Design Thinking Workshops
Using Human-Centered Design and Design Thinking to Build a Creative Roadmap for Your Next Projectdesign thinking workshop
A ux designer knows the ins and outs of design thinking processes. Design thinking workshops are essentially a design sprint where you can conduct user testing on your product design. It is common to to journey mapping at design workshops. User testing is an essential part of product design. Design thinking workshops are all about generating ideas to forward product development.
design thinking resources
At a design thinking workshop you will get the opportunity to start generating ideas for your product design in a design sprint that will include journey mapping. These workshops can be done in person or you can attend a virtual workshop. You can elect to take a workshop when you will receive a design thinking certification. Workshop facilitation is designed to encourage participants to start testing ideas.
design thinking workshop and design thinking activities
As a workshop participant you will learn about the design thinking toolkit, remote design, creative problem solving, how to get team alignment on your new product design idea, and top design best practices. Design thinking facilitators will aim to achieve workshop objectives by following a workshop agenda. Along with the workshop will be workshop materials, as well as design thinking resources.
design thinking workshops
The design process is all about planning and preparation and you can take complimentary innovation courses that work alongside the design system and design thinking methodology. There are many design thinking courses out there that could serve as potential solutions to your and your design team as you work to solve your design challenge.
design workshop
design thinking workshops
If you are hosting design thinking workshops, you need to consider your workshop objective and create a workshop agenda. The workshop objective could be to encourage participants to learn the design thinking processes. A workshop participant attending design thinking workshops is probably part of a design team. UX designers typically attend design thinking workshops to support with creative problem solving within their company. UX designers love to take on a design challenge and work on testing ideas.
design thinking workshop
In your workshop agenda, make time to talk about planning and preparation to support you with workshop facilitation. You may want to teach them about design thinking methodology in the design process. You will definitely want to teach about empathy map and user story. An empathy map is key to the first stage of design whereas the user story is to help with establishing design thinking mindsets.
successful design thinking workshops
Innovation workshops will spend much of their time in their workshop agenda teaching about the empathy map and user story. Workshop preparation is key to a successful design thinking workshop. Part of your workshop objective should be to go over design tools, define ideate and define ideate prototype. In your workshop agenda make sure to leave time for reflection and discussion.
design thinking workshop agenda
What is Design Thinking?
Human centered design (design thinking) is “an approach to problem-solving commonly used in design and management frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Human involvement typically takes place in observing the problem within context, brainstorming, conceptualizing, developing, and implementing the solution.”
The 5 Phases of Design Thinking
Let us look in detail at each of the process stages and learn about the most common techniques used in each one.
- Empathise – Empathy is at the heart of design. If you do not understand what others feel, see, desire, or experience, then this process is pointless.
- Define – Defining the problem statement is essential to ensure all team members understand what users want and are aligned with the needs of the users.
- Ideate– Generating ideas is a collaborative approach. In this approach, we don’t look for the right idea; the aim is to generate the broadest range of possibilities.
- Prototype – In this stage, the aim is to create reduced and inexpensive versions of the product or service (or just a fragment) that capture the ideas obtained in the previous stage.
- Test – Test your prototype with users to learn about your solution and your target audience. It will help you analyze what further needs to be done, what is working and what is not, the pain points of users and the glitches in experience. This helps you avoid any potential disaster beforehand at a very low cost.
Techniques & Tools
There are many different sets of tools available for Design Thinking workshops. They provide a flexible set of human-centered design thinking methods to help creatively solve problems.
- Rose, Thorn, Bud – Rose, thorn, bud is an extremely versatile design thinking tool. It’s designed to identify what’s working (Rose), what’s not (Thorn) and what can be improved (Bud) so it could be used by teams to self-reflect on current projects, day-in-a-life artifacts or overall processes.
- Affinity Clustering – Affinity clustering is the process of grouping and clustering ideas into similar themes in categories. The process works well with the overall design thinking approach allowing an equal opportunity for ideas, collaborative environment, and a platform for creative thinking.
- Visualize the Vote (Dot Voting) – By placing colored dots, participants in UX workshops, activities, or collaborative sessions individually vote on the importance of design ideas, features, usability findings, and anything else that requires prioritization.
- Statement Starters – By using phrases that encourage broad thinking, Statement Starters jump-start discussions toward solving the right problem in the best way. As their main objective, Statement Starters encourage restating problems as invitations for exploration. An example: “In what ways might we_____?”
- The techniques above represent only a subset of the many techniques used by our team depending on the creative problems we are trying to solve.
Building a Roadmap
Our team of experienced consultants can help your team through the process of building a roadmap for your projects in our Design Thinking Workshop and help you answer the following questions.
- What are the things we are doing right?
- What technologies are we currently using and what processes are we using to attract, convert and create customer advocates?
- How are we measuring the results? How do we define success?
- Where can we improve? Where do we want to be?
If you’re interested in the benefits of Design Thinking send a request using the form on this page and our team will be in touch!
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