Design thinking Transcript

Video 1 - 5 Stages of the Design Thinking Process

a long long time ago if humans wanted to move something we had to carry and as time went on we
were able to solve this problem and millions of others in life we're always bumping into new
problems and while we have the desire to solve them it's often hard to find the right solution or even
know where to start that's where Design Thinking comes in design thinking is a process that seeks to
solve complex problems by approaching it from the user's perspective it also aims to turn your ideas
into tangible testable products as quickly as possible the Design Thinking framework can be drilled
down into three distinct phases immersion ideation and implementation now if we zoom in a little
bit these phases can be broken down into five actionable stages that make up the entire design
thinking process empathize define the IDH prototype and test in the empathize stage you'll get to
know your target audience and paint a clear picture of who the users are what challenges they face
and what they need this can be achieved through interviews user testing surveys basically by
talking to people and understanding how they think act feel based on what you learn you'll then
define your problem statement when creating your problem statement focus on the users needs
over the business goals keeping it human centered is the theme here this problem statement will
act as your Northstar if you start to trail off or get lost just look back to the problem statement to
refocus with our problem statement to find we're ready to id8 keep in mind innovation is rarely
born in isolation so don't fly solo get up from your desk cubicle or spaceship gather some key
individuals from other teams and the name of the game is quantity over quality so think outside of
the box and explore new angles there are many ideation techniques to get you and your team
started a great reference is our Design Thinking handbook by Eli Woolery check it out at design
better calm next stop prototyping prototypes come in all shapes and sizes from basic paper bottles
to interactive digital mock-ups the goal is to have something tangible that can be tested on real
people getting your prototype into the hands of real users will give you great insight on if the
solution you provided is valid or if it needs some more work based on our feedback you can make
changes and improvements before spending the time and money building the real thing although
these steps appear to be sequential keep in mind Design Thinking is a less linear and more iterative
at each stage you'll most likely discover new things that require you to go back and repeat a
previous step there you have it design thinking in a nutshell now get out there and start applying
design thinking to your work today you'll be glad you did for more information on design thinking
head on over to envision app comm slash inside design and we'll see you in the next video

Video 2 - Design thinking – what, how, why, when? | Paweł Żebrowski | TEDxSzczecinLive

so today I will want to say you're just few words about thinking actually what is design thinking and
how it works does it really work and what's the state of play according to Poland so what is design
thinking in 1969 Herbert Simon says that design can be a way of thinking and the design it's too
important to be just leave it to the designers and in 1986 roll fast expanded to say that it's a
method of creative action and this man here David Kelley is considered as a kind of father of design
thinking in 1991 together of his colleagues he founded the first company commercial company
which solves the problems using design thinking methodology and that company is called ideal he
was CEO up to 2000 and in 2004 he came back to the Stanford University and established the first
school which teach students how to solve the problem using design thinking and it's a design school
school of design has a Plattner Institute of design called D school and also this man at the beginning
as we work in an Airbus was response for design this laboratory occupied site which you can find in
a Bening 747 if you can put it in one sentence we can say that some methodology for creative in
practical week to problem solving and the two important things is that it has to be creative so we
use a nonlinear non standard way of thinking to solve that problems and also practical because
design thinking it's going into practice there's no design thinking if you cannot put it into practice
and also a wicked problem wicked problem is in my opinion one of the hardest trans expression to
be translated in Polish so I will just stick to the examples to show that so we get problems other
problem which are at the beginning completely difficult or impossible to solve these are the
problems that we don't have data what it secured and we don't know what it should be and like an
example traffic jams like the aggressive sales like no customer in your shops or queues in a public
offices so how it really works at the beginning if you want to start solving we need to answer a few
questions because not every kind of problem can be solved by the design thinking and the first one
is the problem focused on human values so is our problem focus on an end user of that second is
weekd so it's difficult to solve or even impossible or it has a high level of uncertainty so we don't
know what the solution will be at the end and the final question that we have no data at all or we
have some data but we don't know which of them will be relevant but this in thinking it's not only
are developing a new product it's also are developing a new user experience it's to changing the
products according to the trends economical ecological and even social so it's going through the
market without what your clients really want to have and this is how it looks like on the most basic
way the first step is the m50 so we're going out to the streets and we asking people what they
really want we're asking what their pain and when we collect this information to the interviews we
go to the define stage and we by gathering this information answer the question what they really
want and the next stage we gather as many possible ideas to find that one two or three the best
solution and that solution we transform into prototypes and after that we do we take these
prototypes and going back to the street again to say to see do we have right or not so I just tell you
briefly about each of the steps the first one is empathy and why empathy it's so important in the
design thinking firstly because we need to know what our target group once most of them
entrepreneurs said that or think that they know everything about the clients and we need to check
that actually to go to the streets and ask the people what they really want secondly it's also
important because mostly problems which we are solving to the design thinking it's not actually our
problems so we need to go to the group and say and took the information straight from the source
and the most important thing for me in them fatigue it's that every one of us have some kind of
