DESIGN THINKING

New tools for designing future solutions

As a designer I have used many tool sets to help define and build solutions. From Inside Out Design to Design Thinking I have watched the practice mature and become a more powerful tool set.  

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In 2013 I began championing Design Thinking for the Cloud and Smarter Infrastructure Business Unit. During this time I trained our design and development teams on how to apply Design Thinking to our products. I traveled to our world wide teams, teaching facilitation skills and helping them to understand the process. One of the desired outcomes here was to build grassroots adoption across the portfolio. I also used the process to help our senior staff create Hills for their work, guiding them to create trackable progress. I also championed Design Thinking to be used in our research projects, helping to define more applicable innovation.

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In 2015 I helped form the Watson IoT Business Unit and launched a full effort to bring our designer skills up in Design Thinking. I hosted multiple Design Thinking workshops, first showing the team how to facilitate and then slowly stepping back and having them take on the lead facilitation skills. I really appreciate how full encompassing the process is and what we can get out of it. 

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In 2016 I began to adjust the Design Thinking process to match more of the client needs I was seeing in the field. I noticed that when we finished engaging with the client there was not a clear actions list that would continue to keep the participants involved. I began to request that technical architects be brought in for the session and that we spend the last few hours showing the client how the underlining technology would support their vision. As we included this in our workshops, we saw an improvement in follow through. 

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While we adapt our workshops to meet the needs of the teams, there are a few others that brought some innovation to the space. In 2018 we began to design Watson Assistant for clients to use in their solutions. With this addition, there was a unique problem to be solved in not only identifying the client journey but also their branded voice. We had a talented designer on the team that I worked with to define and refine the activity helping the client to hone in on how they wanted their assistant to sound. 

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In 2019 I have started to explore other uses for Design Thinking and how it applies to other problems. Are there aspects that need to be adjusted as we innovate and gain more insight.