In my role, as someone who’s tasked with setting up the Design Thinking capability at Fractal Analytics, there are a few questions I come across on a regular basis – from colleagues and otherwise. I thought it might be a good idea to answer some of those questions on my blog and share the answers with anyone who might need them!

As someone who is responsible for Design Thinking Capability Incubation what is it that you do?

The core responsibility this role has – is driving cross-functional business transformation through a blend of data-driven and human-centered methods of innovation. The primary mandate is to lead the Design Thinking Capability by providing project support, coaching and evangelizing Design Thinking within Fractal to ensure that Design Thinking is at the center if every project executed at the organization.

Who should attend a Design Thinking Workshop?

Everyone! Client facing or not it doesn’t matter. The idea behind understanding design thinking is not following a process but developing a mindset driven by empathy, creativity, and persistence.

How Design Thinking can work in an analytical firm, and what are the specific challenges of formalizing a design-focused methodology in a delivery-centric atmosphere? – another way – in what ways do you see Advanced Analytics and AI/ML as an industry into which design thinking can be integrated?

The success of Design Thinking for Fractal lies in our ability to translate various concepts of design thinking to our environment. It’s about how our PoV changes when we are designing solutions, how we structure and conduct our brainstorming sessions, how we explore possibilities when designing solutions and finally how we interact with clients to provide solutions that not only work functionally but are able to deliver a better experience through intuitive design.

For the delivery side of the business, we focus on service design and pick and choose only specific concepts that are most relevant for Fractal. The application is beyond simply making better-looking dashboards, it’s about exploring and expanding the ways we build algorithms, the hierarchy of insights that our clients ‘need’, understanding the story they want to tell through our capabilities and enabling them in doing so.

For AI/ML we will have to mix design thinking with traditional UX practices to build the best possible versions of the product – going deeper into building user personas, journeys, exploring different ideas and prototyping and testing at a rapid pace.

What are the techniques that you can use to develop user-centricity? And how do you take this to the next level by building those freshly-gained insights (from the newly-acquired user centricity) into products which are not just products but also include the gamut of services, from BI to BDE?

In design thinking, user centricity is explored at two major junctures – discovery and prototype testing. User empathy is generated by designers using a multitude of techniques – analytics, ethnography (observation + interaction), role play and self-documentation, depth interviews, etc.

The next level: once pattern discovery from the user data is done and plotted onto Empathy Maps and used to chart user journeys it becomes much easier to design solutions that can address user pain points and capitalize on opportunities. The service back-end addresses user needs (pain-points + opportunities) by leveraging creative thinking and fail fast prototyping.

What makes a great design team?

Diversity: across parameters – culture, education, skill set, capability, etc.

No Hierarchy: understanding that ideas have no hierarchy – gives space for everyone on the team to contribute ideas and not hold back due to fear of rejection

Ability to think visually: sparks creativity, opens up people, captures insights better.

Readiness to fail: harnessing the power of fail-fast methodology to iterate and improve the solutions through user testing at a rapid pace.

Can Discovery and Ideation phases work independently from Production teams?

Ideally NO. Transfer of ideas/vision and PoV’s is tricky business. That is what creates silos. However, there are times when it is simply not possible. I would highly recommend keeping those instances to a minimal. Results are optimum when the designer who has understood the user is the one designing the solution. Essentially, everyone NEEDS to be a researcher as well as a designer.

Which parts of the process can be shortened when the project timeline doesn’t allow for a fuller version

Ideation: User understanding is paramount. A lot of design thinkers focus on creativity, but ideation without empathy is like shooting in the dark. Discovery and prototyping phases are most critical in terms of generating user understanding.

The best way to proceed in terms of crunched timelines is to get all stakeholders together and finish the ideation and conceptualization phase in in one go as soon as discovery and insight generation is done. Post which lo-fi prototypes (paper pen – no machines) can be used to further expedite the development process.

A sound prototyping process is the best bet when it comes to shortening the development cycle – as it drastically lowers the chances of iterations on the final solution and saves a lot of valuable time.

If YOU have any questions of your own feel free to ask me in the comments section.