Friday, November 16, 2012

Highlights of “Design Thinking”: A 2-day workshop held on Nov 7-8 at Bangalore

How do you get deep customer insights? And how do you translate the insights into innovative solutions? The 2-day workshop on Design Thinking Raghu Kolli and I facilitated a couple of weeks back aimed to give a glimpse of the process and associated tools & techniques. Participants came from Chennai, Hyderabad, Kolkata and Bangalore. They represented various functions such as Operations, Delivery, Quality and HR. Their designations were Business Analyst, Senior Business Analyst, Manager, Solution Manager, Senior Associate etc. Here are some highlights from the program.

We had selected payment counter queues as a broad study area. Immersive research was one of the key steps in the workshop. Participants formed 4 teams and each team visited one of: Electricity bill payment & Railway reservation counters at BDA complex, St. Johns Hospital, Petrol pump and Taco Bell / KFC near Sony World junction. They observed, interviewed and gathered data both in written and media form (pictures and videos). By the end of the day-1, each team analysed their data and distilled their insights into a few statements. For example, one insight was: People didn’t mind waiting, if queue moved faster, and were treated well at the end of the wait. Day-1 ended with a presentation of observations and insights from each team (For more see the presentation above).

A good insight is a good beginning. However, for it to translate into a good solution, we need to formulate a challenge which we want to solve. That is where we began our day-2. We had a brainstorming session where the entire group refined the challenge statement which was to be worked upon during the day. The final challenge we defined was: How do we make being served a better experience? Note that the word “queue” is missing from the statement. Why? Because participants felt that the solution space should include ideas where you don’t need to wait in a queue (queue-less service).

If formulation of the challenge was the toughest part of workshop, idea generation was perhaps the easiest. We formed 3 new teams and each team brainstormed and came up with 40-50 ideas within half an hour. They selected 3 to 5 ideas and combined them to form a solution. This was followed by preparation of mock-ups, almost like going back to primary school - cardboard, colour-pens, lego, play-dough etc. We could have easily spent a lot more time doing this activity.

The final step was in-field validation and it typically leads to moments of truth. Does the customer really like the experience we are creating? How can we refine the solution further? Each team selected an assumption in their solution that they planned to validate by going to the field. For example, one team went to St. Johns hospital to test if colour coding of sign boards will help visitor find their way to appropriate counters. After talking to the staff and visitors the team realized that colour coding will help but you will still need somebody to help the visitors. After coming back, the teams refined their solutions and prepared their final presentations. This part reinforced the importance of rapid experimentation and iterative refinement. Final presentation also included a 3 minute skit depicting the solution through a role-play.

We were fortunate to have Lakshman Pachineela, Head of Innovation at SAP Global Delivery and visiting faculty School of Design Thinking, Potsdam, Germany join us during the final presentations and the discussion that followed. Lakshman also shared his insights on practicing design thinking in an organizational setting.


  1. Vinay and Raghu, it really helped to get the practical insight and real-time feedback of the users ( hospital workers and visitors here ) in a Design Thinking context. After this exercise I also find myself automatically looking out for helpful signs and their placement in public places:). And thank you for arranging an insightful talk by Lakshman as well.

    1. Thanks Koel. I am glad you found the workshop useful. Hope to hear from you some success stories where you applied some of the insights. All the best.