Design+Thinking+Masterclass+ +design+ (RE) +Thinking+Book

DESIGN
THINKING
reimagining innovation
for the new normal
TABLE OF CONTENTS
01 / INTRODUCTION 03 / BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
DESIGN VISION
HELLO AND WELCOME
• introduction
ABOUT DESIGN THINKING
• the tool
• design thinking principles
• restaurant example
BUSINESS GOALS
• summary
• introduction
AREAS OF BUSINESS IMPACT
• the tool - SMARTER method
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS • introduction
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS • the tool
CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE • restaurant example
DESIGN CHALLENGE ARCHETYPE CREATION

• introduction
IDEATION
PROTOTYPING
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS MAP
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TESTING
• Introduction
IMPACT DELIVERY
• Restaurant example
DESIGN THINKING PROCESS SUMMARY
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS SUMMARY
04 / CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE 05 / DESIGN CHALLENGE
RECRUITMENT PROCESS EXPERIENCE MAP OVERL APS

RESEARCH SCENARIO ROOT CAUSE TOOL
• introduction
DEFINITION
• research method types
PRIORITISATION
• research methods - brief description
DESIGN CHALLENGE SUMMARY
• choosing the right method for the job
RESEARCH METHODS
• in-depth interviews
• online questionnaire
0 6 / I D E AT I O N
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
• business hypothesis map validation INTRODUCTION
• transformation method
CUSTOMMER PERSPECTIVE SUM-
• brainwriting method
MARY
SYNTHESIZING THE INFORMATION
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IDEATION SUMMARY
07 / PROTOTYPING 09 / IMPACT DELIVERY
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
04 / CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE
INTRODUCTION REVISITING THE ENTIRE PROCESS
MINDSET TO-BE EXPERIENCE MAP

• tools for prototyping • business goals
PROTOTYPING SUMMARY • key performance indicators
• risk factors
• the tool - ERIC model
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
IMPACT DELIVERY SUMMARY
08 / TESTING
MINDSET 10 / CLOSING THOUGHTS
RESEARCH SCENARIO
TESTING METHODS
• list of recommendations
TESTING SUMMARY
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01 /
INTRO-
HELLO AND WELCOME

• design thinking principles
DUC-
• summary
AREAS OF BUSINESS IMPACT
TION
HELLO AND WELCOME TO THE
DESIGN THINKING
HELLO AND WELCOME
01 / INTRODUCTION
MASTERCL ASS
Let me tell you a story. I was born in Poland - a little country in the center of Europe
with a very rich history – some of which you might’ve heard of. I’ve spent most of my
life here but when I finished university armed with my Master’s Degree in Civil En-
gineering Design I decided to move to Scotland. I’ve spent 4 great years there and
learned one crucial thing about myself – I didn’t like my job. After many weekends
filled with reflection and bordering on depression I’ve decided to change my life.
I’ve sold everything I had and whatever nobody wanted to buy I gave away to people.
I bought a motorcycle and together with my freshly baked wife we started to travel.
We’ve spent a year on the road through pretty much all of the countries in South
America and the US. I had no idea that this journey will have a huge impact on who
I’m becoming and what lies ahead. During the travels I’ve considered a lot of paths
for my future career and I was certain that being a designer is one of them. I also
knew that I wanted to be more creative with what I’m doing with whatever time
I have left on this rock we call earth. After all we all go around it once but some
of us never witness it. Once I started digging into this I found a lot of activities
I really enjoyed. I’ve spent my time as a photographer, filmmaker, graphic designer,
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user experience designer, service designer and a leader. I’ve learnt a lot during
my past years and the most crucial thing I’ve learnt was that we all need to keep
on growing and learning all the time. This mindset is with me even now as I’ve en-
rolled into an Australian College of Arts studying Concept Art to learn even more
ways to communicate visually. It’s all about communication and words truly have
power. I’m Andy Woynarowski and welcome to the Design Thinking Masterclass.
The Design Thinking Masterclass is my way of giving back
to the design community showing you how I approach design
and sharing everything I know so that you can take the knowl-
edge I’ve gathered over the years and use it on a daily basis.
I’ve worked from mid-sized software houses, RnD Teams to big
HELLO AND WELCOME
01 / INTRODUCTION
corporate giants like Deloitte Digital. I would like to thank you

so much for joining in and following my journey. I hope that
wherever this content reaches you – you’ll have an exciting
time and the material presented will be of use to you. I fo-
cused very deeply on the practical aspect of the course. You’ll
see me covering all the aspects and all the detail of each step
of the design process. We will fill out each step with meaning-
ful material working away on an actual design challenge. I’ll
be using the same tools you’ll have access to. I’ve spent a lot
of time to make sure that this design process is comprehen-
sive and deterministic. Each step of the process is correctly
correlated to the step before it – so you’re not wasting time
on gluing post-it notes to the wall – we’re all about the de-
livery here – not running workshops for the sake of running
workshops. The knowledge and the tools you’ll gain you’ll be
able to use on the first day after you’ve finished the course.
Over and above that I have put together a YouTube