filter which true sees reality and empathy removes that filter an example if I can ask you about your
first impression about the serial some of you said that it's a valuable breakfast some of you will say
that it's a lot of sugar in it if I ask you the same question according to the energy drinks some of you
will said that it's a pure chemistry and it's bad for your health when someone can say that's actually
a good energy if you have a long day so we all have filters and the empathy in this stage we do not
interpret the data which comes from a target group we just collect it and after that we go to the
define so we are taking this information and put it all on the whiteboard and really think what our
target group wants what's their pain and we try at this stage to define or even redefine the
problem and I can give you a little story about that fewer few years ago a company called Parker
who its manufacturing no man's ball pants and fountain pens get a big problem of the decrease of
the sales and they hire a consulting company and say we don't know what's happening and we need
you to solve that and after a few months of working the consulting group came back and said we
think we know the answer but before we say what's our what's our proposition we can just ask you
a few questions so first question is can your product be bought anywhere in a grocery store on a
gas station or in a newsstand no if an example the ink cartridge will run out will I throw your pen
out and buy a new one no and in example if what are the feelings of the people who are using your
products if an example give your product to that person it will be the same feeling that an example I
will give a yellow big band to him No so dear Parker you are not manufacturing pants and ball pens
and fountain pens you actually manufacturing gifts because your target group perceive your
products as a perfect gift and after that the perk are reinvented the whole packaging so it goes to
the very aggressive but very nice marketing presenting its product as a as a very good gifts and also
positioning in a different places like an example gift shops and after that the sales go up again so
here is a story about how to redefine the problem actually from the data from the market ok the
next step is the ID 8 so when we know exactly what we are looking for what we are working we
search for a broaden solution for that it is commonly said that we need to have 50 or 60 ideas for
the one problem to find that one two or three that can be transported to the prototypes and in this
and in this stage we go beyond rational thinking we ask yourself a question how this problem can
be solved by the six oh dear boy or how can I solve this problem if I get a control of the forces of
nature but when we go that beyond rational thinking it can lead us to that one or two great ideas
which can be transported to the best solutions and when we end and in this stage there's a two
rules that needs to be fulfilled to get it done first rule is visualize don't write draw sketch visualize
use images and pictures because the pictures inspire you to the next pictures to the next images
which also influence your brain and the second rule is don't sit walk Crouch jump strength but do
not sit in the creative spaces like where you go visiting there's no desk at all in most of them why
that's the easy kind because when we are moving your blood flows faster so you accelerate your
brain and which means that you can be more productive and more creative that's why so when we
select one two or three best solution we go to the prototype phase so we make a physical form of
our solution and the first thing that needs to be considered that it needs to be interactive we do
not show our prototype to the groups we must give it to their hands and see what are the reactions
of the prototypes and it's a kind of a cheap failure if we just see that we made a mistake in the
process in the process we can just came back and make a new a new and better prototype and with
that prototype we go to the test face and the test face we see what our target groups interact with
the prototype how it how it looks like and how they perceive it and most important thing we don't
defend our prototypes if an example give a new kind of packaging to the person and that person
don't know how to open it we cannot go and say hey that's easy you just need to put it this and put
the distal in this if user don't understand our prototype we made a mistake we need to write it
down came back and see what we can do by so what this is all about so design thinking it's mainly
about this so creating a product that your clients will love and also services and I will just show you
a few examples that it really works first one it's a company called embrace and founded in 2008 by
the Stanford graduates which during studies get the challenge to find a solution to create a solution
to prevent mortality of the premature infants in the third countries like an example in Nepal and
what they did the first idea was to create a cheap incubator that can be put it in an example a local
hospital and after that they go to Nepal and start talking with some people and what information
they received that in Nepal they have an incubators but rarely no one use it and the second
information was that the highest mortality it's on the rural areas where is there no electricity at all
so they developed embrace they develop a sleeping bag that can be put it in a hot water and
accumulate heats from that water up to four hours so where there's a infant we can put it inside
and during that four hours we can safely transport it to the hospital that can be put it to the proper
incubator more of that it can be sanitized very easy to put it on the ten or eleven hours in that
some hot water so can be used many times and the price of that it's twenty dollars and that's also a
nice idea how to reinvent the problem and the second company which I'd like to show it's a sprout
gel proto is a company which is building interactive teaching toys especially for the kids that are
that had a type one diabetes and they develop the Jerry the bear so the friend of the here which
also have the same disease as you can see it's a bird they got an insulin pan they get a backpack
with carbs and by but not using the scare tactics they use fun to show that kid that they have a
friend with the same disease and by carrying of that of that friend they also care by themselves and
I would like to also show you two examples from the Polish market the first one it's a bravura
dragon on a warm jaw and in 2008 when they want to introduce the local brand to the national one
they see that they want to distinguish from the from the other breweries and they hire a company
touch ideas from Warsaw which is talking to the people talking to the hipsters in club and so on and
create a completely different strategy the first one that they gather a little bottle which is
combined will be after that they also develop a different label with the traditional log of one job but
