After attending a meet up in NYC on hurdles & learnings of implementing the design thinking process, I came away with a few thoughts to chew on. Enjoy.

Speakers: Miles Fitzgerald (Outlook), Jen Koenig (Coach), Patty Beirne (Sloan Center for Cancer Research, Parsons)

1. Design Thinking can be defined as the marriage between thinking + doing for solutions to imagine ‘what could be’
2. When communicating solutions, remember your audience could want a 1-pager, a 5-slider, a full deck, or a combination. If there’s time, include prototypes, even if not functioning, and videos of audiences using them.
3. Bar meetups are great for prototype feedback when focus groups are out of budget.
4. When searching for insights, ask everyone along the interaction chain. Patty Beirne at Sloan Center for Cancer Research said the employees with the most intimate patient knowledge were the housekeeping staff — they were the ones patiences opened up to most in times of desperation.
5. To empathize, consider what someone does, thinks, feels, and sees about the topic or subject being redesigned. Do this before looking at product usage feedback for answers for a more humanistic approach.