If you’re a business owner looking for ways to innovate or cre- Channel with weekly streams as well as a Facebook
atively solve your organization’s problems this course is defi- and Linkedin groups where we can all share insights
nitely for you. If you’re a striving designer trying to make into the design challenges we all face as practition-
your mark upon the design world this learning experience will ers, talk about new tools, methods, books, plans
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definitely enrich your outlook on Design Thinking and give you and reflections to make our design impact tangible.
powerful tools to tackle any design challenge you might face Please join our community and let’s begin.
now and in the future. I’ve put a very exciting set of tools and
/ 99grit
methods together so that you can participate in the course
regardless of your level in the organization and the amount
of experience you might have.
ABOUT
DESIGN THINKING
01 / INTRODUCTION
Design Thinking is a powerful approach that allows for creative problem solving and if done
properly can lead to some amazing results. Some people associate it with innovation, cre-
ative problem solving, generating business impact and it’s all true. I’ll do my best to break
it all down so that you can fully grasp which areas are being impacted here and how to use
the entire potential of this approach in your work. One of the main aspects of the Design
Thinking approach is the perspective we take when looking at a product or a service. We
put the people in the middle of the process – it’s called Human Centered Design which forms
the backbone of the Design Thinking methodology.
A small side note: I’ll do everything I can to minimize the amount of new vocabulary and
buzzwords like HCD, SD, HCI, Design Sprints, Agile, Innovation Hub, Design Studio - which
sometimes can cloud the issues at hand for no apparent reason. To me it’s all very subjec-
tive and meaningless when you’re only talking about methods. What I want to focus on here
is to give you a full understanding of the design process which then will be followed by the ap-
propriately designed methods that suit it rather that studying methods for the sake of it.
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After you’ve finished the course you’ll be able to ei-

ther use the methods I’ve put together or create your
own ones to fully discover the artist within you and
make the impact happen.
DESIGN THINKING
design thinking principles
01 / INTRODUCTION
Going back to Design Thinking. In short it’s an ap-

proach that allows you to create meaningful prod-
PRINCIPLES ucts and services for your customers enriched

by gathering of insights and quick iterative approach
to design and delivery.
Putting people, you’re designing for first is one as-

pect of the job but the other very important element
is to fully understand the challenges of the busi-
ness.
We will be covering all of those in future chapters

but right now I need you to know that what DT ap-
proach does very well is not only analyzing these
perspectives but colliding them together in order
to achieve unique and meaningful results. So on one
hand we can dig deep into the business side and de-
fine the business goals, influential stakeholders and
activities that represent what the service or product
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is offering as value to the end-customer. On the oth-

