I was tasked with leading the design thinking foundations and practice within our creative cross functional teams.
Research and Benchmarking
I researched design thinking best practices and structure from different thought leaders as well as companies, such as IDEO and Google Design Sprint, to establish a standard guideline to tailer to our team.
The Vision
The goal is to incorporate design thinking into our process seamlessly and strategically. We wanted to push design thinking not for the sake of itself but to encourage forward thinking and build an innovative mindset.
Facilitation
I planned and facilitated multiple design thinking workshops that ranged from 8-12 participants, including senior managers, managers, designers, copywriters, content strategists and developers.
Leadership
Leading the effort for my team's design thinking, I have established a working method that incorporates well into our work process. I worked with different manager to advocate for design thinking and create the foundation for team-wide best practices.
It was a challenge to find a design thinking method that incorporates well into our team's process but also encourages non-designers to actively participate.
On top of researching best practices from outside the company, I worked with different people who have led workshops before to gather a library of content and methods. I also put these practices into test during our own workshops, and tried different methods. Through my research and first hand experience, I found a few principles that seemed to work well with our team and created the best results,
Timing is Key
Because our teams are so busy all the time, in order to find a time together on top of everything is very tough. I discovered that shorter, bitesized workshops are a lot more digestible and yielded better results.
People are Open
Aside from the occasional "I can't draw or be creative," people tend to be very open to design thinking, regardless of their job function. They like brainstorming and big vision thinking.
Disney Lovers
What brings our team together, of course, is the love of Disney, so putting design thinking in the context of Disney helped teams relate to the activities much more.
Break it Down!
For any type of activity, I found it worked best when it is broken down to the most digestible pieces, sometimes a section is only 1-2 minutes. This helped teams stay in focus and really hone in on each sections objective.
It was a challenge to find a design thinking method that incorporates well into our team's process but also encourages non-designers to actively participate.
The final method I landed on incorporated Walt Disney's legacy, which spoke to our team and our culture. It was also easily understood by all participants alike because of the Disney connection and clear distinction of steps.
This method derived from Walt's method of creative solution by putting people in rooms of different mindsets - Dreamer, Realist, Critic. We used this method to categorize all of our design thinking activities, so when the teams are going through the flow of these three mindsets, it's clear and relatable. It also established a great foundation for structuring the workshop.
Case Study 1:
Short Term Innovation
Case Study 2:
Aulani Digital Vision
Test While Doing
Design thinking is not a one size fit all solution. In the beginning, it was very challenging to land on a solution. It required lots of convincing and selling to the non design teams as well as tweaking to the process to make sure it aligned with our culture and process. A lot of the prep and planning of the workshops I facilitated was trial and error. The best way, I found, was to just test while facilitating. I kept a detail documentation of what worked and didn't work each workshop to keep track of improvements and best practices going forward.
You Can't Do Everything by Yourself
This effort started with just me doing the researching, prepping, and executing. I quickly found out that I needed a partner. Because it some sense it was a startup effort, I didn't want start with a big team. I recruited another designer, and things quickly picked up from there. Together we executed much quicker, and the facilitation came much easier as well. We were able to bounce ideas off of each other, validate, and test together.
On top of my design partner, I reached out to managers for feedback and support. I need their help to advocate the effort and sell of the other teams. Ultimately, they were pivotal in creating the additional momentum I needed.
