1.

 DESIGN THINKING IS FOR YOU

“Everyone designs WHO DEVISES COURSES OF ACTION AIMED AT CHANGING EXISTING
SITUATIONS INTO PREFERRED ONES.” - Herbert Simon

Photo dpa picture alliance / Alamy Stock Photo

Design thinking is the mindset that aims to improve the situation of people through the
experiences they have. If you’re interested in solving problems for people, then you can
practice design thinking.

Herbert Simon (1916 — 2001)

An American economist and political scientist whose primary interest was decision-making
within organizations. He received the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1978 and the Turing
Award in 1975. His research was noted for its interdisciplinary nature and spanned the
fields of cognitive science, computer science, public administration, management, and
political science
 2. SO, WHAT IS AN EXPERIENCE?

Is it a coffee maker?
Or is it a person enjoying a cup of coffee?
 3. IT’S MORE THAN ANY PRODUCT OR SERVICE

Think of the last time you had tea, coffee, or hot cocoa. Maybe it was this morning. How
did it make you feel? Why did you drink it? What else were you doing at the time?

Chances are your answers to those questions are different than anyone else who drank a hot
beverage recently. Those answers represent your experience.

Photo Todd Arena / IBM Digital Asset Library

Photo andresr / IBM Digital Asset Library

Photo Yuri Arcurs / IBM Digital Asset Library

Design thinking requires you to consider a person’s experience in order to focus on their
human needs. Your customers don’t inherently care about the inner workings of a coffee
maker: they seek a quick pick-me-up, a comforting chat, or something warm on a cold day.
 4. TRY THIS EXPERIMENT
Take 30 seconds to design a vase. Go ahead, draw in the box below.
DraworWrite

These responses will save automatically. Don’t want this to happen?

Change your preferences on the account settings page.

5. SEE WHAT OTHERS HAVE MADE

1/6

Next
 6. A VASE IS A VASE IS A VASE
Were all those vases similar to yours? The prompt (design a vase) was too narrow for innovation
and creativity to flourish...a common problem in the enterprise world.

Let’s take a step back, open the aperture a bit. Why would someone buy a vase? What
purpose does it serve? A vase is only one way to enjoy flowers in your home. Try the
activity again, but this time think of it as an experience.

Experience: the way a person feels, and what they think while they’re doing something
 7. TRY THIS EXPERIMENT
This time, design a better way for someone to enjoy flowers in their home.
DraworWrite

These responses will save automatically. Don’t want this to happen?

Change your preferences on the account settings page.

8. CHECK OUT ALL OF THESE IDEAS

2/6

Go backNext
 9. REFLECT ON THE EXPERIMENT

1/3

We asked you to design a vase, and then to design a better way for someone to enjoy
flowers in their home.

How are the two prompts different?

design a vase' is just to create a object without any specific purpose,
but asking for a better way to enjoy flowers is an experience around the product to be
worthy solution

Which prompt did you prefer?

the second prompt is more purposeful

Which one was easier for you?

first one, since i dont need think and apply too much to do it
 11. DESIGN THINKING ISN’T JUST FOR DESIGNERS
Even though it includes the word “design,” design thinking is a mindset that anyone can apply. It
simply means that you’re starting to think like a designer—about how you can improve the current
experience of the people you serve: your users.

users

the people who interact with the thing, service, offering, system, etc. that you make
 PUT THE “ENTERPRISE” IN ENTERPRISE DESIGNTHINKING

Lesson 2 of 14 - In this lesson

 Learn the framework of Enterprise Design Thinking and why it’s necessary for modern
enterprise work.

1. YOU AREN’T IN THE FLOWER BUSINESS

Photo FatCamera / IBM Digital Asset Library

Think back to the vase experiment in the last lesson. Enterprise businesses don’t often
face vase-sized problems. We work with problems that shape industries and governments.
The nature of these problems requires a special flavor of design thinking that can cover the
scale and complexity we face in our daily work.
 3. OUR SHARED LANGUAGE
We all communicate through language. But, communication easily breaks down when we aren’t
speaking the same language. Throughout this course, you’ll explore the vocabulary of Enterprise
Design Thinking and start to put the words to work. The Framework allows you to speak about
design thinking across large teams and companies and stay on the same page.

Enterprise Design Thinking

a tailor-made approach for large, distributed teams to help them quickly deliver human-centered
outcomes to the market

4. THE ENTERPRISE DESIGN THINKING FRAMEWORK

Take a minute to explore the vocabulary of Enterprise Design Thinking.

THE PRINCIPLES

The Principles guide your day-to-day work. They ensure you’re keeping your user in mind,
collaborating with a diverse team, and continuously trying to improve your solutions.

 A focus on user outcomes

 Restless reinvention
 Diverse Empowered Teams

THE LOOP

Understand the present and envision the future in a continuous cycle of observing,
reflecting, and making.

