Recently, our Production Artist, Brooke Worthan, virtually attended an event on Design Thinking. Here are her key takeaways:
The Covid-19 pandemic will have lasting impacts on our society. Companies are adapting, innovating, re-thinking processes and integrating a more human-centered focus in products, experiences, and in their communication.
I recently attended a virtual design conference, where I learned that there are a growing number of companies in every industry implementing a more human-centered mindset called Design Thinking. What is it? It is continually looking through the lens of someone or something else other than your own to challenge assumptions and redefine problems to achieve more innovative solutions.
One fact brought up during the conference is throughout history there are societal events that have accelerated change, which would normally take decades to achieve. Companies are making decisions based on human insights rather than only on data, metrics, and analytics.
Design Thinking at the core is more of a natural heartset-mindset than a process. It is integrated into every department of a company, and provides more inter-departmental collaboration, better products and services to meet people at a functional and emotional level. It is studying the people to approach the correct problem. It is focusing on the people to solve the center of the problem—not just address the symptoms.
The core steps are to empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. At each step you will find more and more insight, which continually evolves the solution. We use these same steps here at Schifino Lee.
The shift is more industries outside the creative field are adopting this human-centered mindset to tackle some of their biggest problems internally and externally. More companies are implementing a Chief Design Officer role to work directly with the CEO and other departments to apply a Design Thinking approach throughout the organization.
What types of companies are implementing Design Thinking within their organization? Apple, Starbucks, PepsiCo, IBM, CISCO, Mars, Inc., P&G, Ford Motor Company, Discovery Channel, Nike, USAA, and many more, including companies from financial services, government and healthcare.
Design Thinking is about not losing sight of the people. We can help your company communicate how your product or service has the people at the heart of everything you do.
One point that was made multiple times at the conference is, “So What? What difference does it make other than to you?”
It requires all of us to create the best solution not only for your business but for your employees and customers.
Extra: Can’t forget the after webinars with Don Norman, and an astronaut who worked with NASA and SpaceX.
As Don Norman and Garret Reisman related, everything is a system, and everything is interconnected. All problems are interconnected and interact with each other. Garret asked the janitor working about why he worked there, and the janitor said, “I’m helping send a person to space.” A sense of mission and connectedness of where people work and interact makes a difference for all of us.
Fun Fact: Don is already on his 4th retirement, and Garret also helps in writing science fiction entertainment.