also with that you know grey paper which is symbol of a collage achill whit pink but they also
developed a some kind of a stand which is mostly placed on the counter and it's developed that that
these bottles which you see in here are on the height of my hand so when I wait for the for the
counter I just can take one bottle and say okay maybe I will try I don't need to lower myself or I
don't know go ups it's on the head of my hand so it's more accessible for me and they also
introduced to the Polish market the first fridge pack which consist of the ten bottles and it's and it's
a design that it's perfectly fit to the standards height of the shelves on your refrigerator so you can
has open a refrigerator you detach the front and you always have ten called beers in a limited
space the second example it's a company rainbow tours - one of the biggest polish tour operator
which also asked attach ideas to create a special campaign to distinguish from the other operators
but do not lower the price and what they what they taught is the campaign called the holiday for
the curious so if you want if you buy one curious you have about 50% of the discount to the next
country which is in a different part of the world so what we have now in Poland according to the
design thinking we have desert our market is like a desert in Poland the six or seven years when
design thinking its present so it's very very big possibilities to gather that market but what we have
also that we have an examples we have an examples from the different countries still gaining an
example from Poland but we gotta also learning materials so we should learn from the others from
the other countries too and what we have also that we have a people knows the methodology and
they are willing to help and they want to also share that methodology with especially SMEs what
we need we all need to be more open we need to be open to talk talk with our customers talk with
our partners talk to the people that are in the environment and share the knowledge share the
experience if we don't like such service say it also you want we need to believe we need to believe
that the even paper or cardboard prototype can give us a valuable information how our market
looks like because in the other countries that's how it looks like really and we need to be more
curious we need to be more curious about the services about the innovation that's our market we
need to tweet our experiences we need to post it post it our feelings about how it looks like
because if the developer of the service don't know how it's our feelings it won't change the service
well and when we need it there's only one answer for that we needed here and now because there
will be another company's from abroad and then we come here took our ideas and took the heart
of our clients and it should be our common goal not let them do this thank you

Video 3 - Speed up Innovation with Design Thinking | Guido Stompff | TEDxVenlo

good afternoon everybody I like to talk with you about innovation and innovation let's go the right
way yes innovation is something that we love to talk about you can see it in the newspapers you
see them on the internet you see it in blocks it's something that we love it's about new things it's
about both things that may change our world but the problem is ladies and gentlemen
organizations don't have a clue how to organize for innovation they're caught up in what I named
catch-22 of innovation now a catch-22 is maybe a little bit difficult word it's an English word and
can't translate it very well the English use it for those situations that assets individual you're stuck
in between contradictory rules for example you're 20 years old you apply for a job and the first
thing they ask is do you have any relevant experience now of course not I need I need a job to get
relevant experience no then you can't get a job now that's catch-22 now what is the catch-22 of
innovation just imagine that you have a brilliant idea any innovation starts with a brilliant idea and
you go out there and you go to a banker or an investor or to the management team or a board of
directors whatever and you go there and you stand there and you do your pitch now what happens
afterwards they think I think this is what happens you know I think this is really a brilliant idea yes it
is but I just like to know a couple of things of you before we proceed I like to know how much
money will we make how much will it cost what will the competition do how will the market
develop what kind of people do you need how much time do you need and on and on and off now
the problem is if you have a new IP if you are truly innovative there's no way you can ever answer
these questions it simply is impossible you're caught up in a catch-22 you have a great idea but you
can't start now can we escape the catch-22 of innovation yes we can ladies and gentlemen that's
the good news it's something actually that I learned when I was doing my PhD at the Technical
University in Delft I was doing a study on multidisciplinary teams teams like we have for this
company here in Venlo oh say that research and development department they're large teams work
together and they're composed of people like who are chemists or physicists or mechanical
engineers electrical engineers software engineers and they all have to work together and I wanted
to know a couple of things about these teams I wanted to know for instance how do they get their
ideas actually where there's innovation arise within these teams and the other thing what I like to
know is how did you actually align their work and all their activities just imagine 100 people all
working together on one thing it has to be a seamlessly integrated whole it's quite difficult and the
funny thing is there are no books about it so I started a research and together with two professors
and six other co researchers we analyzed things like this we made a lot of movies on the floor of
people working and we analyzed these movies to find out what the essences of innovation the
funny thing is I think many organizations can learn a lot from these teams now I can of course talk
about what I found and all the statistics and stuff like that but that's a bit boring I think you can all
experience yourself what innovation is about together with my wife check if on before she's here in
the audience we developed a special very dedicated challenge so that every one of you can
experience innovation and it's named the coffee filter challenge now what I do and you have
actually a coffee filter in your back so you can do it at home around Christmas it's great fun to do
together with your family and things like that what I ask people is this is not a coffee filter back I
give you 15 minutes to come up with a brilliant idea what is it but however be sure that you team
up for five up to eight people team up and come up with a brilliant idea and I did it a lot of times I
think already with three 350 people people they love to do it it's really great fun to do and they do
all kinds of thickness things they mess it up they clean it they make toys out of it and they come up
