The Design Thinking Program
The Design Thinking Program is a three-phase immersive course created to spread a user-centric framework for solving problems in a legacy corporation.
Context
Design as a domain was comparatively new to GE Transportation, which is primarily an engineer’s habitat. While the company designed and manufactured top-notch locomotives and freight transportation parts, and had a strong presence in the industry, its digital products lacked a user-centric approach. The transportation industry, especially rail, was several years behind in logistics and in harnessing information. There was always a team trying to solve a problem to build a better experience, but our research told us they were not equipped with the right tools.
Project
The Design Thinking Program was the brainchild of the Innovation Lab at GE Transportation. It was created to equip employees across hierarchies with a user-centric process for approaching a problem. Every year, a mixed group spanning executives to entry-level professionals is brought into a common space. They go through a two-day workshop that introduces the basic design process and its four phases. Attendees do exercises that train them in understanding the user and their motivations, identifying a problem, ideation, design constraints and prototyping.
Initial identity: building blocks
We wanted to introduce the design thinking process as building blocks, to convey its fundamental nature and interchangeability. (Lego, if you’re watching, we used square pegs instead of round ones.) One block for each phase of the process – Empathize, Define, Ideate and Prototype – and together they built the base for our visual language.
Three phases
The program trains participants to three levels of expertise. The first level is unlocked after a one-day workshop, and the second after a week of on-site, immersive problem solving. The third level is unlocked when the participant introduces the design thinking methodology within their own team.
The workshop
A mix of executives, mid-level and entry-level employees from different disciplines within the organization were invited to the first workshop.
This was a lesson in teaching for our team. We learned the most effective pedagogical techniques by running the exercises within our own team first. The final workshop was an introduction to the four phases of the design thinking process.
Participants were divided into groups and picked problems relevant to their teams. With one design thinking expert on each team, they worked through creating a problem statement, establishing design criteria, building personas and archetypes, mapping user journeys and ideating.
In the end, each team created a prototype of their solution through a storyboard and shared it with the audience for feedback.
A new identity
There was some pushback from the organization to the initial identity, which used visual references from Lego. We moved to a more direct approach that drew inspiration from Thomas Edison’s iterative process of discovery.
The Design Thinking Book
The Innovation Lab wanted an exhaustive artifact that participants could take back to their teams, keep at their desks and refer to at any time. We used content outlined by the Stanford d.school.
Each tool was explained through a textual outline and steps, along with an illustrated example.
