A Design Thinking Workshop Helps You Solve Problems

Taking a design thinking workshop, along with your co-workers, can help you to think differently about the way you approach problems in the workplace.

Design thinking is one of the fastest-growing methods of problem-solving worldwide. Although it has been in existence since 1969, the process has recently enjoyed a valuable rebirth in popularity at such companies as Apple, General Electric, Google, and Samsung. It’s also being taught at such prestigious universities as Harvard, Stanford design school, and MIT.

The reason for this rebirth is the increased need for innovation and flexibility in business. As the world’s enterprises become more global in scope, they face greater competition an all fronts. To maintain their market shares in different economies around the world requires a greater understanding of all the problems in their workplace.

Leading global companies and universities have discovered that the design thinking process provides them with an easily understood, logical, innovative, and flexible method. And more and more multi-national companies have taken notice and enrolled their employees in a design thinking workshop.

What Does a Design Thinking Workshop Teach?

The design thinking process is a study in innovative problem-solving. The process uses a five-stage model to target a specific problem and find the most effective, logical, and efficient solution. Learning the five stages of the model and how to use them in problem-solving is the first step in the workshop.

But the design thinking workshop also teaches you how to collaborate with co-workers in finding the most logical answer to the problem. Design thinking not only solves the problem, but does so in the most efficient way cost-wise, and in terms of human resources as well.

It’s the collaborative nature of the process that makes it far more valuable than simply having one manager decide how to solve the problem.  Different employees have different perspectives on the best way to solve a particular problem, whether they are designers or users. The five stages of the process make use of these different perspectives to arrive at the most satisfying resolution.

How Does the Design Thinking Process Work?

The five stages of the process are:

  • Empathy – Understanding the problem from both a designer’s and user’s perspective.
  • Defining – Being able to define the problem exactly in human-centric terms.
  • Ideating – Coming up with as many ideas by different knowledgeable collaborators as possible.
  • Prototyping – Creating models based on the different suggestions of the collaborators.
  • Testing – Putting the models to the test and measuring the results.

The beauty of the design thinking process is that it is completely flexible. It doesn’t need to be followed linearly to be effective. Often, the later stages of the process will lead to re-evaluations of the earlier stages, and adjustments will be made to the criteria used. The different stages can be employed until the problem is solved to everyone’s satisfaction.

By enrolling in a design thinking workshop, all the benefits of using this process in providing the most effective resolution to a problem will soon become apparent. Whether you’re a designer or a user encountering problems in your workplace, design thinking can quickly help you find an effective, permanent solution.