How can HR leverage on design thinking to innovate the current ways in which employees deliver products and services in order to add value to customers?
People today have almost unlimited choices in terms of products and services so a major differentiating factor to any business would be the ability to understand the consumers’ needs. Most companies however assume that they know what their customers need or would like to have without actually understanding their needs or wants. This does not mean that businesses simply give consumers what they ask for either.
The point is to be able to see and experience things from the consumers’ perspective, anticipate potential problems and come up with the appropriate solutions. This is where design thinking comes in. Unlike traditional systemic thinking which makes assumptions on the end users’ part, there are no pre-conceived notions in design thinking. Design thinking, by definition, is the process of the practical and creative resolution of issues and problems through the building up of ideas.
This eliminates the fear of failure and opens up the process for multiple inputs and a variety of ideas. It also helps uncover some of the real and hidden factors that organisations themselves may not be aware of and thus, come up with more focused and directed solutions.
In design thinking, the process typically encompasses these steps: identifying the challenge, mapping the touch points of the service or product, body storming1, ideation and solutioning.
The process
Discover
1. Discover the design brief to be tackled for the product, service or environment
Identify
2. Identify the touch points of the current customer’s experience
Prototype
3. Understand the needs, desires and behaviours of the end user, and the context or landscape in which they operate
4. Research the existing situation within the same industry, alternative environments and alternative industries
5. Innovate solutions through analysis and synthesis
Design
6. Design the concept
7. Implement the design (solution)
Another key component in design thinking is research – basic research skills and application models – which plays an important part in the formulation of solutions. One common practice is that interviews with different stakeholders are videotaped and shown to participants. For example, we had previously worked with a local polytechnic’s interactive media department on how to better engage its students in learning through interactive media.
We conducted in-depth interviews with the department’s key employees and did on-site observation to understand the current interactive media experience in the school. Video interviews with students from the school were also conducted to capture insights on their usage, the problems they faced and their preferences for an ideal interactive media learning experience. The videos helped to either verify or contradict the assumptions and preconceived ideas and thus, challenging them to rethink and reconsider certain factors or conditions.
By understanding their audience better, the school could make their creative process more effective, and implement their ideas to better engage students at a whole new level.
Also, during the brainstorming session, participants should be asked to consider situations and environments, which share the same problem that they are working on, and to map out some of the ideas and solutions visually.
While it is not possible to impart the nuances of design thinking to participants in a single workshop, understanding the elements of design thinking would enable employees to learn the basic techniques of innovation. Recognising different environments and knowing how their interplay will influence and impact what the consumer sees and goes through will give staff and organisations a competitive advantage in understanding consumers’ needs and wants.
1 Body Storming is a technique sometimes used in interaction design or as a creativity technique. The use is twofold: first, participants re-enact the current situation together with the problems they face. After the ideation process, they would have to imagine what it would be like if the product existed, and act as though it exists, in the place it would be used and how the situation would be changed.
Wee Pin Wan
Trainer for Studio Workshop in Design thinking
National Library Board
www.nlb.gov.sg