with ideas ranging from at one hand it's a very nice isolation material for houses all the way up to
the other side like this one it's a Chinese puppet theater played for at the camping you can make
yourself so one of the the personal things I was really amazed off by earth until today not one team
invented the same thing so we all can be innovators and you can do it yourself the keys I'm not
talking here about the results I'm talking about the process and I asked these teams three simple
questions and the first question is is this one did anyone in the team knew in advance that they
would make a Chinese puppet making theatre no oh so you started off without any plan with it
about any ID and you got this brilliant idea yeah okay second question I asked who invented it
there's always someone in the team who says well I named it oh so you named it why did you name
well actually I was responding to her oh and why was she well actually she says I was responding to
someone else so if you take a look if you put the camera on the team who's doing the coffee filter
challenge you see something like this someone says something someone responds someone ask you
questions someone responds someone come up with a brilliant idea now what has this ID been in
the world without all these people and all these conversations before no so IDs fundamentally arise
in between us it's not one mind they arise in between us third question I asked did you play with it
oh yeah yeah yeah we did all kinds of thing we tore it apart we cut it and asked we put it together
we assembled it we put it on from on top of a bottle why is that so relevant because most of the
ideas that I solved until today always are result people doing things creating things making a mess
out of it then oh you know what we can make something out of it so it's not here it's out there
doing things making things creating now if you take a view a bit from those teams away this is the
process that you actually see team is at position aid they have to say something like we have to
invent something for a coffee filter back let's go that direction we go to the direction of B and
something happens a surprise someone asks something hey didn't don't you mind then someone
says maybe we should do something else and they go that direction and then they say hey there's
another surprise I'm not already maybe we should go somewhere else and again and again and
again so before and no one knows what the outcome will be in the end they have something that's
quite proud of but they learn on the go they learn well they create what they are inventing no one
knows it beforehand that they learn on the go that brought something to mind it struck me that it
resembles very much the way how architects work how designers work how creatives work how
artists work they don't know exactly when you ask an architect to design a house for you he doesn't
know exactly what he's gonna make he starts making sketches shows it to you shows it another one
makes another sketch shows it to you he learns as he creates as well so innovation in teams
resembles very much the way how architects and designers work I started to think if it's so much
like design thinking what else can we learn if we take this lens design thinking onto innovation
there are two things I like to share with you the first one designers that's typical for designs they
always think in options they don't think in problems they don't think who is to blame here that we
have this problem no they think how can we solve it that's the way how they're trained and why is
this irrelevant this is the process I just showed you if you have a surprise a problem or whatever
then it's very nice if you have someone in the team who comes up with all these options what we
can do this we can do that and can do that and especially designers are trained for that if you ask
them to design a user interface they don't come up with one idea 20 or 50 IDs why is this irrelevant
because if you have these options you can make a choice which way to go on the go you can find
the way not beforehand on the go any people who can do that but designers not only show options
they visualize them very well why is this irrelevant well when everybody's talking about technology
and what it can do and what the problems are designers make something very tangible like this they
show what the product could be what the service could be and the thing is they make use of a
language we all understand it's a language of images something we can refer to it's not a difficult
language you don't have to study rocket science to understand these things and that enables teams
and companies and organizations to reflect on what is being made and sometimes they can make
very iconic kind of pictures but be visual that's the thing now last time I take this wayfinding process
this is how it looks like you started with something you don't know where you're gonna end up you
have a couple of surprises and all those moments you need people who think in options and can
visualize them because how can we know what we want until we see what the options are how can
we know that we actually want to go that direction unless someone shows the options now I'm
gonna give one example to make you feel yourself how important it is that you see an option this is
the bent implying a rota Dom it's named the water square it's a very nice place there are always
people in there this College next to it the playing pan out soccer over there they're listening to
music the smoking cigarettes there are always people hanging out there does anyone seem see
something particular about this place because it's not just a place to hang out it's designed thinkers
solution for a problem we have here in Van LOH as well rain floods actually when it's raining a lot all
the water from the area is kept in there but these designers it's the urban estate they considered
that if we have to build a tank for capturing the water maybe we can make something out of it that
we all love to use now ask yourself the following question now you know this now you've seen this
what do you think is this something that you had in mind beforehand guess not is this something
that you would say maybe we should do something like that in Venlo as well I hope some of you will
say like that how can we know what we want until we see what the options are I started this talk
with the catch-22 and I promise you, you can break it I'm just going to drive home a couple of things
what you can do tomorrow in your own company your own personal life it's not that difficult the
first thing is don't try to think it all over don't make the plans in the visions and the budgets and
stuff like that start start moving because you cannot know where you're gonna end up with second
thing is team up don't do it on your own talk speak make fun make jokes go out because that's
where the ideas arise third thinking options not in problems there are so many problems we can
think about how do we solve that I don't think in options and learn on the go play make things and