er hand it takes that end-customer and validates
that value so that we as designers can synthesize
and quantify that value in order to create new tan-
gible experiences and innovations. Design thinking
is built around the following principles:
people
01 / INTRODUCTION
It all starts with the commodity which for this specific area would be all
the ingredients that we put together to create the amazing Michelin Star-like
dishes. Someone grows these in more rural areas of the world and competes
with its competitors with the quality and pricing of their products. If we’re
in the restaurant business these commodities rarely get in front of our cus-
tomers without our interference. We can’t just simply give them the rough
vegetables and meats as they’ve been grown.
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patterns
01 / INTRODUCTION
We take the commodities and give them to the experts we employ ie. the chefs
in the kitchen. They take the commodities and using their skills, experience
and expertise deliver our restaurant’s products – the dishes we serve. If
they do a good job delivering the high-quality product we expect, relevant
to the local flavors, differentiated from competitors nearby and with the right
price - there’s a good chance that we’ll keep the place afloat.
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perspectives
01 / INTRODUCTION
Our beautiful award-winning products are not enough though. After all
the chefs don’t serve the food to our customers – they just cook it. We need
to have people on the ground like waiters that can welcome our customers and
show them to their tables, get their orders, communicate those in the right
way to the kitchen staff and then deliver the ready products to the table and
get everything paid for including their tips. Looking at the above it would
seem that that’s all it takes to run a successful restaurant business. Have
the fresh ingredients, cook them well and get them sold for the right price.
The thing is though that most businesses feel and work this way – but this
means that the only things they can compete with is the quality of their
products and their price. This is where Design Thinking can come in very
handy and deliver new dimensions of competitiveness.
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focus
01 / INTRODUCTION
Don’t get me wrong the price and quality are the fundamentals we just need
to get right but there are other ways to impact customer’s decisions – and
there’s plenty of other aspects customers consider when making that de-
cision – some of them might be even subconscious – after all we don’t re-
member the quality of the service – we remember how it made us feel. These
feeling are shaped by the experiences we can design and deliver. We can
affect how the waiters will act, what the temperature will be, how secluded
the tables will be, what music and on what level will be played, what will
the smell be inside, how comfortable the seats will be and if there will be
seats at all. But let’s not get ahead of us here. All I’m trying to say is that
experiences are there regardless if you design them or not – but let me tell
you it’s much better to shape them so that you not only make a positive
impact on your customers but for the bottom line of your business as well.
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literations
04 / INTRODUCTION
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delivery
01 / INTRODUCTION
Each stage of the process needs to deliver value. Design artifacts like pro-
totypes, minimum viable products, insightful research synthesis – call it
whatever you want – it’s a tangible design effect that we’re expecting.
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RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
01 / INTRODUCTION
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Now let’s look at where it all fits into when looking at a broader
business picture. Let’s have a look at one of the oldest busi-
ness models known to mankind ie - the restaurant business
and let’s try to break it down.
commodity
restaurant example
04 / INTRODUCTION
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experiences
restaurant example
04 / INTRODUCTION
Don’t get me wrong the price and quality are the fundamentals we just need
to get right but there are other ways to impact customer’s decisions – and
there’s plenty of other aspects customers consider when making that de-
cision – some of them might be even subconscious – after all we don’t re-
member the quality of the service – we remember how it made us feel. These
feeling are shaped by the experiences we can design and deliver. We can
affect how the waiters will act, what the temperature will be, how secluded
the tables will be, what music and on what level will be played, what will
the smell be inside, how comfortable the seats will be and if there will be
seats at all. But let’s not get ahead of us here. All I’m trying to say is that
experiences are there regardless if you design them or not – but let me tell
you it’s much better to shape them so that you not only make a positive
impact on your customers but for the bottom line of your business as well.
18 / 253
service
restaurant example
04 / INTRODUCTION
Our beautiful award-winning products are not enough though. After all
the chefs don’t serve the food to our customers – they just cook it. We need
to have people on the ground like waiters that can welcome our customers and
show them to their tables, get their orders, communicate those in the right
way to the kitchen staff and then deliver the ready products to the table and
get everything paid for including their tips. Looking at the above it would
seem that that’s all it takes to run a successful restaurant business. Have
the fresh ingredients, cook them well and get them sold for the right price.
The thing is though that most businesses feel and work this way – but this
means that the only things they can compete with is the quality of their
products and their price. This is where Design Thinking can come in very
handy and deliver new dimensions of competitiveness.
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product
restaurant example
04 / INTRODUCTION
We take the commodities and give them to the experts we employ ie. the chefs
in the kitchen. They take the commodities and using their skills, experience
and expertise deliver our restaurant’s products – the dishes we serve. If
they do a good job delivering the high-quality product we expect, relevant
to the local flavors, differentiated from competitors nearby and with the right
price - there’s a good chance that we’ll keep the place afloat.
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restaurant example
01 / INTRODUCTION
As you can see there’s already a lot happening between

the time we take the commodity and get to the experience
level. There’s a lot of processes and stakeholders to consider
and understand. But don’t worry – we’ll break it all down and
be able to create the restaurant experience of our dreams.
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Now that you understand that we can shape experiences in our services and products I’d
like to highlight another dimension. Over the last few decades there’s been an unbelievable
increase in the scale of businesses. Some have fallen to give others room for growth and
with that growth came new challenges. Looking at bigger companies specifically ,but this
is also true for smaller players in the market, we can see an increase in the amount of ways
SUMMARY
summar y
01 / INTRODUCTION
businesses want to interact with their customers. In the past we used to have a few ways
to interact, we could make a phone-call, we could visit the place of business, we could
write an e-mail and maybe go to the companies landing page. Currently the situation has
dramatically changed – we have business mobile apps, functionality-driven web apps and
self-service areas, we have Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, SnapChat, WhatsApp,
LinkedIn, Viber, we have newsletters and e-mail marketing, call-centers and many, many
more. We can reach our customers in various places and they can do the same. The issue
is that each one of the aforementioned ways to interact needs a new company depart-
ment created ie. Social Media Department, Call-Center Department, Digital Transformation
Department, Branch Management Department, Marketing Department and again many,
many others. Each department has its own structure and leadership that unfortunately
very rarely tackles customer centric issues together as one team. It’s usually an internal
matter of each department – hence the only element combining these points of interaction
together is the customer trying to make sense of it all.
Have you ever been in a situation where the information given to you as a customer at
one point of interaction is different than the information given at the other? This is a very
quick give-away sign that the communication within the company you’re trying to interact
with has some issues to address. This is the point where Customer Centricity forming
a crucial part of the Design Thinking approach can play a key role in understanding and
confronting the issues at hand.
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We’ll address these issues in this course and cover them with diligence and focus. We’ll also
unravel the differences between the stakeholders, profiles and personas, so often misused
and misunderstood, in order for you to then take the information you’ve learned and apply
it in your daily design challenges.
AREAS OF
BUSINESS IMPACT
ARE AS OF BUSINESS IMPACT
01 / INTRODUCTION
There’s one misconception about Design Thinking that I would

like to highlight. I’ve seen the approach described in many
ways and unfortunately usually people throw everything into
the mix.
People say that if you apply DT to your business you’ll have

