The document discusses the integration of design thinking, lean manufacturing, and agile development methods in the workplace, emphasizing their collaborative and user-centered approaches. It outlines the benefits of these methodologies, such as reducing time to market, fostering innovation, and enhancing customer experience, illustrated through case studies. By combining these frameworks, companies can create more efficient product development processes and better meet user needs.

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MEC
Design Thinking in a
Work Place

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Contents
• Design Thinking.
• Design Thinking Rules.
• Lean Manufacturing.
• Agile Development Methods.
• Incorporating Lean and Agile.
• Benefits of Design Thinking.
• Case Studies.

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Design Thinking
• Progressive and user-centered.
• Puts humans first and focuses heavily on
empathy.
• Will create meaningful user experiences.
• Encourages businesses and organizations
to consider the real people who use their
products and services.

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Design Thinking
• Fits into the overall product design
process.
• For the user, design thinking means better,
more useful products that actually improve
their lives.
• For business, design thinking means
happy and loyal customers and a healthier
bottom line.

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Design Thinking Rules
• The human rule:
- all design activity is social in nature.
- any social innovation will bring us back
to the “human-centric point of view”.
• The ambiguity rule:
- ambiguity is inevitable, cannot remove
or oversimplify.
- experiment at the limits of knowledge
and ability.
- see things differently.

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Design Thinking Rules
• The redesign rule:
- all design is redesign.
- technology and social circumstances
may change and evolve.
- basic human needs remain unchanged.
- we only redesign the means of fulfilling
needs or reaching desired outcomes.

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Design Thinking Rules
• The tangibility rule:
- Make ideas tangible.
- prototypes make ideas tangible.
- tangibility helps designers communicate
ideas more effectively.

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Design Thinking

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Lean Manufacturing
• Two critical factors of Lean – Value Added
and Non-Value Added.
• To identify and eliminate non-value added
activities.
• To increase operational efficiency.
• Focuses on streamlining design process.
• Minimizes waste and maximizes value.
• Works in conjunction with agile
development methods.
• Some core tenets include collaboration,
gathering feedback, decision making and
team work.

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Core Lean Tenets
• Cross-functional collaboration between
designers, engineers, and product
managers.
• Gathering feedback quickly and
continuously as well as ensure constant
learning and adaptation.
• Deciding as late as possible and delivering
fast, less focus on long-term deliverables.
• A strong emphasis on how the team
operates as a whole.

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Agile Development Methods
• Agile is a software development process
that works in iterative, incremental cycles
known as sprints.
• Differs from traditional development
methods.
• Agile is flexible and adaptive.

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Agile Principles
 Agile adheres to:
• Individuals and interactions over
processes and tools.
• Working software over comprehensive
documentation.
• Customer collaboration over contract
negotiation.
• Responding to change over following a
plan.

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Design Thinking, Lean and Agile
“Design Thinking is how we explore and
solve problems; Lean is our framework
for testing our beliefs and learning our
way to the right outcomes; Agile is how
we adapt to changing conditions with
software.”
- Jonny Schneider,
Product Strategy and Design Principal,
ThoughtWorks.

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Design Thinking, Lean and Agile
• Often seen as three separate approaches.
• Companies and teams ask themselves
whether to use lean or agile or Design
Thinking.
• Can (and should!) be merged for optimal
results.
• Design Thinking in a lean, agile
environment helps create a user-centric
and highly efficient product development
process from a business perspective.

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Design Thinking, Lean and Agile
• Each approach has its own modus
operandi, there is also significant overlap.
• Combining principles from each to keep
cross-functional teams on the same page.
• Combination keeps designers, developers,
product managers, and business
stakeholders all collaborate on one
common vision.

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Design Thinking, Lean and Agile
• Design Thinking, lean, and agile together
cut out unnecessary processes and
documentation.
• Leverages the contributions of all key
stakeholders for continuous delivery.

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Incorporating Lean and Agile to
Design Thinking
• Design Thinking, a user-centered,
solution-based approach to exploring and
solving problems.
• Focuses on generating ideas with a
specific problem in mind.
• Keeps the user at the heart of the process
throughout.
• Establish and design a suitable solution,
then start to incorporate lean principles.

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Incorporating Lean and Agile to
Design Thinking
• Test ideas, gather quick and ongoing
feedback, see what works.
• Emphasis on cross-team collaboration and
overcoming departmental silos.
• Agile ties all work into short sprint cycles.
• Agile allows for adaptability in the face of
change.

