What is DESIGN THINKING?

Design Thinking (DT) is a powerful tool to tackle the unstructured & the unknown. DT is a ‘human centred’ approach to problem solving which emerged at Stanford in the 1960’s primarily as a systematic, immersive approach to product design. In recent years, it was found that these approaches can be extended to a wider category of ill-structured, real world problems, both in emerging and developed markets alike.

•     -Identify opportunities with a change driven mindset
•     -Generate innovative solutions for complex, ill-defined problems
•     -Immerse deep into an iterative, user-focused design process to ensure your solutions are truly relevant to your target audience
•     -Initiate a work culture based on customer needs & wants to create holistic & sustainable customer value

CASE 1

Context –
Client is a leading global household appliances company. They were starting a 2 year development project. They wanted to go through a preparation phase with the team for the next 5 months. The core team members were located across geographies.
Challenges faced -

•     -They were entering an already crowded market segment
•     -Each team working in silos, hence, missing the bigger picture
•     -There were gaps in understanding internal expectations, user insights
•     -How do they differentiate the product and create superior user experience

Participants –

•     -leaders from Innovation, UX design, Category, Project, Manufacturing, Marketing, Costing & Accounts

Program outcome –

•     -Group co-created a shared understanding of the project, expectations & timelines
•     -Cross functional collaboration and importance of user research were established
•     -Teams joined hands in collecting, understanding, analysing data and creating prototypes

CASE 2

Context –
Client is a chemical manufacturing company having multiple plants in India and across the globe.
Challenges faced -

•     -Business units work in silos & communicate separately with the global counterparts
•     -Lot of duplication of work and reporting
•     -Each one is accessing, interpreting & communicating differently
•     -Due to this, process delays and miscommunications are very high

Participants –

•     -Senior leaders from Business, HR, Marketing, Manufacturing

Program outcome –

•     -Alignment & better coordination amongst the Business Units
•     -Centralized processes to reduce duplication of work
•     -Standardized communication between BUs and global counterparts

CASE 3

Context –
Client is one of the largest re-insurers having presence across the globe. It has a legacy policy administration system for its North America business. The system broadly manages underwriting i.e. policy administration, technical accounting and claims management.
Challenges faced -

•     -The legacy policy admin system is connected with a workflow system for deal/ submission management.
•     -The underwriting related functionalities in the system are cumbersome and not user-friendly as per their recent user survey.
•     -Need to replace the underwriting functionality

Participants –

•     -Teams from IT, Support, Client Servicing, Operations

Program outcome –

•     -Carved out the policy admin module with a new system that is more modern and user friendly