Design Thinking | Practical Use

I was contacted by a fiend the other day looking for a design thinking solution to an upcoming client walkthrough and workshop. The client was going to be shown a series of offerings from our company and my coworker was in need of a design thinking solution that would be beneficial running in the last thirty minutes of the day. What to do? He reached out to me looking for suggestions.

This kind of scenario is very common in my line of work - and while design thinking has been embraced as a concept broadly across the business spectrum, I am not totally convinced that the frameworks that make up its practices have been fully understood and implemented. Many know of the methodologies and techniques, but few know how to practically apply them in a consistent, meaningful way.

Understanding Users & Needs

The ultimate end user is the above scenario is the business client who is doing the walkthrough, but in order to come up with an effective plan the first thing needed is understanding of the problem and empathizing of the broader audiences wants and needs (i.e. Goal Setting: We need to define who are users are and what they want). 

In this specific scenario, the users would be:

Addressing Needs & Getting Results

So, we know what each user needs are – how can we meet them both in such a short amount of time? This is where the rubber meets the road and where we apply design thinking methodology with some good old-fashioned common sense. My suggestion: Start with a large visual aid of everything presented and use that to delve into concerns and opportunities that the client is most interested.

From here there are several directions to take. My suggestion was 1) visually vote (with stickers!) on the area of most interest and then 2) run a quick Rose, Thorn, Bud on what they liked, disliked, and unseen opportunities in services discussed. 3) If time allowed, one could even do a quick Affinity Cluster around ideas shared to find larger themes. Finally, (not from the design thinking methods) a detailed hand-out should be given to client highlighting all the offered services presented. 

(Side note: I always find handouts the best way of sharing larger processes and data. If someone wants details – BAM! – give them a handout. They will be able to deep dive later and broader conversations can continue via email/phone)

Now think back to our users – the client has shared their interest in services and left with a summary of those services – thereby sharing feelings and leaving with useful, practical knowledge. For the business, they have better defined understanding of the client’s wants and needs. Additionally, you have also narrowed down the services the client is most interested in – score! Like that silly old business-lingo adage – it’s a win-win.

The 10,000 Foot View

So, what exactly happened? If we look at this scenario with our understanding of the double-diamond (that I covered in a previous post), you can see that we go through a process of convergent and divergent thinking in a simple 30 minute exercise. We help the client summarizing broad services (convergent), we narrow down their interest by visually voting (divergent), we expand upon those interests using rose, thorn, bud (convergent), and we wrap it up by using affinity cluster to find the simpler, broad themes (divergent).

In conclusion, even with a short period of time and limited resources, you can implement effective design thinking in your presentations and meetings.