more customers, you’ll get more cash rolling in and your com-
pany is going to be more innovative. First of all it’s a poten-
tial not a result – you need to change the business mindset
enough to make things really change – the company needs
to be diligent and focused on HOW and most of all WHY they
want to change.
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Second of all we need to separate the business impacts and

treat them individually with the DT process. There are six
main areas of business impact I would like to highlight – I’m
sure there’s more but these I’ve found work very well to struc-
ture our approach. It’s also very useful when you start talking
to business people using a language they all understand.
revenue
01 / INTRODUCTION
There is a big potential to increase revenue for the business. It’s a combina-
tion of existing customer segment and new products and services for them.
In essence we want to create new value for our existing customers so that
they can buy more and thus generate more revenue for our company.
Restaurant example
Let’s imagine that our main customer is a family with young children. We undertake re-
search and find out that what they really come to our restaurant for is the atmosphere and
the peacefulness but whenever they are here with their kids – the kids get a little frustrated
and bored. Why don’t we include a new playground for the kids, additional personnel that
will take care of them while their parents are eating, additional places to eat specific for
the kids right next to the playground so that the kids are not running around the restaurant
between their meal and the playground, why don’t we create a junior masterchef programme
that will allow the kids to experience what it’s like to be a chef and cook for their parents?
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As you can see none of these ideas are about new dishes or the waiter looking nicer – it’s
about adding value and enriching the experience of our existing customers through under-
standing what they really care about.
customers
01 / INTRODUCTION
There is a big potential to increase the number of customers. This in turn

is a combination of new customer segments and existing products and ser-
vices. In essence we want to make sure that our existing offer is viable and
interesting to a new customer segment we’re trying to attract. This means
that our existing products and services need to be improved or adapted
to this new group of people.
Restaurant example
Let’s imagine that we’d like the younger generation to be part of our customer community.
We currently have a lot of families with children coming to our place and would like to open
our doors to this new exciting group. We find in our research that what they really value
is hanging out with friends, always being online but what’s key for them is honesty and
transparency of whatever service they’re using. Why don’t we take our existing restaurant
building and choose a time during the day maybe in the afterschool hours or evening, if
we’re targeting the older youngsters, and turn it into a space for them to relax and hang
out even without paying, including high speed internet, a new way to pay for their meals,
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including discounts and simple ways to divide the bill between them and their friends, why
don’t we give them the opportunity to use our restaurant audio system and put any music
they like from their Spotify and have a projector displaying their favorite YouTuber that they
can control and vote on using Instagram Voting. In essence let’s change the products and
services we already have to suit the needs of this particular customer group.
innovation
01 / INTRODUCTION
Innovation is usually highlighted as the main area of focus for the DT projects
or at least it’s being sold this way. Innovation to me is not solving people’s
problems, it’s changing the meaning of a business – this can span the entire
company, a division of that company or just focus on one product or service
but none the less it changes the meaning of whatever it touches.
Restaurant example
Let’s try and change the meaning of our restaurant. Let’s not try to be bigger, better, faster
or more efficient. Let’s try to be different. We’ll be looking at a specific method of how to get
there during our DT process but let’s give it a small shot now. Let’s try to imagine what it would
be like if the restaurant didn’t have a menu. This would mean that everyone coming in would
have to imagine what they’d like to eat using only a list of ingredients given by the waiter – it
would be the chef’s challenge to come up with a dish that uses the chosen ingredients. What
if there is no chef? Maybe people could be coming in and using the provided cooking stations
and cook for each other? As you can see when we’re trying to differentiate in this way we’re
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actually changing the meaning of a place that has so far been just another restaurant. Now
it’s becoming more interesting and some might say innovative.
employees
01 / INTRODUCTION
One area that is very often neglected are the company’s employees. The
people responsible for making sure that everything works as it should. In
order to have happy customers we need to have happy employees.
Restaurant example
Have you ever been to a restaurant that always has the nicest people working as waiters?
This means that someone in the organization understands that it’s the waiters, as well
as the people in the “back” preparing the meals, make the place what it is. They’re working
together as one team – some of them are customer facing some are not – they’re building
on each other’s strengths and delivering value for each other. The solutions here would solve
issues for those teams of people, the right ordering mechanism so that the kitchen knows
what they need to cook currently and what is planned, the right shift structure, the right
table management so that the waiters are not overwhelmed. Additionally we need to remem-
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ber that it’s not just the things that you need to take care of when people are at work but
make sure that you give them the right training, they have leaders instead of bosses above
them, they spend time away from work with each other - this will mean you’ll need to com-
mit to closing your restaurant for a few days a year to make that happen and many other
opportunities you might create to better the work environment for the people you employ.
margins
01 / INTRODUCTION
Once we generated more revenue and got more customers onboard we need
to make sure that the company remains profitable. This means we need
to look at what drives the costs of our services and products up, and what
we could do to simplify the processes and company structures surrounding
those, to make them easier to handle without the negative impact on the cus-
tomer experience. This very often ends up creating simplified services that
actually deliver more value to the customer.
Restaurant example
Let’s try and simplify the processes in a restaurant to make it more profitable. This very
often means either working very closely with the employees and giving them the right tools
for the job, automating the processes and sometimes transferring what the personnel was
responsible for, up to this point, to the customers themselves. This area is very often used
by existing restaurateurs as it’s easier for them to implement – it’s always easier to give work
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to others. This comprises the all you can eat self-service buffets, the customers taking their
food trays to a specific drop-off point and roughly cleaning them, the customers ordering
meals using mobile apps or restaurant stands, with a display that allows for interaction and
ordering as well as paying for what you’ve ordered before you’ve eaten it and many more.
social
01 / INTRODUCTION
responsibility
In the growing market we should never forget about the impact we’re having
on our local and global communities or on the environment. This is very often
a key aspect of decision-making by our customers – they choose our product
because we’re doing more than others to protect things that they care about.
Restaurant example
Restaurant example: I feel this area is now more current than ever – people take an enor-
mous care about what they eat and this can sometimes mean that we’ll need to cover all
the elements of our business model all the way to the commodities we buy that is the in-
gredients we use – not from the perspective of their quality but where they’re coming from.
Are the farmers being treated well and get a fair trade doing business with your restaurant?
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Do the meats you serve come from a partner that runs their business with integrity? Do
the people that work for your partner are being treated well as their employees or are being
mistreated and abused in some country you haven’t heard about? Are you using local farmers
having a positive impact on the local community or a global international partnership? All
these factors matter if this is the area you’re trying to build your competitive advantage on.
01 / INTRODUCTION
The Design Thinking process we’re about to go into in de-

