Welcome to a 105-minute Design Thinking workshop for Jim Moran Institute’s RISE program. RISE stands for Resilience, Innovate, Sustain, Evaluate. Design Thinking is a popular innovation framework that supports all of these critical business goals.
Facilitated by: Ken Baldauf, CEO, Design Minded LLC, Director, FSU Innovation Hub
Workshop Goals
Learn what Design Thinking is and how it might be leveraged for product or service design and improvement.
Experience what Design Thinking feels like
Learn some of the tools and methods of Design Thinking
Learn techniques and technologies for collaborating online
Consider new ways to effectively collaborate with others online
This will be an action-packed and fully participatory session. Participants are asked to fully engage in the activities to support your team and impact the world!
Preparation
Participants are asked to:
view this 15-minute Overview of Design Thinking provided by our facilitator,
google "design thinking" and peruse some articles,
Create a free account at www.miro.com, go to the help menu, and work through the three videos under Getting Started > Board Basics.
consider the design challenge we will tackle: "How might we bring a better sense of connectedness and productivity to remote teamwork?"
Consider YOUR biggest frustrations regarding remote teamwork and the biggest limitations
Do not consider solutions, only issues - your issues
All participants will be interviewed on this topic
Workshop Agenda
1:00 PM Introduction and Overview
1:10 PM Tech Review, Personality Analysis
1:20 PM Empathy: Interviews
1:35 PM Empathy: Sense Making
1:55 PM Reframing - How Might We? group work
2:05 PM Share HMW's - working break
2:10 PM Ideation Brainstorming First Burst
2:35 PM Share Solutions
2:40 PM Reflection
2:45 PM Conclusion
Introduction - A quick refresh on Design Thinking
Design Challenge:
How might we help business leaders bring a better sense of connectedness and productivity to remote teamwork, to foster stronger and more meaningful relationships between team members?
Tech Prep - Checking Your Skills with Miro and MultiTECHing
Let’s explore your personality while by using basic Miro skills.
If you’ve set up your Miro account, login at https://miro.com/app/dashboard/
Use Miro on the web, rather than running the application
Join the group at the following Miro board: https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lMuxqCQ=/
Team Boards for use during the remainder of our session:
Team Miro Board Link
1 https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lMueVAM=/
2 https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lMueVJU=/
3 https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lMtgxsY=/
Empathy Stage
Empathizing with the people experiencing the problem, and researching the relevant details. NOT thinking about solutions!
Ethnographic research involves observing issues from the point of view of the subject of the study. Methods include interviews, observation, role-taking, desk research, surveys and focus groups.
Activity 1 - Interviewing in Pairs (15 minutes)
Pair up for interviews with the purpose of learning about the person you are interviewing and their views and experiences around the problem. Each person will take turns playing the part of the interviewer, five minutes each. Approach the interview with the mind of a beginner, setting aside pre-conceived notions, and pretending to know nothing about the problem. Use post-its to note facts and insights relevant to the problem - one insight per post-it. If post-its are not available, just them down on paper. Begin with the interviewee’s name (post-it #1), ask questions about the interviewee’s experience and insight regarding the design problem. Reflect on unique insights and perspectives. Dig for unique insights - aha moments. After both people have served as interviewer and interviewee, if time allows, spend two minutes each asking deeper follow-up questions based on insights you gained.
Focus on the problem not on solutions!
Some suggested interview questions:
Do you work and collaborate with others online?
What tools do you use (Zoom, email, chat, Facetime, etc)?
Do you feel you can be as productive with others online as you can be face-to-face?
What kinds of interactive activities are most difficult online?
What are the biggest challenges about collaborating online?
What frustrates you most about collaborating online?
What are benefits you enjoy related to collaborating online?
Activity 2 - Sense-Making Affinity Map (20 minutes)
Create groups of four to six people - not necessarily with your previous partner. Share the insights about your previous partner with your new group by sticking post-its on the board one at a time. If working remotely, utilize a virtual whiteboard. Do not consider solutions only insights to the problem. As group members see correlation with their own insights, they should share their ideas sticking the post-it along side the one it is related to. As all members share their insights in a free form manner, clusters of post-its should begin to emerge on the board. Take time to rearrange post-its into new clusters as you discover new relationships between ideas. When all post-its are on the board, circle and label the clusters. You can create new post-its as new ideas occur to you. Seek unique insights - they will lead to new solutions never before considered.
Other Tools for Empathy
You can find online resources for all of the following on Google and Youtube.
Stakeholder Map
A tool for identifying the primary stakeholder and all others impacted by the problem.
Context Map
A tool for analyzing environmental trends in the organization, in technology, in society, in users behavior and in the market that impact the problem.