 Observe
 Reflect
 Make

THE KEYS

Scalable practices for enterprise team alignment

 Hills
 Playbacks
 Sponsor Users
 5. THE PRINCIPLES

1/3 -The Principles guide your day-to-day work. They ensure you’re keeping your user in
mind, collaborating with a diverse team, and continuously trying to improve your solutions.

 A focus on user outcomes

Drive business by helping users achieve their goals.
 Restless reinvention
Stay essential by treating everything as a prototype.
 Diverse Empowered Teams
Move faster by working together and embracing diversity.
 6. THE PRINCIPLES
The Principles guide your day-to-day work. They ensure you’re keeping your user in mind,
collaborating with a diverse team, and continuously trying to improve your solutions.

REFLECT

How much does your team focus on your user?

Not at all
Completely

REFLECT

When was the last time you tested out a new idea?

I can’t remember
Yesterday

REFLECT

How many different perspectives exist on your team?

None
Many
 7. THE LOOP

1/3

Understand the present and envision the future in a continuous cycle of observing,
reflecting, and making.


OBSERVE

Immerse yourself in the real world with design research. Interview users, watch them work,
and test your ideas with the people who matter most to inform your decision-making and
understanding.

REFLECT

Come together and look within to synchronize your movements, synthesize what
you’ve learned, and share your “aha” moments with each other. Decide together
and move forward with confidence.

MAKE

Give concrete form to abstract ideas. The earlier you make the faster you learn. Put
your ideas out there before they’re complete and improve them as you go.
 8. THE KEYS

1/3

Scalable practices for enterprise team alignment.



HILLS

Align your team around the meaningful user outcomes you want to achieve. Hills are
statements of intent written as user enablements. They follow a format of Who, What, and
Wow.

Who: Who is your user? Refer to them by name.

What: What will your user be able to do that they couldn’t before? Start with a verb and
avoid solutions.
Wow: What differentiates you from the competition? This is measurable.

PLAYBACKS

Stay aligned by regularly exchanging feedback. Playbacks are story-based

presentations that share insights, ideas, and updates to a user experience.

SPONSOR USERS

Invite users into the work and stay true to real-world needs. Sponsor Users are
external clients, future clients, or end users that represent your target user, who
regularly contribute domain expertise to your team. Relationships with Sponsor
Users are typically formalized with an agreement that covers confidentiality and our
right to use their feedback.
 9. THE ENTERPRISE DESIGN THINKING FRAMEWORK
Keep these terms top of mind.

Bring design thinking to your daily work with this downloadable poster and

desktop wallpaper.
 PREPARE YOURSELF

Lesson 3 of 14
 In this lesson, See examples of teams successfully using Enterprise Design Thinking to
solve complex problems and gear up for the rest of the course.

2. CHANGE IS HARD
Photo Hero Images Inc. / IBM Digital Asset Library

Business as usual: a team sitting and listening in a meeting.

Enterprise Design Thinking: a team collaborating around a board.

The team you just saw is doing great things with Enterprise Design Thinking. But this
definitely isn’t their first time practicing it. Adopting Enterprise Design Thinking and
experiencing the great outcomes that you just heard about doesn’t happen overnight.

Like all of the best things in life, Enterprise Design Thinking is an ongoing journey filled
with highs and lows. It takes some effort and commitment, but the results are worth it. This
platform is designed to give you the tools and knowledge you need to address the
challenges and harness the opportunities you will face as you begin your practice.

Are you ready to dive in?

tools

activities and resources that help your team work collaboratively to yield specific artifacts.
Explore them in the Toolkit.
 3. YOUR CHALLENGE

All Enterprise Design Thinking initiatives start with a business problem, like low employee
retention or uncovering a new market segment. In the next few lessons, you’ll work through
a business problem by framing it around human experiences and learn the Principles of
Enterprise Design Thinking along the way.

Here’s a little taste of the business problem you’ll dig into:

Photo Stars and Stripes / Alamy Stock Photo

Windsor Airline’s consistent flight delays are hurting the company’s bottom line.

So the question is, how might we ensure that Windsor Airlines flights leave on time?

4. REFLECT

3/3

Take a screen shot of this page so you can look back once you’ve completed the course and
see how your feelings have changed.

What are you hopeful for?

they may visit the windsor customer care center to witness how often customers are
calling the helplines or support centeres

What fears do you have?

making the course understandings validated
 5. YOU’RE NOT ALONE.

1/2

Take a look at all of these hopes and fears that your fellow learners have shared.

What are you hopeful for?

I’M HOPEFUL THAT ENTERPRISE DESIGN THINKING WILL HELP MY TEAM WORK BETTER

TOGETHER.

I LEARN HOW TO USE DESIGN THINKING IN THE REAL WORLD.