tail needs to adapt with the designer’s mindset depending
on which area of the business we’re trying to affect. As you
can see the area we choose dramatically affects what kind
of products and services we’ll be designing. Each approach
will still need appropriate research to put every solution
through its paces and make sure it is designed in the right
context. Do we want the company to generate more growth
or do we want it to be friendlier to the environment? The
answer to this question matters greatly when designing new
services or improving existing ones.
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02 /
DESIGN
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE
DESIGN CHALLENGE
THIKING
IDEATION
PROTOTYPING
TESTING
IMPACT DELIVERY
PROCESS
INTRODUCTION
02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS
The Design Thinking process comes in many different

shapes and forms – you might have heard of process-
es that have 3, 5 or 6 steps with similar names, you
might’ve heard of the double-diamond and possibly
others. If you haven’t seen or heard anything that’s
also ok as I’d like to present my way of approaching
the subject.
The process that I find is the most useful and what’s

very important, comprehensive - actually has 7 steps.
Each of them subsequently builds value for the next
one with the full allowance for the iterative approach
we’ve discussed already.
So, without further ado – let’s dig right in. First let’s
have an overview of the entire process and identify
what is the purpose of each step and why it’s there.
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RESE ARCH SCENARIO
DESIGN CHALLENGE
DESIGN VISION
BUSINESS GOALS
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
ARCHETYPE CREATION

EXPERIENCE MAP OVERLAPS
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
PRIORITISATION
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
RESEARCH SCENARIO
RESEARCH METHODS TRANSFORMATION MET
IN - DEPH INTERVIEWS BRAINSTORMING
SYNTHESING INFORMA
IDEATION
ONLINE QUESTIONARE
AND PRIORIZING
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
DESIGN
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THINKING
PROCESS
STEPS
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
PROTOTYPING
MINDSET
TARGET EXPERIENCE
PROTOTYPE FOR TESTING
IMPACT DELIVERY
LOW FIDELY PROTOTYPING RESEARCH SCENARIO
HIGH FIDELY PROTOTYPING TESTING METHODS
OBSERVATIONS
SHADOWNIG
THOD
GUIRELLA INTERVIEWS
REVISITING THE ENTIRE PROCESS
ATION VALIDATION WORKSHOPS
TESTING
TO-BE EXPERIENCE MAP
MULTIPLE ITERATIONS SYNTHESIS
KPI
RISK FACTORS
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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BUSINESS
We need to start with a full understanding of the business context – we
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
need to know what kind of service or product are we dealing with. The
main reason for this step is to build a relevant and comprehensive view
HYPOTHESIS
of the design challenge. I would like to change the way these process steps
are usually described starting with the end result and then working our
way back to what and why needs to happen to get there. For this particu-
lar step we want to get to a very well-defined hypothesis that considers
the following questions:
WHAT ARE THE ACTIVITIES OR PROCESSES WE’D LIKE TO ASSESS TO FIND OUT WHERE
THE CURRENT PROBLEMS OCCUR?
WHO IS RELEVANT TO THESE ACTIVITIES BEING PROBLEMATIC?
WHY ARE THOSE ACTIVITIES THERE? WHAT KIND OF BUSINESS GOALS ARE THEY ACHIEVING?
WHY DO WE NEED TO ACHIEVE THESE BUSINESS GOALS?
WHAT IS THE UNDERLYING LONG-TERM MOTIVATION OF THE BUSINESS LEADERS?