Mind Map
A tool for organizing one’s thoughts about the problem, components, and connected concepts.
Empathy Map
An Empathy Map provides a reference to insights about a persona representing your primary stakeholder.
Journey Map
A tool for analyzing the primary stakeholder’s (or other stakeholders’) activities and interactions before, during, and after the point of the problem in time.
(Re)framing Stage
In this stage you synthesize the results of your empathy research, decide on a specific problem within the main problem domain, and compose a descriptive How Might We (HMW) question.
Activity 3 - Synthesize and (Re)frame (10 minutes)
Consider the insights you have gained so far through empathy research - interesting post-its and clusters in your Affinity Map. Consider key insights that you might like to address with your solution. Seek the unusual and unique - insights that no one has considered before. As a group settle on one specific problem that you would like to work on. If there is a difference of opinion utilize dot voting to choose one. Compose a (re)framed problem statement in the form of an HMW to guide your solution design. Write it on your whiteboard or virtual whiteboard.
How might we help ___________, to ___________, so that ___________.
Sharing and Supporting (5 minutes)
Each group shares their HMW question for support and feedback from the group.
This time may be used as a working break for those that need to use the restroom or grab a beverage.
Ideation Stage
From problem space to solution space! In the ideation stage we use divergent thinking to explore all possible and even impossible solutions seeking always to escape our pre-programmed thinking patterns to find solutions that are new, unique and impactful. Often times outlandish, impossible ideas spark creative ideas that are “just crazy enough to work.”
Activity 4: First Burst Brainstorming with Affinity Map (20 minutes)
In Design Thinking Brainstorming we combine independent brainstorming with group brainstorming in order to access every idea for a solution from every group member. Take five minutes of silence in your group, for each group member to generate as many ideas on post-its (real or virtual) as possible. Go for quantity over quality. Spend the next 15 minutes sharing your ideas with the group by placing the post-its on a white board area, finding commonalities, cluster post-its, circle and label to see where group ideas align (as you did for insights in Activity 2). There is no bad idea. Build on each other’s ideas.
Decide on your best solution to pitch to the class and a person to present it!
Other Tools for Ideation
You can find online resources for all of the following on Google and Youtube.
Think Wrong
In his book “Think Wrong,” John Bielenberg and his team share dozens of methods to help innovators come up with new ideas. One method utilizes random words to seed fresh ideas.
Brain Writing
Team members seated around a table write a solution idea on a piece of paper and pass it to the right. The next team member adds and improves on the idea and passes it on. The process continues until everyone gets their original paper back vastly improved with the group ideas.
Thinking Different
Teams travel around the room exploring other teams post-it boards considering how solutions for different HMW’s might spark an idea for their own HMW.
Mash-Ups
Apply the design style of well known companies to develop a solution for your problem. For example, if you are looking for an entertaining solution, consider how Disney might approach the problem.
Business Model Canvas
The Business Model Canvas is a worksheet that allows you to consider all aspects of a solution from a business perspective. Will this thing actually sell?
Stakeholder Value Map
A tool that supports the analysis of investment and return on investment for every stakeholder.
Prototyping
In order to best communicate your brilliant solution to the world you must bring it out of your head and into the visible world as a prototype. Prototypes are born in simple, basic, form (low-fidelity) - where they can be critiqued fearlessly, and are iterated and refined to perfection. There are four primary methods of prototyping:
Storyboard
Tell the story of your solution being implemented as a cartoon. Feature main actions on the part of the stakeholder, and emotional face expressions.
Physical Crafting
Using pipe-cleaners, construction paper, tape, and other crafting supplies build a simple model of your idea.
Paper Prototype (App)
Show the user experience of your app by drawing it screen by screen and demonstrating how a person would use it in a use case. Digital Prototyping with software like proto.io takes your app to the next level.
Act it out
Have the members of the group act out the use of your solution with each group member playing a role.
The Pitch
Each group selects a representative to provide a one minute pitch of their solution.
Reflection and Review
Pillars
Design Thinking is an innovation framework that provides methods to:
Empathize with people's needs,
Collaborate with others across disciplines, skill sets, and perspectives,
Inclusive of every idea in visible form for evaluation, and
Repeat, iterate and test solutions to perfect them, always with human needs at the center.
Goals accomplished!
Learn what Design Thinking is and how it might be leveraged for product or service design and improvement.
Experience what Design Thinking feels like
Learn some of the tools and methods of Design Thinking
Learn techniques and technologies for collaborating online
Consider new ways to effectively collaborate with others online
Question, comments, requests? Email ken@innovation.fsu.edu
Additional Design Thinking Resources
Recommended FREE Course from Acumen Academy: https://www.acumenacademy.org/course/design-kit-human-centered-design