The document discusses design thinking workshops and innovation. It describes design thinking as a human-centered approach to innovation that integrates user needs, technology possibilities, and business requirements. The design thinking process involves learning about users, defining problems from their perspective, brainstorming solutions, testing ideas with users, and building representations to show others. Workshops bring together multi-disciplinary teams to generate ideas through techniques like user flows, post-its, dot voting, and prototyping. The document provides tips for effective workshops and follow-ups like documenting solutions and testing concepts. It also discusses conducting design thinking outside of workshops through smaller sessions, remote collaboration, and individual processes.

1. Design Thinking & Innovation Workshops
The path to meaningful innovation
Images courtesy Anders Ramsay’s presentation, Shutterstock and Google images
Aboli Champhekar| UX Consultant
maydeoaboli@gmail.com

2. Design Thinking
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that
draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of
people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for
business success.”
—Tim Brown, CEO IDEO

3. Design Thinking Process | Ideate & Prototype
Image by D School. Institute of Design at Stanford
Learn about
the audience
for whom you
are designing
Construct a
point of view
based on user
needs and
insights
Brainstorm
and come up
with creative
solutions
Return to
your original
user group
and test your
ideas for
feedback
Build a
representation
of one or more
of your ideas to
show others
Learn about
the audience
for whom you
are designing
Construct a
point of view
based on user
needs and
insights
Brainstorm
and come up
with creative
solutions
Return to
your original
user group
and test your
ideas for
feedback
Build a
representation
of one or more
of your ideas to
show others

4. Meaningful Innovation
“Innovation that is truly useful for end users and impactful for business”
Not merely resulting from emerging technology but comes from
deeply knowing your users and caring about their lives.

5. Based on the 5 day design sprint by Google Ventures
Highly flexible
Useful in every stage of the project
Workshops – What are they?
And most of all…

6. Workshops are all about teamwork
Everyone’s Participation is critical!

7. Workshop Steps
Before, during and after a workshop

8. Have clearly defined goals
Prioritize and distill business goals for the workshop. A ‘Problem Statement’ and
‘Outcome Statement’ is often useful when starting out.
Step 1: Pre-requisites
Know thy users
Team should have a good understanding of the end users. This can be done
through user research or market research (to some extent).

9. Let the UX practitioner
lead the way…
UX practitioners (researchers or designers) have a good
understanding of the design process, UX methods and ideation
techniques. They should lead and facilitate everything before,
during and after the workshop
Step 2: Planning
Get all key
stakeholders together
Multi-disciplinary team to bring different
perspectives on the table e.g. business, marketing,
technology, management, design and so on. Ideal
team size is 5-8 people

10. Step 3: Kickoff
Dive in! Share the agenda
Keep participants interested about what’s coming. If it is a
multiple day workshop provide an overview then detail out
current day
Research and problem
statement read out
Recap what is learnt so far about the users, their pain points
and problems. Pick up a problem statement and begin
ideating.

11. Step 3: Kickoff
Knowns and constraints
At times there are constraints that need to be kept in mind
when ideating. Post ‘Knows and Constraints’ and ‘Design
Guidelines’ in large format in the room.
Persona meet and greet
Post large format personas in room and let participants read
and reflect on them.

12. Step 4: Dive into ideation!
What is divergent & convergent thinking?

13. Techniques & Activities
Effective techniques, activities and games
for breakthrough idea generation

14. User flow & Journey mapping
Define

15. Post Ups
Card Storming/ Post-ups/ Affinity mapping
Diverge

16. Crazy 8’s or 4’s (followed by best idea)
Diverge

17. Dot Voting
Converge

18. Tips & Pitfalls
Some useful tips, common pitfalls and observations

19. Tips
Keep activities fast paced and
time bound
Use a timer for each activity. This keeps the team moving, get more done in less time
and churn out multiple concepts without making a single concept too precious.
Keep decision makers in the loop
Involve management/ decision makers in the workshop. If they cannot be part of the
workshop ensure they are in the loop and in sync with the design decisions. Key
stakeholders also help focus on prioritization and correct things to build based on
budget and goals.
Tackle small but critical problems
first!
Do not make the workshop goals too ambitious. Scope out some less
important problems from a workshop and handle them later.

20. After the Workshop
keep these things in mind…

21. After the workshop
Create a report
Document problems tackled and all solutions uncovered. Park solutions into a
‘parking lot’ section for future reference or for product roadmap creation
Digitalize all artefacts. Create low fidelity wireframes to validate early concepts,
click-through prototypes to test specific flows and high fidelity wireframes to
test user behavior
Follow through
Follow through the entire design and development process to ensure design
decisions made during the workshop and testing are translated into the actual
product

22. Avoid featuritis
Think MVP
After the workshop
MVP lean cake image by Google images

23. Ideating outside the workshop setting
Useful techniques when a full fledged workshop is not feasible

24. Design Thinking: Outside of a workshop setting
Ideate in smaller sessions
Get together a few associates in an informal setting and conduct specific
targeted activities from the workshop
Collaborate remotely
Collaborate and ideate with remote members using online tools like
Realtimeboard, Google Hangouts, Slack and so on
Individual Design Thinking
Use all the steps in the workshop on your own. Follow the process of design
thinking when creating concepts.

25. Q&A
Questions/ Comments?

26. Thank You!
Images courtesy Anders Ramsay’s presentation, Shutterstock and Google images
Aboli Champhekar| UX Consultant
maydeoaboli@gmail.com