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If we answer the above we’ll have a very good view of what the business
people care about, what are they trying to achieve and why but also who
is the key stakeholder that can help them get there.
CUSTOMER
Once the hypothesis is well defined we can start validating it. Usually what
happens is that we confirm some of the hypothesis, we bring new insights

about other parts and we find new elements that were missed in the first
PERSPECTIVE
stage of the design process. After all building your view of the design
challenge needs to look at both sides of the coin – the business as well
as the customer. For this step we need to authenticate the hypothesis an-
swering the following questions:
WHAT ARE THE KEY PROBLEMS AND NEEDS OF OUR END-CUSTOMER?
WHICH OF THE HYPOTHETICAL ACTIVITIES AND PROBLEMS WERE CORRECTLY

OR INCORRECTLY ASSESSED?
HOW DO WE QUANTIFY THE INSIGHTS WE GATHERED?

WHAT QUESTIONS DO WE NEED TO ASK TO GET THE RIGHT INSIGHTS?
WHO DO WE NEED TO TALK TO?

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WHAT METHOD SHOULD WE USE TO GATHER THE RESEARCH DATA?
The answers to the above questions will fully address the main goal of this stage –
the validation of the hypothesis. This will allow us to create an authentic view of what
is currently happening and get a comprehensive outlook on who our customers are.
DESIGN
DESIGN CHALLENGE
Now that we know what is actually happening we need to synthesize the in-
formation and prioritize it. A lot of the work has already been tackled while
undertaking the research but now it’s time to conclusively put it together
CHALLENGE
and define our design challenge. In order to do so we need to appropriately
organize the information answering the following questions:
WHAT IS THE KEY PROBLEM THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED?
HOW DO WE PRIORITIZE THE PROBLEMS?
WHICH OF THE PROBLEMS ARE KEY TO THE BUSINESS GOALS FULFILMENT?

WHICH OF THE PROBLEMS ARE KEY TO THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE?
HOW DO WE DEFINE THE PROBLEMS?
WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM OCCURRENCE?

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The answers to these questions will allow us to get to the bottom of the issues
that need to be resolved not only to improve customer experience but the bottom
line as well.
IDEATION
IDE ATION
It’s time to put our creative minds to work and come up with multiple ways
of dealing with the design challenges. There are many techniques to gen-
erate ideas and very often this is the beginning step for many businesses
– they start with the idea in mind never working through the previous steps.
It is essential for the idea to solve a meaningful problem - without it – it’s
just an idea. In order to answer the design challenge, we need to confront
the following questions:
WHICH OF THE MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS IS THE BEST AND WHY?
HOW DO WE PRIORITIZE THE SOLUTIONS?
WHICH OF THE SOLUTIONS HAVE THE BIGGEST POTENTIAL OF ADDRESSING THE DESIGN CHALLENGE?
WHICH OF THE SOLUTIONS IS THE SIMPLEST TO IMPLEMENT?
WHAT IS THE LEVEL OF DETAIL NEEDED FOR EACH SOLUTION IN ORDER TO ASSESS ITS COMPLEXITY?
HOW DO WE GENERATE MULTIPLE APPEALING SOLUTIONS?

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Answering these questions will lead onto the path of great discovery combined with
the practical and pragmatic approach to delivery. It’s a combination of creativity
flying high and the appropriate use of constructive criticism. but the bottom line
as well.
PROTOTYPING
PROTOTYPING
We need to bring the best solutions to life. Although this stage is not about
creating the target product or service, it definitely is about trying to con-
vey the target experience. It’s our best shot at delivering what we can with
minimum investment in time and resources to create a tangible prototype
of the solution. Our main goal is to craft something that we can put in front
of our customers. At this stage of the process we need to reply to the fol-
lowing questions:
HOW ARE GOING TO CREATE THE TARGET EXPERIENCE?
WHAT TOOLS AND MATERIALS DO WE NEED?
HOW WILL THE PROTOTYPE INTERACT WITH THE CUSTOMERS?
WHERE WILL THE PROTOTYPE BE USED?

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Once we have responded to these we can rest assured that the prototypes we create
will deliver the meaningful insights we’re looking for. After all we want to re-evaluate
and refine how the target product should look like at this early stage.
TESTING
TESTING
It’s time to put the prototypes we’ve created to work and find out how they’re
being used. We’re trying to gather as much insight about what needs to be
improved and what just won’t work. This is the stage where one of the most
difficult things we need to learn is to let go – we need to be willing to ter-
minate any of the ideas that don’t work. To make this efficient we need
to answer these questions:
WHAT SHOULD BE IMPROVED FOR THE SOLUTION TO DELIVER THE VALUE?
WHICH OF THE SOLUTIONS WON’T WORK?
HOW DO WE GATHER THE INSIGHTS FROM THE EXPERIMENTS?
WHAT ELEMENTS OF THE SOLUTIONS ARE WE TRYING TO VALIDATE?