make it as tangible as possible and the last thing and this is the thing I hope you will take home from
me visualize make it as visual as you can thank you very much you

Video 4 Design Thinking | Doreen Lorenzo | TEDxUTAustin

so for the past 30 years I've led teams departments and businesses through record growth I've been
involved with mergers and I've been involved with acquisitions I've seen product introductions
product reinventions product innovations and I've hired and I fired some of the best people in the
world I had a really good run and I thought when it was all done I was ready to go do it a lot of
people like me do you sit on boards you become a mentor your invest in companies but I'm here
somehow at the University of Texas and I'm teaching our students how to become empathetic how
to make mistakes and how to lead in this new burgeoning creative economy so the truth is I ended
up in education but it isn't so strange that I'm here for many many years I hired so many students
out of college and I watched them rise up through the ranks and then in the last few years what I
noticed is they weren't being as successful you see businesses have changed the business has
changed product cycles today our products cyclones the need to interact with your end user your
consumer your employee is at rapid pace we need to work in these multidisciplinary teams to get
anything done so the work we're doing here has two significant goals one it's to prepare our
students beyond the 40 acres you see a diploma is just the price of entry businesses want more and
the second is to and a little harder is to change decades-old convention in higher education
learning I'm also going to explain a little bit how we do this a little bit about human sin and Design
Thinking because I want all of you to walk away today and think how can I be more human centered
so as I said higher education does a very good job particularly here at the University of Texas we do
a great job educating our students but we do it in silos and those silos don't allow us to have cross
disciplinary work now it doesn't mean that our students and our professors don't want to do that
see the problem we have to solve is our is the funding problem we're rewarded for the number of
students in seats in a department we're not rewarded for the cross collaborative work that we do so
we have an amazing opportunity at UT to do something different because think of it we have
almost infinite knowledge here we have so much research and so many smart people in this
university the cross collaboration can is is mind-blowing and how could we expect a recent set of
graduates to go out into the world if we haven't taught them how to collaborate how to work with
others empathy critical problem-solving we need to be responsible for teaching them that because
today we are living in a very multidisciplinary world our students have to learn about this they have
to learn how to live and work and perform in this world now we want them to be fantastic at their
craft or their discipline whether their business or computer science or engineering or design but
they need to be more they need to know how to problem-solve they need to be critical thinkers
they need to understand how to work with others that are not like them so how do we do that so
we reimagine higher education sounds simple right but we're doing it I want to talk about this is my
favorite part of the speech the school the school of design and creative technologies and what
we're doing there first of all we are designing a curriculum that is responsive to the market you see
higher education has a wonderful way of teaching a curriculum for 20 years in the world that we
live in today and in the discipline that we have in our school that's very difficult to do this
curriculum embodies design thinking entrepreneurship and a highly collaborative work environment
and second we're changing who teaches it and where we teach it we decided that all these 3 credit
class three credits 15 week classes that wasn't necessarily the way that we needed to do things and
we've recognized the need for entrepreneurial skills to be taught to creative people so this past
semester who tried something very different 24 students were chosen out of a pool of about a
hundred that applied to take a class that was taught by really fantastic designers up at the IBM
design studios in North North Austin so each week they gone on the bus and they went up to uh
IBM studios and obviously the bus took them down to and it was funny as it went on in the
semester the team called it the campus the design campus because that's what it became but there
they were learning problems that businesses or that particular business was dealing with it's very
much like they would teach their new employees and it was it had restrictions and they were in a
corporate environment and they were working with multidisciplinary teams of people they didn't
know but we also had mentors and guest speakers and lots of people to help shape this experience
for them and I have to tell you it was it was mind-bending to watch this think about it think about
when you would have applied for a job if you had this type of experience or you wrote a cover
letter what would it have been like for you to talk about something like this when we went up for
the final presentation after the 15 weeks and we took a whole bunch of people up there and I'll tell
you as I'm driving up there I'm thinking oh my god I hope this worked but we got up there and these
students were amazing not only was their thought process and how they solve these problems just
incredible but their presentation skills the way they felt confident about themselves they were
transformed by this each and every one of them told me they wish that more of their classes were
experiential where they could learn and they could learn with other people because they felt like
they took knowledge away from there that they could use for the rest of their life and you know
what as educators and academics we were transformed by this too and this semester because we
were so excited about it we're doing something similar with other companies USA a McKinsey
design BNSF railroad wpengine we're making sure that our students are getting real-world
experience in a very different setting we've also started teaching microcredit courses these are one
credit five-week courses because if we want our students to understand all about the different
disciplines that we're working we want them to be able if you're a designer go take a computer
science course understand how they solve problems what's the nomenclature if you're a computer
scientist go take an intro to design course understand what they're talking about what's fabulous
about these courses and actually all of our courses is that they're getting filled up they're all filled
up there is a need and a desire and there is a palpable excitement there's like a buzz that runs
around this floor that we're on it's very exciting to watch because the students are not being taught
but they're learning it's one thing to teach it's another thing to learn and they're feeling that this is
