Leading a design thinking workshop can completely transform your company for the better. According to the 71% of brands that champion design thinking, making a shift to a design-centered mindset will dramatically improve productivity and work ethic amongst your staff.

Are you ready to take your team to the next level?

If you’re ready to take your team to the next level by leading a design thinking workshop, it’s essential to know the basics of design thinking first. Having a deeper understanding of this human-centered approach will make it easier to get your team on board with this process.

In this article we’ll cover the basics of design thinking and the best way to approach leading a workshop for your team with the following topics:

• What is Design Thinking?
• A History of Design Methodology
• The Six Phases of Design Thinking
• Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

Understanding Design Thinking

Design thinking is a creative problem-solving method that centers on the needs of the end-user, by considering them first when creating products or services. When you authentically understand the wants and needs of the consumer, you can develop successful products and services they value and use to improve their lives.

Ultimately, a design thinking approach helps you understand the experience of the end-user by adopting the end user’s mindset and creating your product or service from this perspective.

A History of Design Thinking

The human-centered design process is an extension of the design thinking methodology. Though scientists, creatives, scholars, analysts, and engineers have studied this methodology for the past several years, the idea to apply a design mindset to problem-solving as a business strategy didn’t exist until the cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon coined the term in 1969. Simon explained the modern idea of design as an applicable way of thinking about business in his book, The Sciences of the Artificial.

Since Simon began the conversation about the design thinking methodology, many academic elites and experts have adopted this concept and expanded upon it. Yet one thing remains the same: the user should be at the core of any design process. The human-centered process is an exploration of how to accurately and innovatively create a product or service that satisfies consumers’ wants and needs.

“We must design for the way people behave, not for how we would wish them to behave.” –Donald A. Norman, Living with Complexity

The Six Phases of Design Thinking

Let’s take a look at the six phases of the human-centered design process to learn how to create with purpose as you prepare for leading a design thinking workshop.

1. Observe & Understand Users’ Behavior

The first phase of the design thinking process is to observe and understand the end user’s behavior to learn as much as possible about their needs. This allows you to better understand the people you are designing for as you approach problem-solving from their perspective. Doing so will allow you to deeply empathize with them and identify opportunities to better cater to and address these issues. 

By identifying the end user’s behavioral patterns you’ll have a clearer understanding of what your customers enjoy and what they are dissatisfied with. This phase allows for greater innovation as you build trust and connect to your consumers.

2. Ideation

The ideation phase focuses on brainstorming new solutions based on what you learned by observing the end-user. Remember to stay focused on a human-centered design process while generating ideas. The use of divergent thinking is critical in this stage to foster creativity and generate as many ideas as possible. 

In the ideation phase, everything is fair game. For example, instead of worrying about the details of how your potential ideas will work, focus on “why not?” 

There are no right or wrong answers, only potential creative solutions to the problems you’ve identified. When you prioritize the needs and desires of the people you are creating for, you’ll arrive at the most successful solutions that you’ll continue to refine through the rest of the design thinking process.

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3. Prototype

Now that you have potential solutions, it’s time to bring your best ideas to life with rapid prototypes. In this phase, you’ll test your ideas in real-time with real people to get their feedback. Rapid prototypes are quick and easy versions of the ideas you want to create. Their role is to ensure that your vision is on target and it allows you space to make amendments based on feedback before you make the final product. 

This experimental phase isn’t about perfection. The goal is to create a quick, tangible prototype so that you can test it.

4. Feedback

In the feedback phase of the design process, you’ll test your prototype. This is perhaps the most vital part of the human-centered design process as it will determine whether or not your idea works for the people you are designing for. 

Get your prototype in the hands of your target consumer and ask them: how and why does this product/service achieve or fail to reach your needs and desires? During this stage, you’ll want to collect as many details as possible from testers as you’ll use this feedback to finalize your solution.

5. Integration

The integration phase of the design thinking process helps you to identify the usefulness of the proposed solution. Consider the feedback you receive and how you can implement it into your design to make it better. This is a fluid process: integrate, test, and repeat until you reach the best version of your idea. Once your solution is fully-fledged and replicable, it’s time to share it.

6. Application

It’s time to send your idea out into the world! During this last stage of the design thinking process, make the final prototype and share it. It’s important to keep an eye on changes in your target audience and their needs and desires as time progresses so that you can make adaptations to your design as necessary. 

With each new update, return to phase one and repeat the process for best results. Remember that the user’s needs change over time, so it is important to anticipate future alterations to best serve consumers’ changing needs.

