Design Thinking Case Studies | In Their Own Words | Ideafarms

Design Thinking has, over the past few years become
the talk of the town. Here’s a look at how some
companies have incorporated it, and to what
successes.
Design Thinking
In their own words

 Ideafarms 2018 | Tel +91 124 4075513 | Email its.magic@ideafarms.com
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Design Thinking @Citrix
in five years Citrix
went from ‘I didn’t
know we had a
design team’ to ‘I do
customer-centered
innovation’.
In 2008, Citrix had an executive meeting
and they were trying to figure out how to
really differentiate their IT products. They
were difficult to use, clunky, and not very
well designed, and companies were no
longer willing to accept that as the status
quo.
That’s how our industry had been. Until
they thought “You know, what? We can
really differentiate by being the Apple of
the IT world. We could consumerize these
products.”
- Julie Baher
This led Citrix to create a role for VP of
Product Design, which was later taken by
Catherine Courage. Catherine championed
the cause of design thinking. In an
interview to McKinsey, she says, “The
main purpose of my team’s charter is to
ensure that we’re delivering a great
experience across all customer
touchpoints—from the website to trying
our products, using them, and all the way
through to support and renewal of
contracts. This requires a company-wide
focus on the customer.”
“Design thinking is an ideal framework for
us to use because it focuses on developing
deep empathy for customers and creating
solutions that will match their needs—as
opposed to just dreaming up and
delivering technology for technology’s
sake.”

In their own words
Design Thinking for Product enhancement
The Citrix Information Experience (Ix)
team is using a human-focused approach
to discover how customers interact with
our content and deliver the content our
customers want, when they want it, and
how they want it.
An example of a recent project involved
organizing our eDocs content related to
the release of XenApp 7.5 and
XenDesktop 7.5. Rather than organizing
content the way we thought customers
wanted it, we asked them to show us how
they wanted it.
We quickly came up with three
prototypes for our eDocs navigation pane.
Using our Twitter followers and internal
contacts, we recruited six customers. We
asked them who they are, what their
goals are, and what they think about
eDocs, and then we put the three
prototypes in their hands to see which
they liked the best.
We then gave the customers the
opportunity to edit their favourite
prototypes. This was where the real
insights were revealed.
The customers’ input directly impacted
the final structure of our table of
contents.
Our holistic approach
encompassed not only what
they said and did but also
included inferences made
about what they think and how
they feel about the content.
Design Thinking for Processes
When we’re choosing what products to
procure and deploy to our users, IT does
trials and proof of concepts. That’s critical,
because IT can’t simply deploy
technology. It needs to understand its
users. Our IT department has also taken
to heart that design thinking is not only
about products and services; it can be
about processes as well.
For example, IT has transformed the way
it does project retrospectives. The
department now has a redesigned process
that uses a different framework than
before. There are subtle changes in how
questions are framed that reflect empathy
for the person next to you—who may
have given the project his heart and soul
even though things didn’t go as planned.
This approach has made a positive change
in how team members learn from
mistakes and do a better job the next
time. Being open to failure, learning, and
iteration is a critical part of the process.
Design Thinking for Systems
The sales organization, with its natural focus
on meeting sales quotas and numbers, was
the last area we touched because we
thought it would be the hardest to engage.
We were wrong. When we described what it
can do with respect to innovation and
problem solving, they realized that there
were many problem areas in their own
world. The systems they used, for example,
were getting in the way of them
understanding how to sell to their
customers. We created a team of sales
leaders empowered to define their own
problems and solutions within a design-
thinking framework, and we made
participation optional. It was surprising how
many leaders took part and came up with
solutions that we want to scale across our
sales teams.

Design Thinking @Intuit
We’ve emphasized to
engineers, product
managers, and
designers that
functionality isn’t
enough anymore.
We have to build
emotion into the
product.
When Scott Cook cofounded Intuit, in
1983, many other companies were
already offering software to help people
track their finances. In fact, at least 46
similar products launched before Quicken,
the product Cook created, which is why,
the internal joke is that instead of having
the first-mover advantage, Intuit had the
“47th mover advantage.” The original
version of Quicken offered only one-third
the features that many competing
products had, but with an important
difference: It was well designed. Instead
of looking like a spreadsheet, it displayed
the familiar images of a check register and
an individual check. Because the design
made using the product so intuitive,
Quicken immediately became the market
leader in personal finance software. It has
held that position for three decades.
When Brad Smith took over the reins of
CEO, he found that the company had
strayed from their focus on design. He
took upon himself the challenge of
integrating design thinking into every part
of Intuit.
“We kept looking for new ways to instil
design thinking. To help things along, we
even tried changing the layout of our
office spaces. We reduced the number of
cubes and added more areas for
collaboration and impromptu work. We
also began paying closer attention to how
our competitors were using design to
delight customers”

