MEMSI June 2018: Design Thinking Workshop

Editor's Notes

• #3: Introduction (5 minutes) At the beginning of the workshop, the instructor will introduce design thinking to the cohort.
• #4: We will briefly set expectations of what we are going to do. We will break the cohort into randomized groups of 4-5 (we will specify who goes where). (One way is to just have students call out a number in sequence- 1-2-3-4-5-6 and all the 1’s are in 1 group, etc.)
• #5: We will ask each group to solve a problem in the area of travel (business or leisure… long haul or short hop… up to them) for a customer we will provide to them. Warm up (25 minutes) What they want from their travel experiences (8 m) Each person will spend 1-2 minute brainstorming what they want to improve for their own travel experiences, and writing it all down on sticky notes. Keep it moving! Don’t overthink it. They will now spend 5-6 minutes to share their thoughts with their team. What they fear from their travel experiences (7 m) Now repeat with each person spending another 1-2 minute brainstorming what they fear about travel. Write it all down on sticky notes. Now share out with the team for 5 minutes. Group sharing + transition (10 m) Group sharing for 5 minutes – discuss how that felt, what was hard/not hard, reinforce participation, speed, don’t overthink things. Rebalance teams if needed (e.g. if one team has 3 customers and another has no customers – see below)
• #6: We will ask each group to solve a problem in the area of travel (business or leisure… long haul or short hop… up to them) for a customer we will provide to them. Warm up (25 minutes) What they want from their travel experiences (8 m) Each person will spend 1-2 minute brainstorming what they want to improve for their own travel experiences, and writing it all down on sticky notes. Keep it moving! Don’t overthink it. They will now spend 5-6 minutes to share their thoughts with their team. What they fear from their travel experiences (7 m) Now repeat with each person spending another 1-2 minute brainstorming what they fear about travel. Write it all down on sticky notes. Now share out with the team for 5 minutes. Group sharing + transition (10 m) Group sharing for 5 minutes – discuss how that felt, what was hard/not hard, reinforce participation, speed, don’t overthink things. Rebalance teams if needed (e.g. if one team has 3 customers and another has no customers – see below)
• #7: We will ask each group to solve a problem in the area of travel (business or leisure… long haul or short hop… up to them) for a customer we will provide to them. Warm up (25 minutes) What they want from their travel experiences (8 m) Each person will spend 1-2 minute brainstorming what they want to improve for their own travel experiences, and writing it all down on sticky notes. Keep it moving! Don’t overthink it. They will now spend 5-6 minutes to share their thoughts with their team. What they fear from their travel experiences (7 m) Now repeat with each person spending another 1-2 minute brainstorming what they fear about travel. Write it all down on sticky notes. Now share out with the team for 5 minutes. Group sharing + transition (10 m) Group sharing for 5 minutes – discuss how that felt, what was hard/not hard, reinforce participation, speed, don’t overthink things. Rebalance teams if needed (e.g. if one team has 3 customers and another has no customers – see below)
• #8: We will ask each group to solve a problem in the area of travel (business or leisure… long haul or short hop… up to them) for a customer we will provide to them. Warm up (25 minutes) What they want from their travel experiences (8 m) Each person will spend 1-2 minute brainstorming what they want to improve for their own travel experiences, and writing it all down on sticky notes. Keep it moving! Don’t overthink it. They will now spend 5-6 minutes to share their thoughts with their team. What they fear from their travel experiences (7 m) Now repeat with each person spending another 1-2 minute brainstorming what they fear about travel. Write it all down on sticky notes. Now share out with the team for 5 minutes. Group sharing + transition (10 m) Group sharing for 5 minutes – discuss how that felt, what was hard/not hard, reinforce participation, speed, don’t overthink things. Rebalance teams if needed (e.g. if one team has 3 customers and another has no customers – see below)
• #9: We will ask each group to solve a problem in the area of travel (business or leisure… long haul or short hop… up to them) for a customer we will provide to them. Warm up (25 minutes) What they want from their travel experiences (8 m) Each person will spend 1-2 minute brainstorming what they want to improve for their own travel experiences, and writing it all down on sticky notes. Keep it moving! Don’t overthink it. They will now spend 5-6 minutes to share their thoughts with their team. What they fear from their travel experiences (7 m) Now repeat with each person spending another 1-2 minute brainstorming what they fear about travel. Write it all down on sticky notes. Now share out with the team for 5 minutes. Group sharing + transition (10 m) Group sharing for 5 minutes – discuss how that felt, what was hard/not hard, reinforce participation, speed, don’t overthink things. Rebalance teams if needed (e.g. if one team has 3 customers and another has no customers – see below)
• #11: Empathize and Define (25 minutes) Setup and demo (5 min) We will introduce good interview techniques via a brief demo. We will provide a template for developing the persona of their customer based on their interviews. Empathy and sharing within the team (10 min) Then we will ask each group to interview their customer about their travel behaviors and any problems they may have, using the best practice techniques we shared. Each person in the group must ask at least 1 question. After everyone has gone once, they can be more freeform in their interviews. Build persona (5 min) Teams will share out what they heard and build out the persona with the template provided, using the customer to do any adjustments and answer any questions. The template includes: Picture + brief description Demographics Behaviors Needs and goals Whole cohort sharing (5 min) Each group will nominate 1 person to briefly share who their persona is, what the problem they are solving is, and why this is important to the persona.
• #12: Ideate (25 minutes) Setup (3 min) At this point, we will ask the customers to leave their groups and join a different group. We will ask the group to go over the persona and the problem they are solving. We will explain the “yes, and” improv rules for ideation. Ideation warm up (4 min) and sharing / build on ideas (8 min) Teams will now start brainstorming solutions. Each person will draw/write as many ideas as they can write in 2 minutes on the provided 3x2 sticky notes. Then team members will do a once-around and share their ideas with the group. The customers will double as timekeepers – everyone will have no more than 1 min to share. They can add ideas at this stage – basically as fast as people can write and draw on sticky notes. Concept selection and development (10 min) Teams will now try to group the ideas and then vote down to 1 idea. They should spend a few minutes developing this idea by sketching on a large sheet of paper according to the template provided, which includes the following elements: Name of idea Drawing of idea Description of idea
• #13: Prototype (30 minutes) The customers will return to the second group with whom they did the ideation. The groups will adjust their ideas based on the first round of feedback, and build a prototype to mock up the idea. The mockup can be physical (e.g. a backpack, a luggage, etc) or software based (e.g. a hand drawn wireframe of an app, or a human powered mockup of an animation)
• #15: Test (25 minutes) Each group will now demonstrate their solution to their customers in front of the entire cohort. They have 1 minute to present their prototype to their original customer. The customer will then have 2 minutes to give them feedback.