IDEO has released a Human Centered Design Toolkit that is the result of  a project funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. The BMGF brought together four organizations —IDEO, IDE, Heifer International, and ICRW—to partner in the creation of a method for guiding innovation and design for smallholder farmers.

It contains the elements to Human-Centered Design, a process used for decades to create new solutions for multi-national corporations. This toolkit has been designed to hear the needs of smallholder farmers in new ways, create innovative solutions to meet these needs, and deliver solutions with financial sustainability in mind.

While many elements of the toolkit are specifically tailored towards the specific questions one faces when innovating with and for smallholder farmers, it is a valuable collection that makes the sometimes vague human centered design process more concrete and therefore transferable and reproducible.

What I really like about this toolkit is that it differentiates between the design team and the facilitators. I think this differentiation and the active nomination of facilitators is one of the unique aspects in design processes and the transfer of design knowledge.

I see a lot of potential to create Human Centered Design Toolkits a specific company and certain industries. It is really helpful to narrow the focus and create a human centered design toolkit for the automotive industry, telecommunications industry or financial service industry.

More information about the toolkit

[via Nick Marsh]

 

 

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Patients that are regularly watching medical TV series develop unrealistic expectations about hospital service and are less satisfied with their patient experience than patients who don’t watch medical TV series.

Influencing Images

The images and situations depicted in many medical TV series create the wrong expectations in patients which lead to disappointment and negative experiences during their stay in a hospital. The scenes depicted in medical TV series are set to create engaging stories and increase viewer numbers and are not necessarily meant to reflect reality. That’s the reason why doctors are carrying the infusion bag next to the patients bed by themselves, show no reluctance when they are called to the hospital at most uncommon times and are in general extraordinarily committed, generous, competent and patient-oriented.

Frequent TV viewers have higher expectations

Kai Witzel, a German doctor, interviewed patients about their television viewing behavior and their satisfaction with the time spent by medical doctors, service and general experience. He found out that patients who regularly follow medical TV series and think that the scenes shown in these TV series reflect the reality of hospital operations are significantly less satisfied with the time doctors and nurses have spent with them. Additionally they rated the satisfaction with doctors lower than those that prefer game or quiz shows. These patients also believe that the scenes in medical TV series do not reflect reality.

The Implications for Doctors

It becomes increasingly important that doctors not only focus on the outcome of patient treatment but also on the atmosphere and experience that is created while interacting with patients. And it becomes increasingly important to understand your patients – and the amount of medical TV series that they watch – in order to provide a remarkable patient experience. I wonder which hospital will be the first to ask patients whether they watch a lot of medical TV series in order to provide differentiated services to these customers.

The Implications for other Industries

Remarkable customer experiences are the result of delivering an experience that exceeds a customer’s expectations. The most important task that companies have to do is to understand customer expectations and how they differ in between different customers. The key is then to deliver on and exceed these customer expectations with differentiated but customized products and services.

Further Links (Only available in German):

• Arztbild in den Medien: Dr. Stefan Frank hätte sich mehr Zeit genommen
• Einfluss des Fernsehkonsums auf die Angst vor einer Operation

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Businesses are confronted with an increasing rate of innovation and the ability to continuously and systematically develop innovative products and services is becoming a critical factor to sustain a competitive advantage. Our role as one of the leading business schools in Europe is to prepare our graduates for these challenges.

Prof. Dr. Walter Brenner, Director of the Institute of Information Management, University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and Prof. Larry Leifer, Director Center for Design Research, Stanford University initiated a collaboration in 2005 where student teams work on product and service innovation challenges presented by corporate partners. Teams take projects all the way from defining design requirements to constructing functional prototypes ready for consumer testing and technical evaluation. Projects typically combine aspects from sustainability, automotive, medical, communication, and user interaction.

Students working towards their master’s degree in information, media and technology management participate in this  two-semester course where they learn the necessary skills to gather deep consumer insights, develop ideas through various ideation techniques and synthesize these ideas into conceptual prototypes of innovative products and services.

In the fourth year of this cooperation 12 students are working in three teams to work on the next big idea with problem statements from three corporate partners. The corporate partners in 2008/2009 are BASF,  Lonza and Swisscom.

My role in this course is twofold, firstly I am teaching and coaching the students in the design process and the different methods and tools that are used in the different stages, secondly I am doing research on the course observing different aspects of the design process and design collaboration with business students.

More information about the course can be found on the official website at http://designthinking.iwi.unisg.ch

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What are the difference between business people and designers? What are the differences between a “business mindset” and a “design mindset”? These are a few questions that I have been researching and thinking about recently and which I will try to answer in more detail in my Ph.D. thesis.

In this process I have collected different statements that summarize some of the differences, challenges and approaches to overcome the gap between managers and designers.

A.G. Lafley, CEO Procter & Gamble, found in "P&G Changes Its Game, BusinessWeek"

Business schools tend to focus on inductive thinking (based on directly observable facts) and deductive thinking (logic and analysis, typically based on past evidence). Design schools emphasize abductive thinking—imagining what could be possible. This new thinking approach helps us challenge assumed constraints and add to ideas, versus discouraging them.

 

Roger Martin, Dean, Rotman School of Management, found in "Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education: And Interview and Discussion"

A traditional manager would take the options that have been presented and analyze them based on deductive reasoning. You typically get those options on the basis of what you have seen before—that is, inductive logic. You then select the one that has highest net present value. Whereas a designer uses abductive reasoning to say, “What is something completely new that would be lovely if it existed but doesn’t now?”

 

Tim Brown, CEO IDEO, found in "Lessons from innovation’s front lines: An interview with IDEO’s CEO"

The innovation process is a series of divergent and then convergent activities – a very simple concept but one that a lot of leaders used to managing efficient processes in their businesses struggle with. By „divergence,“ I mean a willingness to explore things that seem far away from where you think your business is today. The discomfort that a lot of business leader have with innovation is with divergence. They think that it’s divergent forever and that they’ll never be able to focus on something that makes business sense. I think that’s where some business leaders, historically, have had a bit of problem with their internal innovation units: the leaders have a sense that these units are endlessly divergent. If you understand that convergence follows divergence, and that it‘s really hard to converge without first diverging, maybe that‘s a bit comforting.

 

If you are doing research in this field or if you are confronted with questions and challenges at the intersection of business and design, please don’t hesitate to send me an email at bernhard@customer-experience-labs.com. I am interested in sharing experience and exchanging ideas.

Image credit

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