GETTING A BETTER UNDERSTANDING OF WHAT DESIGN THINKING REALLY IS

5. YOU’RE NOT ALONE.

2/2

Take a look at all of these hopes and fears that your fellow learners have shared.

What fears do you have?

I FEAR FAILURE.

NOT EVER GETTING HOW TO APPLY THIS TO MY WORK

I’M FEARFUL THAT THIS WON’T APPLY TO ME.

 IDENTIFY YOUR USERS AND THEIR PROBLEMS

Lesson 4 of 14

IN THIS LESSON

 See how working with users can help your team address complexity and ambiguity.

1. COMPLEXITY AND AMBIGUITY

Enterprise teams, like yours, deal with complex ecosystems that take years to learn and
master. They offer countless rabbit holes, worm holes, plot holes, pot holes, and any other
kind of ambiguous situations you can think of. Finding enough clarity to decide on the best
thing to do within this intricate web can sometimes seem impossible.

But, it doesn’t have to be so hard. Finding clarity can be as simple as focusing on

the most important thing. In design thinking, the most important thing is people. In
Enterprise Design Thinking, we call this a focus on user outcomes.

a focus on user outcomes

is an Enterprise Design Thinking Principle that represents putting your users at the center of
your work and solving for their needs

2. A FOCUS ON USER OUTCOMES

When you focus your team and your work around your users and their needs, you’re able to
more easily decide what’s important. This makes your offerings more essential to the
people who use them. If all you did was ask:

Who are our users?

What is their current experience?
How could it be improved?

over and over again, you would get closer and closer to understanding your users and
creating an ideal future for them. This allows you to put a more valuable offering into your
client’s hands and into the market.
 3. BUSINESS PROBLEMS TO HUMAN-CENTERED PROBLEMS
Business problems, like those you are asked to solve day to day, are often focused on something
nonhuman, like the bottom line or brand recognition. In order to start focusing on your users, you
have to identify the user problems that underlie the business problem.

4. UNCOVER THE PROBLEM

Adam Cutler, Enterprise Design Thinking Leader, explains the value of knowing
what problem you’re solving, for whom, and why.
 5. THE AIRLINE PROBLEM
Think back to the business problem we gave you in the last lesson. The original problem
was: Windsor Airline’s consistent flight delays are hurting the company’s bottom
line. This complex problem could quickly overwhelm anyone, but focusing on users and
their problems can help make it more straightforward.

6. ASK WHY

1/7
The 5 Whys activity digs deeper into a problem, or uncovers the intent behind an idea.
Let’s find the root cause of the original problem facing Windsor Airlines.

What is the business problem?

Windsor Airline’s consistent flight delays are hurting the company’s bottom line.!

Why might that be?

Because the majority of their flights don’t depart on time.

Why?
Because on average the gate isn’t locked 10 minutes before a flight’s scheduled
takeoff.

Why?
Because the dispatchers don’t have the passenger data, which is legally required for the
gate to close.

Why?
Because it’s not clear who’s on the final passenger list.

Why?
Because gate agents struggle to negotiate last-minute passenger changes.

The user-centered problem after 5 Whys

Because gate agents struggle to negotiate last-minute passenger changes.
 7. CURRENT SITUATION TO IMPROVED FUTURE
Photo alno / Storyblocks Images

As-is:
long lines and grumpy people
at an airline gate.
Photo simplefoto / Storyblocks Images

To-be:
organized and happy people
at an airline gate.

Complex systems, like the efficiency of the airline’s boarding process, impact a lot of
different types of people. That’s okay. We expect that from enterprise problems. The key is
to identify the users who are impacted the most.

Next, you need to work to understand these users’ current experience. Design thinking at its
core is the process of understanding the situation, recognizing where it can be improved,
and then creating a better future for the people involved. This is the concept of moving
from as-is, to to-be.

8. HOW MUCH DO YOU KNOW ABOUT THESE USERS?

4/4
Reflect on your answers. How confident do you feel about what you think you know about
gate agents?

What do gate agents do on a daily basis?

they check boarding passes and inform users when their flights taking off and when they
need to be boarded

What do they like and dislike about their jobs?

they love helping the passengers but they have to pass on the same information to multiple
passengers

How could their current experiences be improved?

they can be supported with next flight/s schedule info displayed in a standing board besides
them
 9. REFLECT ON YOUR OWN WORK

4/4
Reflect on your answers. How confident do you feel about what you think you know about
your users?

Who are your users?
company recruiters

What do your users do on a daily basis?

they source profiles and screen and shortlist based on the skills present in a resume vs
needed for company vacancy role

What do they struggle with the most when they try to complete important tasks?
they have to manually go through the skills in a resume to map them to the role opening

10. WORKING WITH SPONSOR USERS

Sponsor Users are more than just focus groups. See how a team built a
relationship with their users and truly co-created for meaningful results.