To be fair, my approach isn't always the right and certainly not the only way to address problems, but I will show you how to use design thinking, a human-centered framework popularized by the design consultancy IDEO, to creatively solve complex problems.
Or to reframe this challenge as a design opportunity: How might we apply (and tailor) design thinking methods and tools to create positive change in a real-world scenario?
Click on the numbers to find out what's behind each step of the design-inspired process I follow.
Assessing and understanding the problem we’re trying to solve from a human, business, and technological perspective.
Integrating our findings, leveraging insights from data, and reframing the core problems in human-centered ways.
Co-creating ideas for solution concepts, innovative designs, or strategic interventions to solve the challenges we identified.
Designing, building, integrating, or implementing the most promising solution(s) we created in the ideation phase.
Collecting feedback on our prototyped solutions to test assumptions, gain new insights, refine our work, and decide what to do next.
Imagine you’re Yana, the newly appointed manager for your organization’s upcoming software innovation project. You already assembled your diverse team and, being the modern day project manager you are, you decide to “go agile”.
Enter Andrew, your most influential business stakeholder whose support is critical for the project. And he is not enthusiastic about your plans. At all.
(This case study is from a session I led in 2021.)
❝ I’m passionate about co-creating value with innovative software products—ideally in a fast-paced environment. ❞
❝ Project management is all about time, scope, and cost. Projects cannot succeed without structured plans. ❞
Click the button below to empathize with Yana and Andrew, understand the core problems we're trying to solve, and ideate solutions to successfully start the innovation project.
Bonus: You'll also learn the basics (and some best practices) of agile and traditional project management along the way.