Design Thinking Application

Here is how I helped pull together a Horizon Europe full proposal in two weeks. (The answer is not AI) It was during COVID and I took a call from an old friend. He wanted me to help with a proposal - due in two weeks. Normally, I would say no, but I did not. It is estimated that it takes more than 400 hours of effort for the Coordinator to develop a full proposal for EU funding. Who has an extra 400 hours to spare? We only had 240 hours in total. Here is what I learned. Good proposals are not about reaching a consensus. They are also not about magically melding text from 10 different authors. How did we do it? Design thinking. Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative approach to innovation that emphasizes: ⤷Empathy, ⤷Problem reframing, ⤷Ideation, ⤷Rapid prototyping, ⤷and Testing. It works as way to accelerate the process. It leverages the collective creativity of a group and, . Prototyping and testing are also great ways to rapidly communicate concepts. By first reframing the problem and then rapidly iterating concepts we were able to get the proposal done on time. The result? The proposal was successful. The experience changed my perspective on what is possible. Want to avoid a 400 hour investment in effort to develop a Horizon Europe Consortium project? Adopt a design thinking approach. 

🚀 I’ve been loving the chance to dive into design thinking through my Social Impact Hub Fellowship – and it’s really got me reflecting on how these principles can be applied to the development of Individualised Living Arrangements (ILAs) in the NDIS. 🧠 Design thinking is all about starting with the person – understanding their needs, goals, and what a good life looks like from their perspective. It’s about co-design, iteration, and creativity – and that’s exactly what we need more of in disability support, especially when it comes to housing and living. 🏡 Too often, people with disability are forced to fit into systems, instead of the system adapting to fit them. This is especially true when it comes to housing and support arrangements, where outdated models like group homes continue to dominate. ILAs offer a real alternative – a way to break away from cookie-cutter solutions and design supports around what actually works for the person. 💡 To get this right, we need to deeply understand people’s goals, values, and daily realities. That’s where design thinking comes in – it gives us the tools to ask better questions, test new ideas, and co-create solutions that are both innovative and grounded in lived experience. hashtag #SocialImpact hashtag #DesignThinking hashtag #DisabilityRights hashtag #NDIS hashtag #ILAs hashtag #Innovation hashtag #CoDesign hashtag #Inclusion Image Description: A presentation slide titled “Recording of Design Thinking session” features the heading “Design Thinking Tools” with the subheading “There are hundreds of tools for design thinking.” Six icons with tool descriptions are presented across the slide: Understand Perspectives & Develop Personas (icon: red glasses) Empathy research to deeply understand the world view, needs, pain points and opportunities of your users/beneficiaries/customers. Map a Journey or System (icon: map with dotted path) Use mapping tools to visualise how changes, journeys and experiences unfold over time. Develop Future Visions (icon: upward graph with arrow) Use individual and collective imagination to consider possible futures or scenarios. Generate Ideas (icon: lightning bolt) Use creativity and brainstorming tools to bypass ‘evaluative mode’ and generate new and interesting ideas. Refine and Test (icon: funnel) Process large amounts of data and evaluate ideas in a systematic (and collective) way. In the bottom left corner, the logo “Social Impact Lab” appears

Meet Jane Marie Chen, who used a design thinking approach to solve a $20B critical problem in rural India, saving the lives of thousands of infants. In rural Nepal and India, high infant mortality rates were alarming due to a lack of affordable and accessible incubators. Hospitals were struggling to provide life-saving warmth for premature and low-birth-weight babies. Jane Marie Chen and her team at Embrace Global saw a need for life-saving care in rural areas that couldn’t be ignored. Driven to make a difference, they turned to design thinking to reimagine a solution that could save lives. They developed an affordable, sleeping bag-like infant warmer called “Embrace infant warmer” that operates without electricity. Using a paraffin-based pouch maintains a steady temperature, ensuring newborns in remote areas can survive. They have saved more than 700,000 lives across 20 countries since its launch in 2011. Now, let’s use the design thinking approach to understand the cultural context: In settings without reliable electricity, traditional incubators are expensive and culturally inaccessible.  Embrace designed a non-electric baby warmer resembling a simple swaddle familiar to mothers.  This easy-to-use solution fits seamlessly into existing caregiving practices, overcoming barriers of cost, complexity, and cultural acceptance. 3 takeaways from this story: - Reframe Problems: Design thinking means redefining challenges to fit real-world needs. - Simple Accessible Solutions: Even a basic, accessible design, like Embrace’s warmer, can drive a life-changing impact. - Empathetic Approach: Understanding cultural context makes innovation sustainable and impactful. Sometimes, the simplest solutions create the biggest impact. Have you encountered any other design thinking solutions that have impacted lives like this? Share them in the comments! #designthinking #Socialinnovation #innovation

Real Case Study: IBM Design Thinking Transformation (2012-2015) Source: "The Power of Design Thinking in Business Transformation" - Harvard Business Review, 2016   Challenge: - Complex software development processes - Declining user satisfaction - 18-month development cycles   Design Thinking Implementation: 1. Trained 10,000+ employees in design thinking 2. Conducted 1,000+ user empathy interviews 3. Created rapid prototyping framework 4. Established design thinking studios globally   Results: - Development cycles reduced to 6 months - 301% ROI on design thinking investment - 75% reduction in design/development rework - User satisfaction increased by 42%   🗝️ Key Learning: Design thinking shifted focus from feature development to user experience, transforming both process and outcomes. I'm curious what success stories you have seen or experienced with implementing a design thinking transformation? Share below!   #ChangeManagement #DesignThinking #Innovation