In their own words
Design Thinking for Product innovation
We began adding features to TurboTax
that let people make more comparisons
between years and import some
information directly from year to year,
limiting the number of questions the
program asks them. From our research,
we know that among married couples,
one partner usually takes responsibility
for tax preparation, and the other
spouse’s primary question is “Why is it
different from last year?” With that in
mind we designed several new features
(which we referred to internally as “the
Spouse Test”) to make it really clear what
changed from year to year.
We also came up with an app called
SnapTax. This was driven by consumers’
migration to smartphones. Because
preparing taxes requires inputting data,
you’d think people wouldn’t want to do it
on a mobile device. But our team played
around with the idea of allowing users to
take photos of their W-2 forms. The
program automatically recognizes the
data and inputs it directly into TurboTax.
SnapTax was the first tool to allow people
to completely prepare and e-file federal
and state returns from their smartphones,
and we were amazed by the response.
Within two weeks of its release it had
replaced Angry Birds as the number one
app on iTunes.
We made many other, smaller changes.
We began using emoticons in the
customer interface. We revamped
support and help functions in the
software, streamlining them to be more
intuitive; as a result, our phone service
reps are receiving 24% fewer calls from
confused users. We spent tens of
thousands of hours working alongside
customers to see how they actually use
our products; as we did, we made notes
with smiley faces next to elements that
customers enjoyed and sad faces at places
where they hit a snag—an example of
using design to simplify the feedback
mechanism.
The $10 million prototype
The group that primarily focuses on
TurboTax is very product- and feature-
driven, and is always looking for insights
and inspiration into the not-so-
inspirational world of how people do tax
returns.
To use their creative time, they often
explore how to make improvements in
the way products are sold. During a two-
day design thinking workshop, one team
had taken on an experiment that failed
and needed a new problem to fill their
remaining time.
One of the team members raised the
question as to why the product they were
working on was only sold in seats of five
and not in single seats. They concluded
that perhaps someone in product
management, at one point in time,
thought that selling multiple seats was the
optimal way to sell.
To test their idea, the team suggested
changes to the script used in the call
center. They then ran some quick tests
right then, on the fly, with call center
staff, customers, and prospects. In a very
short period of time they learned that
many more people were interested in
buying just one seat, or three seats. As a
result, after further testing, they changed
their policy to sell individual and smaller
numbers of seats. What was the result of
this small customer-centric, quick
prototype test? A $10 million increase in
sales in the first year.

References
Citrix Information Experience applies
design thinking to content delivery
https://www.citrix.com/blogs/2014/03/24/ix-
design-thinking-content-delivery/
Applying design thinking across the
business: An interview with Citrix’s
Catherine Courage
https://www.mckinsey.com/business-
functions/digital-mckinsey/our-insights/an-
interview-with-citrixs-catherine-courage
Design Thinking at Citrix – An Interview
with Julie Baher
http://thisisdesignthinking.net/2015/02/julie-
baher-on-design-thinking-at-citrix/
Intuit’s CEO on Building a Design-Driven
Company
https://hbr.org/2015/01/intuits-ceo-on-
building-a-design-driven-company
How Intuit Used Design Thinking to Boost
Sales by $10M In a Year
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90147434/how-
intuit-used-design-thinking-to-boost-sales-by-
10m-in-a-year
More examples
How Kaiser Solved the Problem of
Hospital “Ghost Towns”
https://www.fastcodesign.com/90150616/how-
kaiser-solved-the-problem-of-hospital-ghost-
towns
How Pepsico, Godrej and Marico are
'designed to succeed'
https://brandequity.economictimes.indiatimes.c
om/news/business-of-brands/how-pepsico-
godrej-and-marico-are-designed-to-
succeed/48719157
How Design Thinking Transformed
Airbnb from a Failing Startup to a Billion
Dollar Business
http://firstround.com/review/How-design-
thinking-transformed-Airbnb-from-failing-
startup-to-billion-dollar-business/
Starbucks, “The Third Place”, and
Creating the Ultimate Customer
Experience
https://www.fastcompany.com/887990/starbuc
ks-third-place-and-creating-ultimate-customer-
experience

Ideafarms provides Design-led Strategy
Consulting to mid-sized organisations
worldwide. Founded in 2002, the
company pioneered using Industrial
Design concepts and approaches to
software, keeping the user’s experience
at the centre of all its thinking.
Ideafarms’ ethos combines empathy with
strong technology competencies to
highlight the value of interdisciplinary
work and prototyping: Design Thinking is
a natural extension of this human-centric
cultural DNA. To help clients stay relevant
in today’s disruptive business
environment, the company conducts talks
and workshops for educational
institutions, start-ups, investors, mid-sized
enterprises.
Ideafarms has the distinction of
partnering with some of the largest global
corporations to help drive strategic value
through its proven approaches to problem
solving.
Ideafarms has invested in leveraging
technology for social change; a core belief
which powers its social impact agenda.
The company’s foray into VR for
education of the underprivileged is a front
runner in bringing the latest of latest in
technology for social change.
Contact
India
Mr. Rajiv Malhotra
rajiv.malhotra@ideafarms.com
+91 98103 33148

Design Thinking Case Studies | In Their Own Words | Ideafarms

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Design Thinking Case Studies | In Their Own Words | Ideafarms