Design thinking & project management: 2 in

1 complete guides (Peter Alkema)

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1. Introduction: Design thinking
1.1. Start here: Course overview on a wipe board, your journey & value adds in
course (2)

Hello and a very warm welcome to this whiteboard overview of your design thinking
course. So, what you're going to get in this lesson is a fairly extensive overview of all the
content that you'll cover in this course and how that helps you on your journey of
becoming better at design thinking. So perhaps you're involved in design thinking
workshops, perhaps you want to become an expert in design thinking, it's a growing job
market, perhaps you're involved in designing products and solutions for your customers
and all those roles more and more are requiring design thinking.

I work at a bank in digital transformation and as we try and take advantage of new
technologies to change the way we do business, more and more we're turning to design
thinking as a human centric, customer-centred way of thinking about our business from
the outside in and understanding with empathy, ideation, prototype, all the things that
you learn in this course, what our products and services should look like and how we
should organize ourselves around the needs of our customers ultimately who are the
most important people together with your employees for any business.

So let me sketch out for you then the journey that we will take you on to become a
design thinking expert, all of which you'll be able to achieve in this course. So we start
with a little bit of an introduction to design thinking and you're over here let's say and
you're early in your journey of becoming a design thinking expert or you just want to
refresh, you want to make sure that you've got all the basic concepts of design thinking
well understood and fantastic that you follow this journey, follow the stages of learning
that you're going to go through in this course.

So as an introduction we'll talk about the kinds of problems that you can solve with
design thinking and generally speaking there are always going to be problems involving
people where people are the users of the products and services, and you need to solve
their problems and help them by meeting their needs.

We'll talk about and you'll learn why design thinking actually exists and we'll give you
fantastic case studies. So, where firms have actually used design thinking and a couple
of very interesting examples of how they use design thinking to come up with really
fascinating solutions to their customers and users’ problems. So, these case studies
throughout the course in healthcare, even look at an example where incubators were
redesigned or reconceived using design thinking, solar panels, Kellogg's, very famous
user of design thinking as an organization.
Then we will go into some additional insights about design thinking and they're very
important to you that we understand Maslow's hierarchy of needs, something that we
all probably learnt at school but very good to revise and go through and understand why
it's the basis and the foundational concept for being better and better at design thinking.
And I know from many of the workshops that I've run and a lot of the work that we do at
the bank that design thinking requires very specific mindsets for people.

So, in addition to these insights and these case studies from which we extract relevant
insights together with some of these theoretical concepts, we'll talk very importantly
around the right mindsets that you need both as a design thinker and in applying
design thinking to the problems that you're trying to solve.

So, what are some of those mindsets that you need? And I know from my experience
when I've got people together with these mindsets and we've used these ways of
thinking, design thinking has been powerful in those contexts. So, a couple of the
mindsets that you need is one of constant iteration. Thomas Edison, well-known
inventor of the light bulb, he did the see his 9999 iterations of the light bulb as failures,
saw them as steppingstones on the journey to success. And that's the same mindset
that we use in design thinking. And just like Thomas Edison, very optimistic, so
optimism also very important.

There, empathy, now because design thinking is human-centered, we must have

Then creative confidence, so the idea that I can solve problems, I can design products
and services that do actually meet the needs of my customers and my users and I'll
apply a certain amount of creativity to that but combined with the confidence, the
empathy, the optimism and the willingness to iterate as many times as necessary and
applied as design thinking principles, I can be successful in developing and
implementing the right products and services and solutions for my users and customers.

Then we'll also talk a little bit about what is design thinking. We'll talk about how it's a
new way of thinking. And it's not necessarily new, it's been around for decades but it's
been more formally described in the process that you'll learn in this course and in the
methodologies that relate to design thinking and how those methodologies are
implemented in organizations. So, it's more being packaged now if you like in a set of
principles and ways of working that are based on a relatively new way of thinking but
that has been around a lot longer than the methodologies that we're aware of in
organizations today.
Then we'll go into a little bit of the process. And we'll look at the four principles of
design thinking. So, there's stages but there's also principles. The first one is that
design thinking is human-centered. We've spoken about that. Second principle is that
there is ambiguity in the design process and that it should be tolerated and accepted
and embraced. There's the redesign principle which says that all design is redesigning.
We are constantly improving things when we design things. Then there is the fourth
principle of tangibility which is that I need to see something, I need to be able to
visualize something, play with something, prototype something, have a realistic
experience of something to conceive of that solution. So very much related to the
importance of prototypes in design thinking which we'll talk about in some detail as well.