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Incorporating Lean and Agile to
Design Thinking
• Agile delivers value to benefit both the end
user and the business as a whole.
• Products improved and built upon
incrementally in an agile environment.
• Cross-team collaboration crucial.
• When used as a combination cuts out non-
value added processes and minimizes
documentation.

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Why Design Thinking at Work?
• Designer has a pivotal role in shaping the
products and experiences that the
company puts to market.
• Integrating Design Thinking into the
process can add huge business value.
• Ensures that the products designed are
desirable for customers, viable in terms of
company budget and resources.

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Benefits of Design Thinking
• Reduction in time to market:
- In combination with lean and agile to
reduce the amount of time spent on
design and development.
- Emphasis on problem-solving and
finding viable solutions.
- User-centric.

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Benefits of Design Thinking
• Cost savings and ROI:
- Getting successful products to market
faster.
- Savings in the business money.
- Significant return on investment.
• Customer retention and loyalty:
- Ensures a user-centric approach.
- Boosts user engagement and customer
retention in the long term.

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Benefits of Design Thinking
• Fosters innovation:
- Challenges assumptions, established
beliefs.
- Encourages all stakeholders to think
outside the box.
- Fosters a culture of innovation, extends
it well beyond the design team.

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Case Studies

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Case Study 1
- Design Thinking in an Eye
Hospital
• Executive Aim :
to transform the patient experience from
the typically grim, anxiety-riddled affair into
something much more pleasant and
personal.
• Action :
implementing Design Thinking and design
principles into the planning process.

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Case Study 1
 Empathize:
set out to understand their target user first
ie; patients coming to the hospital for
treatment.
hospital administrators, staff and doctors
found that most patients came into
hospital with the fear of going blind.

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Case Study 1
 Define:
empathize stage revealed the need to
prioritize fear reduction among patients.
• Problem statement:
“Patients coming into our hospital need to
feel comfortable and at ease.”

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Case Study 1
 Ideate:
had a deep understanding of their patients
and a clear mission statement.
started to brainstorm potential solutions.
inspiration from both likely and unlikely
sources.
looked to flagship airline and supermarket
chain to learn about scheduling.
turned to other medical organizations for
inspiration on operational excellence.

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Case Study 1
 Prototype:
the team presented the most promising
ideas they had come up to those in charge
of care-giving at the hospital.
teams of care-givers used the insights to
design informal, small-scale experiments
that could test a potential solution, and see
its worthiness for wide-scale adoption.

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Case Study 1
 Test
ran the experiments to see if they took off.
transition to formal adoption of ideas
tended to be more gradual.
If an idea worked, sooner or later other
groups would ask if they may also try.
best ideas spread organically.

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Case Study 1
• Outcome:
able to get to the heart of the users’ needs
and find effective solutions to fulfill them.
improved user experience.
patient intake rose by 47%.
hospital won several awards for safety,
quality and design.

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Case Study 2
- A Financial Service Provider
• Findings:
an all-time low consumer trust.
• Executive Aim:
re-engage with their target users.
come up with new ways of building trust.
• Action:
test out a Design Thinking approach.

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Case Study 2
 Empathize:
focused on users, made conscious effort
to understand user needs first-hand.
learned that user assumptions were not so
accurate.
spoke to them about goals they want to
achieve, uses do not want to commit to a
certain goal.
found users do not know what the goal is.
users keen to reveal their ideas regarding
financial planning.

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Case Study 2
 Define:
were able to reframe their mission
statement.
they needed to rebuild consumer trust.
the way to do this would be to speak to the
customer in their own language and
become a more relatable brand.

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Case Study 2
 Ideate and Prototype:
decided to experiment with a completely
new image.
team members went out in casual
clothing.
tested some prototypes and homemade
posters in designated hotspots including a
university campus and selected railway
stations.

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Case Study 2
 Test:
learnt valuable lessons about the users
and how to communicate with them.
found that even something as simple as
dressing more casually helped to reduce
the negative connotations associated with
financial services.
learnt the value of asking open questions
than trying to sell the prototype.
Design Thinking taught them to ask
questions that focus on the user’s needs.

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Case Study 2
 Outcome:
was a huge learning curve.
taking time to speak to the users gave
them the insights needed to redesign their
messaging.
allowed them to start marketing much
more effectively.
opened up a new office space in a student
district.
put their editorial and social media teams
in close proximity to their customer base.

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References
• Christian Muller Roterberg, “Handbook of
Design Thinking – Tips & Tools for How to
Design Thinking”, 2018.
• Your prescribed textbooks.
• https://careerfoundry.com

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