch and you offer two options – pepperoni pizza and vegetarian pizza. This presupposes pizza is the answer. (Arguably, pizza is always the answer, but I digress.) Instead, a variety of solutions would be pizza, or soup, or salad, or subs, etc.
If participants find the task of devising a wide variety of ideas challenging, remind them of the SCAMPER method.
Step 6: Share your solutions & capture feedback
Partner A presents to Partner B – 5 minutes.
Partner B presents to Partner A – 5 minutes.
Caution the participants against being too invested in their ideas. This is still a chance for participants to learn from their partner, not convince them of their idea.
Step 7: Reflect & generate a new solution
Participants working on their own – 3 minutes.
Have the participants reflect on what they heard from their partner. This feedback can help them to narrow down their candidate solutions to one to focus on and improve. In their reflection, they can consider:
Which idea resonated most with your partner?
What modifications did they suggest?
What did they like the most, the least?
Can you emphasize what they liked and eliminate what they didn't?
Step 8: Build your solution
Participants working on their own – 7 minutes.
Provide your participants with art and office supplies and invite them to build a crude example of their idea. You may encounter some resistance at this step, because many people prefer to talk through their idea, or draw it. The objective here is to demonstrate the value of a prototype.
Certainly a drawing or description is better than nothing, but it is better still to have a physical object to look at. This gets the idea out of the participants’ heads and in front of their partners’ eyes. This reduces the chance of misinterpretation.
Step 9: Share your solution & get feedback.
Partner A shares with Partner B – 4 minutes.
Partner B shares with Partner A – 4 minutes.
This is the last chance for feedback in this exercise, but in reality a design is never complete. The objective of showing the proposed solution is to learn, not convince – to improve, not just validate.
Debrief
Whenever I’ve done this exercise the results have been very positive, with a group arriving at ideas they are excited about and lots of energy in the room.
It does a good job of demonstrating key principles in Design Thinking:
- the value of human centred design
- experimentation and prototyping
- the value of showing and not just telling
- the power of iteration to incrementally improve a design
- the cycle of divergence (generating lots of ideas) and then convergence (narrowing down to one idea to try)
Ask the participants to reflect on their experience:
“Who had a partner who created something that you really like?”
“Who sees something they are curious to learn more about?”
“How did talking to your partner inform your design?”
“How did testing and getting feedback impact your final design?”
“What was the most challenging part of the process for you?”
Photo Credit
Photo by The Ear Depot on Unsplash
