Design Thinking : Learn by Stories

Design Thinking!

Lots talked about it. Different organizations and practitioners have different ways to explain. But the core remains the same -

It helps solve complex problems and provides solutions that work!

In this article, I will share some stories and take you through basic concepts around the framework practiced by IDEO.

The VANMOOF story of the bike box

VANMOOF when it started in 2015 began shipping bikes to the USA. The only problem was that a lot of them were arriving to their new customers damaged. Annoying for them and expensive for the company.

They had to think of ways to fix this. multiple options were tried - Tougher boxes? Better packaging? Different shipping partners? Nothing worked. Co-founder Ties Carlier’s thought to print images of TV on each box as they were about the same size as a really big, expensive, flat-screen television.

It worked and became the talk of the town and inspires many.

The good kitchen story from Denmark

The Municipality of Holstebro in Denmark is responsible to take care of people who suffer from a reduced ability to function due to illness, age, or other conditions. Looking at nutritional challenges govt hired services from Hatch and Bloom to look after this issue and fix their Menu.

During the observation phase and thorough review of the stakeholders i.e. Senior People, Cook, Delivery Staff, Menu, etc it was observed that it is not a mere Menu issue but much more.

The process of ethnographic observation, mind mapping, co-creating with stakeholders, and iterative prototyping and experimentation yielded a host of dramatic changes: a new menu, new uniforms for staff, a new feedback mechanism (we’ll get to that in a bit)—an overall new experience for both customers and employees.

Employees’ images of themselves and the services they provided changed, and this itself seemed to improve customer satisfaction levels.

The process also yielded a new name: Hospitable Food Service became The Good Kitchen.

The Airbnb story

During a fireside chat between Joe Gebbia of Airbnb and Phin Barnes of First Round Capital, Joe said,

"At this time like nobody knew about us. Our early customers were actually angry at us because the way we did our payments was not we paid people on check-out rather than check-in. And because we wanted to make sure that the state went just perfectly didn't want to get any charge backs on the credit card. And host vertices angry emails like 'Oh what are you doing like why do I have to wait three weeks to get paid' 'oh my gosh yeah!' So it's like the kind of felt like the world was against us you know we had investors were saying no to us, our hosts were angry, our parents thought we were crazy. Our kind of like lives were like kind of upside down and I just remember the moment where everything turned around."

"It was really Paul Graham saying it's okay to do things that don't scale. And if I could sum that up in one line he said to us - 'Go meet the people!'"

"And what he meant by that was get out of the apartment get away from the computers go out into the real world and meet the people who make up your product who were consuming your product go talk to them so so for people who don't work at a place that sort of encourages them to get out and go do that like how can they as either an individual contributor graphic designer you know sort of either fresh out of school or first year on the job like how do you sort of get the ability to do..."

The PepsiCo story

Speaking to Adi Ignatius Indra Nooyi said,

I had a choice. I could have gone Pedal to the Metal, stripped our costs, delivered strong profits for few years and then say 'Adios'. But that would not have yielded long term success. So, I articulated a strategy to the board focussing on the portfolio we needed to build, the muscles we needed to strengthen, the capabilities to develop. The board said, "We know there will be hiccups along the way but you have our support so go make it happen."

Concepts from stories -

• VANMOOF - think, think, think, brainstorm. Encourage wild ideas!
• The Good Kitchen Story - Defer judgement, build on the idea of others, empathise, use create journey map, act patiently
• The Airbnb Story - Go out, meet people who matter, Defer judgement, Be visual
• PepsiCo Story - Ensure leadership support, Ready for radical change, Strategic

While it could be understood in three phases i.e.

Each phase encourages to diverse and converge

While process says do the following in each of the steps

Tips -

• How to get a good problem statement? Try below

• How to discover user needs? Try below

• How to find the right focus? Try below

• How to generate ideas? Try below

• How to structure and select ideas? Try below

• How to create a good prototype? Try below

• How to test efficiently? Try below

Prof. Rohit Kumar Jeanne Liedtka Indian Institute of Management Raipur Indian Institute of Management, Ranchi 百事 Airbnb A State of Denmark VanMoof IDEO Stanford d.school Indra Nooyi

References:

VANMOOF Blog : https://www.vanmoof.com/blog/en/tv-bike-box

Book : Solving Problems with Design Thinking Ten Stories by Jeanne Liedtka

Book : The Design Thinking Playbook

FirstRoundCapital : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RUEjYswwWPY

HBR Article : How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking into Strategy

HBR Article : IDEO Human Centered Service Design