Then we will start looking at the actual stages. So different to the principles, the stages
are sequential in nature, can be repeated or iterated as indicated over here but broadly
speaking you want to go through these stages to follow the design thinking process.

We'll also go through some challenges that you'll face in the design thinking process,
and we'll look at some key considerations in design thinking. In there there's an
introduction to the five stages that I'll sketch onto on the right-hand side in a little bit
more detail.

So, let's start with that. The first one is coming back to this mindset of empathy. We start
the design thinking process almost with empathy and in the course, we teach you how
to empathize. You probably know what empathy is but how do you actually empathize in
order to trigger that design thinking process? We give you an activity, we show you an
example, we talk about some research, and we talk about what is empathy.

The second major stage is define. So, under define we look at this concept of personas.
Now persona is a proxy if you like for customers. So, you'll be servicing a certain group
of customers and you'll define a persona, you might even name them so that you can
bring that persona into the design thinking process and actually include them in the
empathy, the define stage and the others that we're going to walk through just now. So,
you don't have this anonymous idea of an abstract concept of a customer, you name
them, you define them, and you bring them into the process and that's really this idea of
persona.

We talk about empathy map as a way of bringing what you've started in the first step of
using empathy to get the design thinking process going but then as a more formal
framework over here, we talk about how to define the problem. Generally, because it's
human centered, problems are very much more open ended. So, you are not going to
be able to get to a solution unless you bring that openness into some level of
convergence which is done through this step over here of how to define the problem.
Then we look at pain points, that's just part of defining the problem. We look at also and
teach you how to synthesize different viewpoints and you might even have multiple
personas.

So, it's not to say that you just got one persona that you're solving for, you might have
multiple personas which need to be synthesized and understood so that you can move
to the next stage which then is very excitingly ideation. And ideation really is then all
about primarily brainstorming, and we have lots of frameworks and we teach you
extensively in this course how to do brainstorming. So, we give you techniques like
sketch maps, mind maps and you'll learn about tris, scamper and these are all just
tangible techniques, methodology, frameworks, resources, and downloads in those
lessons that you can use to apply those methods in your workshops. And it's not to say
that you must follow those, those are for you to draw inspiration from and select which
ones are going to be most useful for your specific environment and in your specific
context in terms of using design thinking to achieve the value that you're looking for.

And then very excitingly the fourth sort of major stage is prototyping. And this comes
back to this idea of tangibility over here. So, prototyping there and because you're
working in a team and again you've got that version to use in the room and the
workshop and the process that you're going through, you've got to be good at co-
creation. We're teaching some principles and tips and tricks to achieve co-creation. We
talk about how to sketch out, sketch for prototypes so this idea here of tangibility and I
need to touch or feel or see or visualize something. How do you define that prototype?
You get different types, physical model, software prototype for example, a sketch or an
architecture of a house. You must go back and look at some of these case studies to
see how they prototype some of those solutions before they actually went into the cost
of actually implementing and building those solutions. Very important that your
prototyping achieves that principle of tangibility over there. We give you frameworks like
FASGov. We teach you how to do role plays. How to do storyboards. Okay, and quite a
bit more there in the space of prototyping.

And then once you've got these prototypes very excitingly you can then move into really
the fifth major stage of design thinking which is testing. As much testing as you can do,
the more you can prove that the solution is going to work once you've spent the money
to implement it and roll it out to your customers. So as part of testing we give you some
templates. We teach you how to manage feedback. We talk about the types of testing.
So again, depending on the type of prototype that you've used you're going to do
different types of testing, using those prototypes and engaging the people and the
personas to get the feedback that you need on the process of testing whatever it is that
you want to solve. We talk about something called a business model canvas. Different
businesses are going to have different business models. I mean banking, you might be
in healthcare, logistics, manufacturing, engineering and design thinking applies to all
industries but very important that you bring into mind the business model that you're
solving for, and we teach you this idea of the business model canvas to help you with
that process.
And then you've got to think about costing. So, what is the cost structure of your
proposed and prototyped solution that you're starting to converge on in this design
thinking process. And then we start looking at implementation. And of course,
implementation is a whole framework and methodology in its own right. There will be
different processes of achieving implementation for software or vehicles, logistics,
manufacturing, engineering but we do give you what you need to know about
implementation in order to have a successful design thinking process. And around
implementation we talk about the planning, staffing, we talk about pitching. So, there's
going to be an idea of pitching the idea and the prototype based on the testing and the
feedback into some sort of process or team of people that are going to take that forward
into an implementation stage. We talk about monitoring because of course as you
implement the solution you need to make sure that it ties back and achieves what you
were looking to solve for originally as you adopted the right mindset, followed the right
process, displayed the right amount of empathy, to understand the needs of your
personas. Does the implementation tie back to all these principles and important stages
and ways of thinking that will teach you and that you need to understand and use in the
design thinking process.

