How grandpa of Technology (IBM) is thinking like millennials...?

How century old IBM remains relevant...?

Why does IBM need to hire designers when its business had been to produce computing black boxes for ages...?

Special Thanks to Design Thinking Approach.

IBM is one of the leading companies moving in this direction. Last year alone, the company hired 1,100 designers across the company.

IBM Design Thinking Process

In 2013, IBM started to build a design-driven culture at the largest scale ever, in a company with more than 385,000 employees. The project took three years, involved more than 750 designers, and affected over 10,000 employees and hundreds of teams. The main idea behind the model is to apply design thinking to understand consumers and build empathy. The target was to apply this with the speed and scale that modern companies demand.

“Above all… good design must primarily serve people.”

Thomas J. Watson, Jr., IBM President, CEO and Chairman of the Board

The IBM design thinking model focuses on building a deep understanding and empathy for the consumer through the principles, the keys and the loop as follows:

The Loop

The loop is the pathway for IBM’s design thinking process that is based on three main steps: Observe, Reflect, and Make. First, you start with observation to improve your understanding about the problem. Then, you move to reflect the acquired knowledge on your own knowledge to adapt it into a plan. The third step turns this understanding into a prototype and delivers it in the form of an outcome.

The Keys

The third part of the model reflects the need to be scalable. While the loop is enough for small problems, complex problems require collaboration with complex teams. Therefore, IBM proposed three techniques to achieve this scalability:

1. Hills : The first technique, Hills, aims to clearly define the intent through the teams. This intent is actually the users’ needs put in the form of project goals.

This intent should clearly define “who,” “what,” and “wow.”

IBM provided an example with President John F. Kennedy’s statement “I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal … of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.”

So, “who” reflects the American nation,

“what” is reflected as the goal, and

“wow” is reflected as a measurement of success, which is safely returning the traveler.

2. The Playback is the second technique, and it targets putting all the stockholders in the same page and ensuring that everyone is aligned together.

shareholder’s project Hills (Hills Playbacks), proposed solution (Playback Zero), or measure progress towards delivery (Delivery Playbacks). Playbacks involved with consumers are “Client Playbacks.”

3. Sponsor Users: In order to make the process of development iterative make your clients an integrated part of your development process. Give customers a seat at the table and observe, reflect, and make the product with you.

Principles

Focus on User outcome: The first principle is to put the user in needs in the first business priority in order to achieve good design from the client perspective. This principle is visualized with the yellow circle in the loop.

The multidisciplinary team: A collaborative team with all the stockholders in the organization aiming to move faster and smarter. IBM describes the teamwork as “Empathy: first with each other, then with our users.” This principle is represented in the loop as three green circles.

The restless reinvention: The main principle that frame the above two is the loop itself. The restless reinvention tends to build an iterative process. The process is based on prototyping solutions for old problems with new ways based on actions. Keeping in mind that nothing is perfect, this turns every product into a prototype that is a case for iteration and development.

After three years of development, IBM released its design thinking model with the goal of overcoming the traditional model’s adoption barriers for large companies. IBM’s design thinking model puts the consumer in the heart of the development process, which is known as the Loop.

Blogging is my way of rehearsing my courses and questions on these courses are my viva tests, I consider. This is last post in three blog series on Design Thinking. Please refer my following blogs on Design Thinking approach:

1.How your consumer can build your next product and why?

2. How to design the Apple Way ?

About myself : I am Wanderer, Blogger, Reader, Volunteer, Entrepreneur at Head, ER Professional by Heart and Analytics Enthusiast....