something that can help them going forward we also hired a serial entrepreneur a woman named
Jan Ryan who happens actually to be here and the reason we did this is we wanted to bring
entrepreneurial skills right to our creative team you know what I've noticed in my career is nobody
ever ever wanted to talk to creative people about business or entrepreneurial skills that was
actually for somebody else that didn't make sense to me you know it's another piece of the problem
it's a puzzle for them to solve and our students have really embraced jan is inundated with them
has really have really embraced the concept and what to do with it so you're wondering probably
who's teaching all this courses you got a hint here a lot of them are professionals there are people
that are in the industry that are doing the work they're staying on the cutting edge that know
where the trends are going this is what's going to keep our students competitive in the marketplace
this is what's going to help them get out there and get jobs and be recognized so that's the how let
me talk you a little bit about the what what are we teaching here well and how we're gonna make
this stick so really what's Yugi empathy how many of you know what design thinking is or human-
centered design guys anybody take a course here ok good we've got it we've got a few so design
thinking or human centered design is often confused with the visual aspect of design it's the
tangibility of it but really what it is it's a methodology that designers have actually used since the
1960s and what they do with this methodology is they're trying to solve a couple of or answer a
couple of questions what is the actual problem we're trying to solve and who we try to solve that
problem for and with this methodology you will go through a discovery phase and insights ideation
experimentation testing failure come back to ideation testing failure and you do kind of a rinse and
repeat until you come up with a solution that's human centered that people will use that's made
for someone it uses often interdisciplinary team because what you want to do is get different
people's ideas of how to solve this you know people coming at it from a software perspective and
people coming at it from a design perspective people coming at it from an engineering perspective
will have different ways of looking at a problem and we want to make sure that you bring in all
those ways because if I've learned anything there's never one way to solve a problem and empathy
is a huge part of what we teach now empathy is not sympathy it's not feeling sorry for people in
fact it's understanding people at a deep personal level and why is that important well have you
going to create something for humans you might as well understand them otherwise we can create
it for the monkey so we want to understand people now this is a soft skill this is the skill that hasn't
been valued so to speak but you know before I took this position at the University of Texas I did my
design research I did my human Center design and I talked to businesses and I talked to professors I
talked to students and I talked to parents what was very interesting about this is businesses told me
almost hands-down what they told me the type of student they just expected the students coming
out of the University of Texas to have fantastic crafts they were going to be great engineers or
whatever but they wanted them to have these other skills and one of those skills was empathy
because they understand today you have to work in a team dynamic and they have to be able to
work with people and they have to solve problems quickly businesses also understand today you
cannot run a business from the bottom of a spreadsheet anymore it's about the unions that
surround you and the humans you serve and we're seeing more and more businesses today using
this type of thinking businesses nonprofits governments it's all over so how many of you remember
blockbuster here I loved blockbuster okay so Friday right Friday would come and that was like the
release day and you'd have to run to Blockbuster and you get the new release and you'd run home
and I know like everybody would want to watch it he had 24 hours to watch it the new release now
you can keep the new release longer but the late fees were quite hefty so you returned it and this is
just the way we did things right we accepted it that was the norm so a gentleman named Reed
Hastings was doing the same thing he was going to blockbuster only he kept his DVD a little bit too
long and when he went to return it the late fees exceeded the cost of a new DVD and he said hmm
there's got to be a better way and what was that better way Netflix so he and what Netflix initially
did was they just had a DVD mailing service she bought a subscription and what you did was you
you know you sent it along and you could watch it whenever you wanted and it changed the
viewing habits of everybody you the human owe us we were in control we can do what we want we
didn't have to worry about whether we're gonna have a late fee or not we just wouldn't get the
video you know until we sent it back so Netflix as you know became so popular that they were
trying to get more content from studios but Studios didn't want to get in the content interestingly
enough so they decided they were going to make their own content which everybody laughed at
but they also had something they were watching how humans viewed and what they knew is that
humans viewed things all at once because people don't have time hence not only did they develop
new content but they released it all at once and we now have the new phenomenon of binge
watching I am a binge watcher I don't know about all you but I am a binge watch er and so what
they did was they really looked at human behavior and how to make that successful last year I met
a fabulous designer I interviewed her for my Colin column a woman named Ariel Keenan she works
for the city of New York um in the innovation group and she was tasked with figuring out how to
help the homeless population in New York during dangerous and inclement weather now New York
City is huge so many agencies and she used design thinking with all these agencies to map the
journey of a homeless person and all of these agencies began to co-create with her in a group how
you would change the system and that went from data to communications to infrastructure and
they changed it and she was so moved by that that she created tools for all these agencies so they
can go out and do this themselves this stuff works now we can't talk about the relevance of design
and design thinking we're talking getting back to how we teach our students about mistakes and
failure you see I hate the F word I think it's misused because we spend our lives telling our students
and telling ourselves not to fail how many of you when you came home with a failing grade your
parents jumped up and down and said fail fast I don't think that happened or in business situation
where you make a mistake and somebody will usually say to you well whose heads gonna roll we