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This will create a final list of validated solutions that should make their way
to the forthcoming view of the service or product. Some of them will require more
work and the list of recommendations will tell us exactly what needs to happen.
IMPACT
IMPACT DELIVERY
We get to the final stage where everything we’ve done so far needs to be
put together. We revisit the entire list of subsequent events that led us here
– each one adding more value to the process. The main goal of this step
DELIVERY
is to visualize what the future of the customer exper ience looks like. We
need to integrate what we’ve learned into the current business ecosystem
and make sure that this new additional value doesn’t damage what’s already
working. We’re operating on a live organism and it takes finesse to make
things happen. We must answer the following questions at this final stage:
HOW WILL THE TARGET EXPERIENCE CHANGE IF WE IMPLEMENT THE SOLUTIONS?
WHICH BUSINESS GOALS WILL BE ACHIEVED BY WHICH SOLUTION?
HOW DO WE MEASURE THE ACHIEVEMENT OF THE GOALS?

IS THE ORGANIZATION READY FOR THE IMPLEMENTATION?
WHAT DO WE NEED TO WATCH OUT FOR WHILE IMPLEMENTING AND MAINTAINING THESE NEW SOLUTIONS?
WHO WILL BENEFIT THE MOST AFTER THE IMPLEMENTATION?

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This concludes the entire Design Thinking process. As you can see there’s quite a lot
of questions that need addressing and each one of them takes a while to tackle.
We will cover all the methods of how to answer them and get from the very early
Business Hypothesis all the way to the finished outlook at the exciting future ahead.
DESIGN THINKING
PROCESS
SUMMARY
Let’s review what we’ve learned about the goals of each step in the process:
1. The main goal of Business Hypothesis is to create a tangible picture of what the business challenge is.
2. The Customer Perspective’s goal is to validate the hypothesis so that any future design work is based
on facts.
3. Design Challenge is here to create a concrete definition of the problems so that we know what needs to be
resolved.
4. The main goal of the Ideation stage is to generate as many ideas as possible to then prioritize them with
the biggest potential in mind
5. The Prototyping stage is here to bring the ideas to life so that we can refine them even more through working
on them in detail
6. Testing plays a key role in investigating what works and what doesn’t work – the main goal is to filter the best
solutions out of the ordinary ones and improve them
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7. Impact Delivery has one specific goal in mind – prepare the business for the new changes that are about
to come and look at them from many different perspectives.
This summarizes how I look at the Design Thinking process. I specifically used slightly
different terms for the stage names as I wanted to capture the key elements that
define each step. You now know more than a lot of designers out there and because
you fully understand what are the goals of each stage of the process, you can use
the experience you gain and start designing your own tools. Before we get there
though let’s dig right into the next chapters of the course and cover all the details
of the approach. Each step of the process will begin with the outline of all the tools
and materials needed for each stage as well as responses to the following questions:
• Who should be involved at this stage of the process?
• How many people should be a part of the project both

from the Client’s side and the design team? All of the above will give you a good understand-
ing of what to expect at each phase and who you
• How much time is needed to deliver the results?
should be in contact with. This dramatically helps
• What are the goals of the activities? with managing the project as well as expectations.
I really care about the time you have and I really value
• Where should they take place? the fact that you sent this time with me. This wraps
up the first major section of training.
• What kind of preparation is required by the participants?
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For some of you I believe this should be enough to get

out there and start designing the world around you
– if you feel like you need more information please
stay and listen further – we will now dive deep into
each one of the steps.I’ve mentioned with practical
tools showing you how to use them in all the details
with a pragmatic business case example.
The business
the business context
Since we’ve mentioned this business in many examples so far, I would like
to continue with it as we go through each step of the Design Thinking pro-
cess so that we can have something tangible and practical to talk about.
context Let’s imagine that an existing restaurant owner reaches out to us and asks
if we could help him out with his business. The restaurant is profitable
and makes the ends meet but not without effort. It competes with other
restaurants in its vicinity and focuses on the fresh products and delicious
dishes. It’s a reasonably spacious place located in a mid-sized city with
approx. 500 thousand inhabitants. It’s a fairly touristy place with access
to the sea. The restaurant is located in the older part of the city not too far
from the coastline. Their usual customers are local families with children
but they would like to try and figure out a way to be more attractive and
visible for the tourists that visit the city – or so they think.
They’ve heard something about creative ways

of thinking through problems but have no idea where
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to start. Sound familiar? Great! Let’s get things done!

03 /
BUSI-
DESIGN VISION
• introduction
• the tool
NESS
BUSINESS GOALS
• introduction
• the tool - SMARTER method
HYPOTH-
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
• introduction
• the tool
ESIS
ARCHETYPE CREATION
• introduction

• Introduction
• Restaurant example
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS SUMMARY

03 / BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
Before we start building the Business Hypothesis let’s

first review a few questions so that we know what
to expect.
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01 / Who should be involved
at this stage of the process?