💡Combining Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile A combination of Design Thinking, Lean UX, and Agile methodologies offers a powerful approach to product development—it helps balance user-centered design with efficient concept validation and iterative product development. 1️⃣ User-centered foundation (Design Thinking): Begin by understanding the needs, emotions, and problems of the end-users. ✔ Start by conducting user research to identify and understand user needs. ✔ Gather insights through direct interaction with users (e.g., through interviews, surveys, etc.). Spend time understanding users' behavior, focusing on "why" rather than "what" they do. ✔ After gathering research, prioritize the most critical user insights to guide your design focus. Create a 2x2 matrix to prioritize insights based on impact (high vs low business impact) and feasibility (easy vs hard to implement) ✔ Begin brainstorming potential solutions based on these prioritized insights and formulate a hypothesis. Encourage cross-functional collaboration during brainstorming sessions to generate diverse ideas. 2️⃣ Hypothesis-driven testing (Lean UX): Lean UX helps quickly validate key assumptions. It fits perfectly between Design Thinking's ideation and Agile's development processes, ensuring that critical hypothesis are validated with users before actual development started. ✔ Formulate a testable hypothesis around a potential solution that addresses the user needs uncovered in the Design Thinking phase. ✔ Conduct experiment—develop a Minimum Viable Product (https://lnkd.in/dQg_siZG) to test the hypothesis. Build just enough functionality to test your hypothesis—focus on speed and simplicity. ✔ Based on the experiment's outcome, refine or revise the hypothesis and repeat the cycle. 3️⃣ Iterative product development (Agile): Once the Lean UX process produces validated concepts, Agile takes over for incremental development. Agile's iterative sprints will help you continuously build, test, and refine the concept. Agile complements Lean UX by providing the structure for frequent releases, allowing teams to adapt and deliver value consistently. ✔ Break down work into small, manageable chunks that can be delivered iteratively. ✔ Embrace iterative development—continue refining your product through iterative build-measure-learn sprints. Keep the user feedback loop tight by involving users in sprint reviews or testing sessions. ✔ Gather user feedback after each sprint and adapt the product according to the findings. Measure user satisfaction and track usability metrics to ensure improvements align with user needs. 🖼️ Design thinking, Lean UX and Agile better together by Dave Landis #UX #agile #designthinking #productdesign #leanux #lean  

I learned Design Thinking on my first day as a data scientist at IBM, and it quietly became one of the most useful mindsets in my AI career. It taught me to slow down, understand the real problem, and build solutions that actually land with users. Here’s how I still use it today: → Solve the right problem Most AI teams jump into modeling too early. Design Thinking forces you to reframe, question assumptions, and check if the problem is even defined correctly. → Diverge before you converge Explore many possibilities, then narrow down. This prevents tunnel vision and leads to better architectures, better experiments, and better product decisions → Use the 2x2 grid Am I exploring or deciding? Am I thinking about the problem or the solution? This simple check saves me from going down the wrong path. → Observe behavior, not opinions The real insights come from watching users, not asking them. The same applies when evaluating agents, prototypes, or internal tools. → Prototype fast, assign ownership Ideas die when nobody owns them. Execution is where Design Thinking turns into impact. This mindset shaped how I build AI systems then, and it still shapes how I build them now. ♻️Share this with your network

As CX leaders, solving problems starts with people. Design thinking gives us a clear path. We start by listening to users, defining real needs, and brainstorming ideas. We then build quick prototypes and test them early. Machine learning shifts the focus to data. It breaks issues into smaller parts and finds hidden patterns. We tune models and check how well they predict results. This helps us make smarter decisions fast. Both methods bring value to CX. Design thinking ensures we meet human needs. Machine learning gives us insights we might miss. Using them together unlocks new ways to delight customers. When should you use each? Use design thinking when you need empathy and creative ideas. Use machine learning when you have large data sets and need fast answers. Merging both gives you a balanced, human-led and data-driven CX strategy.

It's been shocking to see the rapid resurgence of design thinking and human centered design over the past 12 months. But this time it's focused on employees, not customers. When we started The Design Gym most of our work was focused on product, design, and innovation teams helping to better understand customer needs, design new products, and grow the business. Time and time again we would see that what actually blocked innovation wasn't the lack of a novel idea or new technology - it was the internal ways of working, outdated processes, or stakeholder complexity. As such, our work has gradually become focused on applying the design process to rethinking internal processes, workflows, collaboration models, and teaming structures. Innovation on the inside. Today's world requires leaders to get good at naming and framing problems, developing solutions where no obvious one exists, rallying really complex stakeholder groups to collaborate together, testing-and-learning through ambiguity (quickly and cheaply of course), and bringing your people along the journey in the midst of it all. The design process is built for this. And where most traditional change management approaches are based on instilling a false sense control or predictability during moments of complexity, design thinking instead gains buy-in through deep listening, moments of co-creation, and powerful storytelling. It's the most powerful approach to change management that has never been branded as such. So it's no surprise that HR teams and People teams are flocking to design thinking right now. I have a prediction over the next 3 years, the most successful people teams will look more like an internal design consultancy than a traditional HR team. Their team members will be adept at facilitation, experience design, stakeholder management, and prototyping. They will see their counterparts across the business as customers and treat their work like a product manager would. They will tell their story through sharp narratives of business impact, and as a result they will be seen as an imperative for getting complex, cross-functional work done. The people side of businesses will be the most complex challenge that will block growth in the coming years. Aside from the CEO, CHRO's and CPO's will be the most important seat at the table. And - I hope - design will be a grounding process for how they approach it.