are actually talking about learning and what we need to do is make sure our students understand
that making mistakes is part of continuous learning we need to be learning in a continuous fashion
it's not about failure it's about learning so I just want to say this I think the road from childhood to
adulthood is filled with wonderment with learning with wanting to seek out information and we
have a job to do which is to make sure that we're creating the right environment and we're giving
our students the right information to go forward and be successful not just in their work career but
in their life you know the speed and pace isn't been a slowdown but we need to teach them ways
to cope and deal with it so we can relieve the stress we need to teach them how to work in the
world that we're living in today and what's great is that it is happening here at the University of
Texas because you know what we say is what happens here changes the world and it's happening so
thank you very much and hook them horns

Video 5 - Design Thinking for Complex Environments | Nilufer Erdebil | TEDxOttawa

has anyone been to a hotel room and had promised turning on the shower well I have earlier this
year I was out in Vancouver and I'd had a long flight a couple long flights by the time I got there and
I wanted to relax a little bit before going out for dinner and so I went to go turn on the shower and I
was pulling and pushing on whatever was there trying to turn on the shower and I couldn't figure it
out actually this is what the shower looks like it was about two minutes in before I realized that
they actually had instructions on the shower but I saw them and I thought to myself it's okay I'm an
engineer I can figure this out on my own and so I went on for another minute I actually pulled
something out that wasn't supposed to come out and I put it back in and then I decided to read the
instructions and so step one turn the water on no problem has been running for a couple of
minutes step two pull the tub spout in a downward motion to activate the shower spray so I did
that I'm like pulling down on the thing trying to turn it on and then I realized wait at the very
bottom they have additional instructions if you need extra help call zero so not only do they have
written instructions for a shower but they also have third line support to turn on something as
simple as a shower I thought to myself there's no way I'm gonna call a zero and so after another
read through the instructions he's been looking at the diagram once again I figured it out with a lot
of laughs and giggles in there but I thought to myself how'd the shower designers thought about
using design thinking they might have foreseen that people would have had problems turning on
the shower after a long flight or early in the morning and so you guys are probably wondering what
is design thinking and design thinking is actually understanding ends users needs and discovering
their real problems and so what does an end user mean and so it could be anything like a client a
customer or for those in government citizens whoever you're developing services for and so we
hear the word innovation and the fact that disruption is rampant everywhere we have increased
expectations we want things faster we want and to end experiences and we want to feel special and
how do you do that it's through understanding your end clients better if you have complex
problems like innovation it's easier to simplify by understanding your end clients even better and so
two of my favorite parts of Design Thinking are the empathize looking at things from an end-user
perspective and reframing re-evaluating problems at a human level so using empathizing and
reframing together to be able to think about the problems from a different perspective I don't
know if you run into this in your work environment but we're being asked to do more with less and
so how are we gonna do that and that's by making sure we're focusing on the right processes that
way policies the right services the right products that we're developing and the best way to do that
is by understanding your and clients better so that we can focus in on the right problems to solve
for them and Design Thinking is a huge part of this let me take you back a couple of years one of my
first jobs in my career was working for a global consumer manufacturer and marketer of home and
personal care products and they actually took a lot of care understanding who their end users were
they would go into people's homes and watch them clean they would actually pay people to go into
their homes and watch them clean and so as part of my job at the time I was living with five other
housemates we actually had to test out toilet paper and in exchange for that we got lots of free
toilet paper the one thing that we had to tell them was how do we use the toilet paper yeah I'm like
what do you mean how do we use the toilet paper and so they said well do you fold it or do you
scrunch it how many sheets do you use and counting in my head and then what do you use it for
and how does it feel and so if global manufacturers of consumer goods are paying that much
attention to how people are using something like toilet paper maybe we should be putting a little
bit more emphasis on how our end clients are using our products services policies or processes so a
lot of time in our work environment or at home when we run into problems a lot of people tend to
jump to solutions without really pulling back and taking a look at what the actual challenge might
be and so sometimes especially at work we get an opportunity to pull back and think about what
are the problems what are the challenges we're trying to solve before we come up with ideas and
solutions and then some environments we get a chance to prototype and test to see if it works or
to see if our end clients like that what if we brought in empathizing and we took a look at what
people really truly want how are they using our products and services right before we understood
what the challenges could be for them and so if we were to bring it into our regular day processes
this is what it might look like where we start out with empathizing then defining the problem I da
ting and then prototyping and testing and so it's all to be able to understand the end users so that
we're solving the right problems and it's kind of difficult because sometimes like with a shower we
don't pay enough attention and think about the fact that we're actually developing services and
products for real people so one of the best ways to empathize is through something called personas
personas basically group or characterize a group of people through the use of a person or a persona
and so for example take think about the last time you were at a coffee shop what were the different
types of people that were in there and so you might have seen people may be students maybe folks
that were in the construction industry office workers or senior citizens and so personas helped us
understand that group better their goals their challenges their fears and also to be able to help
