Getting in the shoes

29 Dec 2011

... of our users, that is.

We continued on our journey to find ways to improve the quality of life of migrant workers in Singapore. A quick recap from previous episodes: we did interviews. And created a "User Journey Map".

How we did it: Extracting insights from the interviews. Putting both observations and the insights into a chart that visually shows the user's experience chronologically (and then refining it some more). 

This served as a great foundation of inspiration (the first, and often the most important, phase of design thinking), and preps us for the next stage - ideation. Typically in conventional innovation, this is the point where you do brainstorming/solutioning (if not much earlier). But, we figured - why design for them, when you can design with them? 

And that’s how we ended up sitting in front of our whiteboard with a group of Foreign Domestic Workers, employers of FDWs, people familiar with the Ministry of Manpower and some more people from HOME (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics). All armed with yellow, orange, blue and pink post-its of course. And a carpet. We love the carpet.

As you can see below, we ended up with … something that looks like the upcoming MRT Downtown Line.

What was amazingly useful about it: enabling us to identify points of tension from various perspectives to create opportunity areas for further exploration. 

What were some (other) things we learnt? 

The process of design thinking is meant to be iterative, not linear. Through our conversation, we found certain knowledge gaps and interesting areas of exploration not identified during our interviews, and we never hesitated to pause the ideation session and turn it into an insight-gathering one. 

Facilitation is useful, but good facilitation is invaluable. We didn't just listen to what people said, but also what they didn't say, and what their body language showed. This got us asking relevant questions to gain even deeper insights to certain points of tension. 

Also, designing with our users doesn't mean they know what design thinking is about. But users don't have to be design thinkers - the steps of DT are intuitive enough to understand without the jargon. Instead, we focused on using good facilitation (which reinforces the above point) to bring the process through with clear communication and action. 

More to come. Watch this space.

Previous post here. 

drawing inputs from our different stakeholder perspectives

constructing our user journey map - collaboratively. 

voila.

PS. Our next Think&Drink features none other than Singapore's Toilet Man, Jack Sim! 

... of our users, that is.

A quick recap from previous episodes: we did interviews.

So we were thinking – why design for our users when we can design with them?

That’s how we – and we mean SYINC – ended up sitting in front of our whiteboard with a group of Foreign Domestic Workers, employers of FDWs, people familiar with the Ministry of Manpower and some more people from HOME (Humanitarian Organization for Migration Economics).

All armed with yellow, orange, blue and pink post-its of course. And a carpet. We love the carpet.

As you can see below, we ended up with … something that looks like the upcoming Downtown Line.

But Design Thinking is not meant to be linear, it is meant to be branchy, complex and maybe with a few thorns. Like a Christmas tree. So thus all the feeder bus services branching out from the main line from the main line.

Not that the users all knew what Design Thinking was about of course but you do not need to know what Design Thinking is to give ideas. Certainly not all of them -  given the different groups they were from - were of the same viewpoint. All the better – more clutter and post its on our wall!

We wanted to slap ourselves for not thinking of this earlier. Because here in SYINC, we realized that many cooks make rich broth. So Happy 2012 everyone! And we hope that those Christmas Trees of ideas are growing too.

Design Thinking great -- Design Doing even better

6 Dec 2011

On the consulting front, we're currently working on a project for migrant workers in Singapore. Our client is a nonprofit that works to advance the welfare of migrant workers here. Our challenge: to uncover a business opportunity for a product (or service) that improves the quality of life for migrant workers.

We haven't synthesised everything yet, as it's still early in the project, but here's a fun snippet we captured: creating the user journey map. Really good for putting us in the shoes of our user/beneficiary.

(you'll have to forgive the bad handwriting - too much technology, we don't write-write enough!)

We know this is a brief one - we'll be sharing more shortly!

PS. did you know the next think&drink is happening this Wed? ;)

YET ANOTHER DT101 SESSION

Iteration is powerful.

The simple act of doing, learning, and baking learnings into a new product/service works wonders. Especially when you keep doing it, and people keep thinking it's getting better!

That's why we ran yet another DT 101 session last Friday, and it was for SMU's Lien Centre for Social Innovation as part of their Social Conversations series. It was our second collaboration with LCSI (the first was as part of something called iLeap, details here).

Things were a little different to most of our workshops: not only was this the largest group we facilitated (45!), but the majority of our audience were senior non-profit folks – who we assumed prefer comprehensively detailed theory presentations, be mildly cynical of an "innovation method", and distrust trainers who look young enough to be their kids. Boy did we bust that assumption!

The workshop turned out to be extremely interactive and "experiential"; people seemed to like that we kept "lecturing" to a minimum. But we knew that senior executives wouldn't be satisfied without at least some theory, so whilst we kept them pretty busy with talking and prototyping, we added a bunch of slides during our debrief. We felt that theory sinks in better (and deeper) if participants have the emotional experience of having gone through the exercise. 

In principle, that was right.

Reflecting: How might we improve?

• We forgot to account for the awkwardness of presenting slides to people who had just huddled around a table for debrief – most of whom were still standing!  (Read: Being more directive as to little moments in between, and during, segments so they can focus fully on the experience itself.)

• Rather than just uploading DT theory/process to participants, we're gonna work harder to tease it out of the participants through their own insights and observations. (Read: Show, not tell.) (And yes, we're gonna have to beef our facilitation skills big-time - an exciting challenge.

Enough talk. Pictures!

Nothing quite personifies "show, don't tell" like role-playing does

We did encourage participants to be visual in sharing their ideas ;)

In the thick of it: Sasa Vucinic, founder of MDLF and TED speaker, who came along

Prototype galoreShow & Tell: Usha Menon of Management Centre Asia (or =mc Asia) showing how her prototype works

(full set on FB here)