Rethinking Design Thinking, remotely…
How Design Thinking is managed and delivered is changing radically in this pandemic. We are all needing to adapt to uncertain, rapidly changing external conditions and governments are implementing different Coronavirus restrictions all over the world. In this environment pretty much all businesses are faced with major challenges; physical outlets are being closed down, and workflows need to be managed remotely. Also, many products and services that were of high value until recently suddenly need to be re-designed entirely to meet new demands.
So really the need for rapid user-centred innovation is greater than ever. But as Design Thinking, and specifically design sprints rely largely on bringing people together in a physical space, we have been working on how to translate our workshops, sprints, and training into purely digital form. And we are pleased to report, these new formats are already showing really positive results. Here are some of the reasons why:
1. Time
Preparing a virtual workshop takes about the same amount of preparation time. But a great deal of time is saved within the workshops as well as in terms of traveling. By making workshops online, it becomes more doable to involve the ideal group of people, no matter where they are in the world. The difficulty of finding a date and timeframe that allows everyone to invest the needed number of hours or days to travel, be present for a series of workshops and stay overnight, is no longer an issue. This is not just saving time for participants, but also for the organisation. Most importantly it may significantly reduce the time to market or go-live where we are typically dealing with services, products, solutions in our workshops.
If done right, virtual workshops can also be more productive compared to the traditional on-site event. People can be more focused and less distracted, e.g., by having side conversations. We work extensively with infinite whiteboards to collaborate including Miro, which lets us “summon” all participants to a specific area of the collaboration board – keeping people’s minds on the issue at hand. It is also a great leveller where some individuals in physical environments often use their physical presence or seniority to guide the room. Everyone can contribute easily, and the mental barrier to contributions sinks – and more output can be produced in less time.
Again, we need to adapt the workshop design to the restraints that come with staring at a computer screen. But we find with the right combination of breaks, guided stretches and other participative exercises, a virtual workshop can run smoothly and deliver the same results in less time. We have also found that where you have the team available we can use the breaks to do some processing of the gathered information meaning the next section moves on significantly and the workshop overall makes much more ground.
2. Cost
Driving innovation has typically turned out to be quite an expensive undertaking in a lot of organisations. Even when observing design thinking best practices often-times people travelled, fancy innovation spaces were booked, elaborate workshop materials bought, and demanding food arrangements catered for. Our remote design thinking workshops strip-down innovation processes to their core functions, making them a lot cheaper, as costs are only produced where value is created in return.
In addition, the greatest cost of innovation comes from its failures, which is exactly where design thinking comes in – focusing on the user, their needs and testing and validating in whatever way possible. We have found that, with an evolution of people’s expectations thanks to the virus, gathering and quickly integrating diverse groups of experts, clients, users, and observers much easier. Another valuable feature is we can add one or more attendees for only a few minutes to test a specific feature, or use break out rooms to provide different perspectives and results. This flexibility has allowed us to develop and iterate new workshop exercises and structures that we would never have considered in a physical space – imagine the cost of bringing together a range of international experts to observe international users responding to a prototype?
Finally, of course there is the environmental cost, not only of the travel and flights but of all those beautiful sticky post-its and markers!
3. New-normal-native
In times where nothing is certain and challenges reach unprecedented levels, turning to design thinking to understand human, customer, employee and societal needs as well as prototyping and testing ideas at a very fast pace, can be an effective way to create the knowledge you need to make informed decisions. But, founded in necessity, this combination of established practices, technology and tools and virtual sessions may not just be the only way to run a workshop these days – they also become new-normal-native by addressing the emerging crisis-induced needs for all kinds of teamwork.
Taking part introduces people to a digital, collaborative work mode and a variety of online tools suited for all kinds of teamwork. A playful, yet meaningful entry point is the pressing topic that nearly everyone is currently confronted with. But it has a really encouraging and team-building effect it has on colleagues who, by taking part in a virtual session, share the experience of successfully tackling challenges together – despite the current situation. We have found running these sessions often leads leaders and their teams to want to do more, we now run interactive sessions for senior leaders, and conduct training to upskill teams so they can use and adapt the tools themselves for the broader organisation.
As mentioned above, in a virtual workshop setting, participants are much more open and willing to engage in unfamiliar approaches, as they have already had to say goodbye to their accustomed ways of working and their expectation that business will continue as usual. Unlike in face-to-face workshops, they can physically stay within their comfort zone, while only their mind is being challenged by a new way of thinking and working.
Yes, it does have great benefits to work together in person, especially because about 80% of all communication is non-verbal. Nonetheless, there’s no alternative to conducting workshops online at the moment. We work with video conferencing tools like Zoom in combination with collaboration tools (e.g. Microsoft Teams or Slack) and particularly Miro (or Mural or LucidSpark), which provide their own kind of benefits and features, can significantly make up for what’s lost by going digital.
4. Digital in, digital out
Another beauty of these virtual sessions is that workshops can be pre-prepared with much of the material reusable for repeat sessions. They can be fully recorded, which allows for more accurate evaluation and easy post-processing. The common virtual collaboration spaces allow you to save and send workshop results in all kinds of file formats. Providing a first digital copy of workshop results within a matter of minutes, allows everyone to further dwell on a tangible outcome and not be cut off from the momentum that was built in the session. You can also allow team members continued access to a duplicate if they want to continue to develop their thinking, or refine assets in the future.
Having a digital copy doesn’t mean we don’t have to make sense of the results – but it makes this final step a lot easier. There is no more need to collect information from the fronts and backs of whiteboards or sticky flipcharts scattered all over the room or to decipher unreadable handwriting on post-its. It is also easier to integrate digital and more collaborative mock-up or prototyping tools in the workshops, that provide even better outputs, which can be used for immediate validation or testing.
New and mostly virtual forms of collaboration are now being considered by many – and design thinking workshops are no exception. Interestingly enough, we find that projects or design challenges that would have previously been ruled out as unfit to be managed remotely work out in virtual space without any significant loss in quality. Maybe even the opposite.