guide our decisions along the way as we're thinking about products and services for that particular
persona or that group so if we take a look at the persona for a senior citizen in a coffee shop we
might characterize them as Ruth and then provide a picture of roof so that as we're making
decisions about senior citizens for our services we have Ruth in mind what would Ruth want and so
we want to write down what her demographics are and ideally we'd do that with that particular
group they are with us and so senior citizens are usually over 65 years old although what a senior
citizen changes depending on who you are what you're doing she might want to have a friendly
atmosphere to be able to get together with friends she wants it clean accessible and close to home
to because she can't travel very far she can't drive as much and then we also want to note down
things like the fact that she's on a fixed income so her incomes less than $50,000 a year and she she
is married she has children and grandchildren but maybe they live far away so she goes to the
coffee shop for more company that's a great simple example but what happens when we get into
more complex environments like for example the federal government when you're in large groups
with complex problems what do you do you need another tool for empathizing let's take a look at a
particular problem with a community of federal regulators CFR they wanted to display regulatory
guidance in the same way for all of their regulators they wanted to showcase information in the
same way for all of the departments and so they had five workshops over seven months with 174
participants 18 departments and agencies and 17 external organizations sounds complex right what
we ended up doing there is doing the personas that everybody agreed on and then we want to do
empathy mapping and empathy maps have what are people saying doing thinking and feeling and
as we did the empathy maps we found that there was a lot of commonalities especially in the way
that people were thinking and feeling it was funny actually because some of the people in the
sessions thought that it was more like group therapy and so because of all these commonalities we
were able to simplify a complex problem into a more manageable Channel so that we were actually
able to solve it and solve it quickly how did we do that let me show you we used empathy mapping
and it's really funny this is one of the most impactful empathy tools that I know but it's also the tool
that most organizations try to skip out on and not do and so with empathy Maps we take a look at
what are people saying and what are people doing and a lot of the time it's actually quite different
and then what are people thinking and what are people feeling and so if we take it back to our Ruth
example or senior citizen at the coffee shop she's probably saying she's talking to the cashier or the
people around her about the weather what's she doing well when she's going to purchase for coffee
she's probably paying with cash and then what's she thinking she's probably wondering why Kathy
her favorite cashiers not working on Tuesday and what's she feeling probably happy a sense of
belonging and comfort because she's familiar with people there and she's gonna be meeting friends
and so empathise mapping is great for figuring out what are the articulated needs and also what
are the unarticulated needs what are people thinking and feeling but not necessarily saying think
about the last time someone asked you at work how you feel another tool that's had a positive
impact in my life is reframing a few years ago a friend of mine called me up right before
Thanksgiving and she asked me if I want to go away for the thanks being long weekend and I know
where she likes to travel so I thought maybe we'll go to New York or Chicago and she asked me do
you want to go to Budapest yeah I'm like no my automatic response is no and I thought okay I need
a reason I need a reason to do something fun and I thought oh it's gonna be too expensive and she
told me actually I found a great flight and the dates work really well for both of our schedules and
then I thought oh accommodations are probably gonna be hard to find and expensive she knows me
really well then so she said no no it's ok I found something on Airbnb and she sent me the link
beautiful place close to everything we wanted to go see and I couldn't think of any other reasons
not to go I'd run out of excuses and so finally I said no no no I said yes but I was trying to figure out
why I was thinking no it was because that in my mind I felt like a trip to Europe or overseas should
be at least 10 days long but then I thought when was the last time I had two weeks off in a row and
so I had a friend help me reframe what travel was and it wasn't about the travel itself but the
duration of the travel and so if I didn't do this now I wouldn't be able to do it at any point in my life
and so we went and it was phenomenal so reframing a lot is about thinking about what are some of
the challenges and the way that you're feeling and thinking about problems and empathy maps
really help out in terms of figuring out what you should be focusing in on to be able to reframe
reframing is happening all around us countries are reframing where residency means this is Tallinn
Estonia where they have virtual residency and so that means that you can get a card with a chip
mailed to you here in Canada and you become a virtual resident and that means you can do things
like open up a business in Estonia where there might be lower tax brackets this is Portugal city in
Portugal they have something called participatory voting that means that a portion of their budget
is set aside for voters to be able to state how they want the budget to be spent pretty cool and
then if you live in rural parts of Portugal you can actually vote through an ATM machine we're
actually also reframing currencies around the world through things like crypto currency like Bitcoin
and ether and citizens are wanting to reframe what to be a citizen as well as what we want from
our governments and we want impact and outcome rather than output and so how do we do that
it's through design thinking with empathy and reframing so whether you're running a business or
you're putting in place policies for government design thinking is really important to be able to
understand your problems your citizens and your end user is even better you might be running a
business you might be organizing an event you might be trying to find a university for a child or you
might be doing career planning but at the end of the day Design Thinking can help you understand
your problems better so that you can simplify them more I want you guys to think a little bit more
about how you can start empathizing and reframing bring humanity back to work and remember
that it's real people that were producing services for bring humanity back to work and think about
what do you do who is it for and what's the one thing you're gonna do tomorrow to empathize and
reframe thank you