Leading a Design Thinking Workshop

When we approach innovation with a human-centered design process, we are able to empathize with and therefore better understand the end-user and what they truly desire. Everything we create is an extension from t

When we approach innovation with a human-centered design process, we can empathize with and therefore better understand the end-user and what they truly desire. By leading a design thinking workshop, you’ll encourage your team to innovate in this human-centered way. As you create everything from this level of self-awareness, you’ll ultimately develop better products and services as you improve your company and team as well.

Once you have a clear understanding of the design thinking process, you’ll be able to lead your design thinking workshop with your team. Whether your design sprint is a few days or a few hours, a well-executed design thinking workshop will help you keep your customers’ needs top of mind.

Hiring a professional facilitator is one of the best ways to lead a design thinking workshop at your company. At Voltage Control, our team of facilitators is happy to assist you in your design thinking needs. With a clear understanding of this methodology and an effort to lead your team with the same mentality, you’re sure to see the benefits of adopting a design thinking approach.

Do you want to learn more about human-centered design?

Voltage Control facilitates design thinking workshops, innovation sessions, and Design Sprints. Please reach out at hello@voltagecontrol.com for a consultation.

The post What You Need to Know Before Leading a Design Thinking Workshop appeared first on Voltage Control.

There’s no question that innovation is a key growth factor. Unfortunately, innovation isn’t easy.

Trying to develop new ideas when you have been doing something for a while can feel daunting. This is especially true if everyone on your team is already entrenched in the process you have created, as well as the brand, identity, tone, and voice you have spent years developing.

In these situations, organizing an innovation workshop can be extremely beneficial.

The purpose of innovation workshops is to come together for organized idea generation exercises. Put simply: they are moments to help your team uncover revolutionary ideas and to think boldly about the future.

Understanding the Innovation Workshop

An innovation workshop encourages ideation. Ideation is the creative process used to generate, develop, and communicate new ideas.

These ideas can be related to a wide array of business/company needs, such as:

• Inventive ways to talk about or market a current service or product
• New content
• New products
• Ideas for starting a new business

You may have been to brainstorming meetings in the past. The difference with an innovation workshop is that people aren’t just sitting around waiting for snacks — they are pushing themselves to “think outside the box.”

1. Explore Capabilities

Each organization is made up of talented people, all at different executive levels. Over time, people often fall into a routine when it comes to work and their jobs.

They do what they have to, without trying to be innovative. When you utilize innovation training activities, you can help your team members foster the skills they need to perform their jobs in a more creative manner.

2. Quality Assurance

Creating and then selling a product or service isn’t enough. There are several companies offering the same thing. The question is — why are consumers going to choose you over the competition?

Consumers seek out quality and how “unique” a product is from the others. If you want to beat the competition, then innovation is the best path to this goal.

An innovation workshop is an investment that will help you reap these benefits. They ensure that you aren’t just sticking with the status quo, but that you’re thinking about your next big move to answer customer needs.

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3. Allow Participants to Build on One Another’s Ideas

When you gather a group of people with the intention of innovation, you have more than just one person’s idea. Instead, one person can introduce a new idea and then others can add to it, enhance it, and give it a life that can ultimately lead to success.

This helps everyone attending the workshop build on each other’s ideas, strengthening the overall value proposition. By doing this, you can raise additional questions, which are crucial to determining if the new idea is viable.

4. Hear Elevator Pitches

An elevator pitch is essential for any new idea. Put simply, this is a minimalist definition of your service, product or idea.

The term “elevator pitch” comes from the concept that you may only have an elevator ride’s worth of time to introduce yourself and your idea to a potential partner or investor.

During an innovation workshop, you can hear the elevator pitches developed by anyone with a new idea. This is a quick way to gather interest in ideas and explore whether a concept has “legs.”

5. Achieve Your Full Potential

Brainstorming is no longer as effective as it was in the past. Today’s extremely competitive market requires much more powerful idea-generation. You need something that’s future-focused and one-of-a-kind.

Through the activities in an innovation workshop, it’s possible to elicit maximum creativity, by tapping into the full imagination of the team.

6. Create an Ongoing Flow

One of the biggest reasons that innovative workshops are considered a smart investment is because innovation isn’t a one-time phenomenon. Instead, it’s a continuing process that comes into play in all types of day-to-day activities.

One important aspect that innovation workshops stress is that the innovation process is something that should always be at play. It’s not something that happens in a special meeting and then never again. These type of workshops actually help team members learn new ways of working that extend beyond and into their typical 9-to-5 lives.

The Innovation Workshop: Is It Right for Your Company?

Supporting a successful and innovative organization is challenging. An innovative workshop can help you be better prepared for sudden changes, regardless of internal and external changes.

If you think that an innovation workshop may be right for you, please get in touch! Our team is dedicated to helping you achieve success, regardless of the size of your business or what industry you work in.

Contact Douglas at douglas@voltagecontrol.com to find out more.

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