So that really then excitingly is the journey that you're going to go on and really the most
important part of it is understanding these five stages over here and design thinking is
always anchored around those five stages of empathy, define, ideation, prototyping, and
testing and again you can circle back through those as you need to and iterate as you
need to but to get this basic foundational knowledge and the insights and the mindsets
and an understanding of the process and the principles you'll have a better chance of
being successful at implementing those five stages of design thinking.

Fantastic. So that's a quick overview of the content of the course. Let's just talk very
quickly then about some of the value adds that you can look forward to and that we
provide to you in this course. We'd really love you to introduce yourself and design
thinkers are a wonderful community. They have this creative confidence over here, so
we'd like you to display that creative confidence when you introduce yourself and tell us
your journey of design thinking and perhaps touch on some of these mindsets and how
you identify with them in achieving your goals for learning about design thinking.

Right, then we have lots of activities for you to do in the course so you absolutely need
to put what you learn in this course into practice as quickly as possible, following some
of the examples and the case studies that we give you so that you can learn from them
how to achieve the same benefits in your own context or environment in your business
as well. So, learn by doing and take the lead from Scheister, our instructor in this
course, who will teach you all of these lessons and point you to the necessary activities
and resources that will help you to learn by doing and put these skills into practice as
soon as possible.
Then you'll also be able to ask questions at any stage during the course and anybody
during this course, any student can also actually answer any of those questions, so we'd
really love to have discussions and input from everybody. No one person has all the
answers but if we create a community of design thinkers in this course we share in each
other's knowledge through that process and the course really provides for that type of
discussion amongst us.

Okay, I'll also be celebrating your progress. So I'll be checking in with you and I really
strongly suggest that you just go through all the lessons and I'll check in with you at
about 25%, 50%, 75% and then 100% and you can download your certificate and
please do share it on LinkedIn with the hashtag Peter Alkmaar so that we can celebrate
your success and I'll do that in my network but we'll also celebrate it with you in the
course. So, there's a certificate for you. As I said you can share that on social media or
print that out or keep that or add that onto your CV potentially and of course there is a
workbook, a very extensive workbook in this course and that consists of all the
worksheets that are also attached to each of these lessons. So, let's say you just want
to dive in and learn one of these stages you'll still be able to get the worksheets for that
stage or you can get the workbook for the whole course and keep that as a very
valuable extensive reference for all aspects of design thinking that we teach you in this
course.

So, you'll also get engaging and empathetic lessons. I think one of the fantastic things
about this course is the level of empathy that our instructor from Digital Regenesis
demonstrates and displays in her lessons and in her teaching, very empathetic, very
supportive way of teaching you and taking you through these concepts and I think you'll
really agree that she does a fantastic job of doing that and in doing that she also brings
in that step by step way of teaching. So, you really get everything that you need to apply
these principles and apply this way of thinking in a practical way in your place of work or
in your business or in your career as soon as possible after or even during this course.

Right so this has been an extensive overview of the design thinking course and really
what's great about this lesson and I include these types of lessons in all my courses is
this sketch out for you everything. If you were to say okay just lay it out for me this is it
and you can then dive in and follow the learning path that we've designed for you in the
course to get the basic knowledge, build on that, understand the process that you're
going into and then actually apply that process by following those lessons using the
resources and the different frameworks that we teach you here to then get better and
better at doing design thinking. And I honestly believe that if you're going through a
design thinking process at work then you could very much use this course as a
reference and even play our lessons for other people to learn and get them to enroll in
the course so that all of you in the project are able to take advantage of what we teach
you in this course to apply what you've learned here and achieve the benefits of design
thinking. So, there's the lessons, there's the stages of your journey to achieving 100% a
mastery of design thinking and there's several the value adds. Good luck and I look
forward to seeing you in class.
2. Learn the kinds of problems to solve with design thinking
2.1. Kinds of problems that can be solved with design thinking (7)