Design Thinking In The Digital Transformation Journey

Birth of an idea...Design thinking is a process which involves the “building up” of ideas, and generally includes inspiration, ideation and implementation.

In recent years, design thinking has become one of the most important advances in innovation and leadership. Design thinking is now being included in the curriculum of the Top 10 MBA programmes. Top venture capital firms like Google Ventures and Cisco Investments have brought design teams in-house. Many of the top management consultancies, including EY, have also acquired design firms (EY acquired Bedrock in 2014 and Seren in 2015).

However, a 2016 survey conducted found that while 96% of executives think design thinking is very or extremely important to their company, only 37% said they have strong or expert capabilities to do so[1]. This indicates a significant gap between vision and execution.
 

Design-led digital transformation journey – What is it all about?

Design thinking is a philosophy and a mindset about truly putting customers and users first. It's about collaborating across multiple disciplines and ways of thinking.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way products, services, strategy and processes are developed. This approach brings together what is desirable for users with what is technologically feasible and economically viable for business. Unlike traditional analytical thinking,design thinking is a process which involves the “building up” of ideas, and  generally includes inspiration, ideation and implementation.

In recent years, we have seen many projects that have achieved tangible benefits by using this methodology. For example, design thinking can be used to facilitate a brainstorming workshop for requirement validation and refinement of a system solution, helping to ensure upfront user involvement and that requirements from different functions are appropriately captured.
 

A collective approach...The upfront involvement of users in the Agile Design Approach enables the project to leverage on the collective thinking of the group and produce a more creative outcome.

Dynamic duo – Design thinking and agile methodology

By combining design thinking with the Agile methodology of implementation, organisations can develop digital road maps that are user-centric, as well as enjoy rapid innovation in a shorter time span. The combination of these methodologies is commonly described as the Agile Design Approach, and will commonly consist of three (3) stages:

Stage 1 – Discover

The core value of design thinking lies in the focus of solving the needs of people. Broad groups of stakeholders should be involved in the design workshops to understand their needs and how they currently fulfill those needs. This creates an opportunity to identify better ways of addressing those needs. The empathy map is a common tool used to gain understanding for targeted personas, thus enabling better delivery of user experience for products or services.

In addition, different personas are also created to better understand the goals, needs and frustrations of different usergroups. This can be illustrated in the form of a ‘user profile’, ‘user journey’or ‘user story’ (e.g. as a user, I want to achieve some goal, so that I can…).It is important to keep personas visible so that the focus is on solving their problems.

The upfront involvement of users in the Agile Design Approach enables the project to leverage on the collective thinking of the group and produce a more creative outcome.

Stage 2 – Realise

Once ideas are gathered, it is important to bring the ideas to life so that people can interact with them. Ideas are progressively shaped into design, thus allowing early validation and improvement throughout the journey from idea to realisation. It is also important to show, rather than tell. Often, there will be iterative development of low-fidelity prototypes to provide visibility of the experience at each stage.

The mindset of creating and maintaining a culture of prototyping fosters an experimental environment and a continuous state of iterative testing in the sense of “design-build-test-learn”.

Stage 3 – Refine and Finalise

After rounds of informal testing, prototypes are refined by incorporating user feedback, increasing fidelity (e.g. developing a visual prototype that is not connected to back-end systems) and extending coverage (e.g. covering more user stories). Finally, high-level solution architecture and implementation road maps are developed to serve as steppingstones to the next phase of the digital transformation journey.

Design thinking and its practical benefits

In one example, an organisation already had an order management system in place. However, its existing system and processes were not user-friendly, resulting in poor user experience, loss of productivity, incompatible delivery times and increased off-catalogue spend.
Agile Design Approach was adopted and was performed in three sprints of two weeks each in order to develop the prototype, summarise supplier networks, develop high-level solution architecture and determine the implementation roadmap.

Subsequently, a minimum viable product was created for pilot and implementation was executed. A post-implementation survey showed improvement in user satisfaction from the system refinement.

In comparison, a similar scope performed under a traditional approach would typically take three to six months, as teams normally appear fixated on a script of features rather than focusing on solving the needs of people.

In another instance, an organisation aimed to conduct a strategic review of its operations and business strategy, and at the same time explore the opportunities arising from blockchain technology. Design thinking workshops were conducted to identify key use cases for blockchain which included considerations, benefits and potential approach for implementation. The upfront involvement of employees also facilitated a user-centric design and ensured that innovative ideas from employees were captured.

The outcome was a blockchain strategy design which highlighted blockchain benefits and implementation options. Throughout the journey, the team leveraged design thinking and rapid prototyping techniques to create minimum viable prototypes within workshops to help employees better understand the proposed programme.

But design thinking is not without its challenges

Although design thinking is starting to gain momentum in many large organisations, it is not without its own set of challenges as many are not seeing the results and benefits they expected.

Organisation culture often needs to be aligned with the designers’ mindset. Traditionally, an organisation adopts a linear fashion of design and requirement-gathering which aim to get it right the first time.In contrast, design thinking fosters an experimental mindset where a project is open to new possibilities and failure, and often prefers to “fail fast and fail early” in order to maximise learning. Therefore, an organisation needs to be comfortable with failure and learn to turn failures into opportunities, instead of penalising them.

It is easy to be distracted or overwhelmed by the many different needs of people. Although design thinking emphasises solving the needs of people, it is crucial to clearly define the scope of coverage at the inception of the project to maintain project focus i.e. to solve a clearly defined set of problems.

Lastly, plans are nothing without implementation. Strong project management expertise is key in ensuring that the design-led transformation will be implemented as planned, especially in large-scale transformations that span a number of years.
 

Laser focused on finding a solution...By promoting a design thinking mindset, organisations can foster an environment where the focus will be on solving the needs of people, and not anything else.

So what’s next?

Design thinking at its best can blend what is desired by the user with what is technologically feasible and what is economically viable, to produce a more innovative product or service that is sought after by users in a shorter time frame.

However, design thinking is not a magic wand; it requires time and persistence to fully realise the benefits it can bring.

By promoting a design thinking mindset,organisations can foster an environment where the focus will be on solving the needs of people, and not anything else. And by combining design thinking with other methodologies such as Agile, organisations may find a more effective and efficient way of delivering these solutions.
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Ling Kay Yeow is a Partner at Ernst & Young Advisory Services Sdn Bhd. The views in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the global EY organisation or its member firms.