This is a very strategic phase of the process and therefore we should involve
people that are responsible for the direction and decision making at the com-
pany. For bigger size organizations this might involve either the C-level staff,
Director or mid-management depending on the project but there’s one com-
mon thing to consider – the people you invite should have the knowledge
about the area we’re trying to affect with the project. Additionally, what is
very important they should have a broad understanding about how the en-
tire business works and have just as broad of a perspective when looking
at things.
Restaurant example
This is not a big company but the assumption is the same. We’re going to invite the owner,
the chef, the restaurant manager, person responsible for accounting, person from Human
Resources, someone responsible for the waiter onboarding and training, IT Specialist as well
as the marketing director. This will form our imaginary Executive Team. Each of these
people has a broad understanding of what the business is all about but are very focused
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on their own area of expertise. All of these different perspectives will have a huge impact
on the value of the discussions around the table.
02 / How many people should be
a part of the project both

from the Client’s side and
the design team?
Depending on the size of the project and the company this could vary but
generally I would recommend inviting 5-8 people to his kind of discussions.
If there is a need to invite more people we need to divide them into smaller
groups of 5-8 people in order to manage the discussions.
Restaurant example
We have invited 8 people from different areas of the company that will form one workshop
team tackling the challenges as we go.
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03 / How much time is needed
to deliver the results?

This vastly depends on the complexity of the issues at hand and the availa-
bility of the Executive Team, but in ideal scenario we could get things done
over a 2-day workshop and then synthesize the gathered information in 2-3
days. Obviously, you can shorten that time and do everything a 1 day work-
shop with the synthesis being very rough around the edges and hanging
on the wall. You’ll need to judge what your Executive Team is happy with
as far as the deliverables are concerned. Also, please remember that you
need time to prepare the tools and materials and the teams beforehand so
that you don’t waste any time during you workshop.
Restaurant example
I would really try to get to the bottom of every little thing to get the most value out of the Ex-
ecutive Team and go for a two-day workshop even if that meant we needed to shorten
the working sessions to 4 hours a day – it’s great to have that additional day to ask new
meaningful questions and have a space to sleep on some of the things that were discussed.
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04 / What kind of preparation is
required by the participants?

Participants also mean your Design Team – don’t worry if you don’t have
a massive team behind you – you’ll be able to tackle all the steps in the pro-
cess on your own if needed. So far, we have the Executive Team and the De-
sign Team – there will be new project stakeholders showing up here and there
once we progress further.
The preparation needed by the The preparation needed by the

Design Team comprises: Executive Team comprise the following:
• Finding out more about the area both physically and digitally, • Each person on the team must do a little bit of soul-searching to get to the grips
where the business takes place and its immediate competitors. of what they really care about when it comes to the business they’re a part of. It’s
not an easy task and we’ll dive into how to make it easier for them.
• Finding out more about the sector and if there have been any
recent disruptions or innovations we should know about. • They need to get their affairs in order beforehand so that they’re not distracted
during the workshop – we need their focus and attention – they need to be present
• Finding out more about the people you’ll be working with – how
and active. No laptops, no mobile phones – they need to prepare for it – it’s not easy
long have they been at the company, what are their interests and
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to let these things go. If it’s a two-day workshop we’ll provide them with proper
passions, what is their past experience, what is their skillset.
breaks to do their emails and phone-calls but once we’re working - we’re committed
• Finding out more about what is being said about the company to delivery.
online and physically go there is possible.
05 / What are the goals
of the activities?
We covered this subject already but because it’s very important let’s review
it once again. The goal is to address all of the questions below:
• What are the activities or processes we’d like to assess to find out where the current
problems occur?
• Who is relevant to these activities being problematic?
• Why are those activities there? What kind of business goals are they achieving?
• Why do we need to achieve these business goals? What is the underlying long-term
motivation of the business leaders?
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In order to get to the answers, I’ve picked appropriate tools
to get us there so hang in there and let’s dig right in. We’re go-
ing to start with defining the Design Vision which is a great
way to structure the long-term motivation of the business
leaders. We can turn it into a beacon of reason to which we
can always revert when we feel lost to remind ourselves
what is the overarching promise we want to keep. This
promise is for both the Executive and the Design Teams
to deliver – it unites us in the Design Thinking battle. Once
we get beyond the design vision we need to identify key busi-
ness goals that when achieved will turn that vision into reality.
When that’s done we’ll move straight into stakeholder mapping
to find out who are the key stakeholders. Afterwards it com
es time to identify all of the activities that affect these stake-
holders on the journey towards our business goals through
the creation of the Business Hypothesis. I know it might sound
a little overwhelming but once we get into the details you’ll
see, it really is not.
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DESIGN VISION
introduction
DESIGN VISION
INTRODUCTION
We begin with the Design Vision – It’s usually hard to define but it is something that makes
a massive difference in the way that customers look at your company and your brand. It
There are multiple examples we could go through
requires time not only to define the vision but also make it tangible in the marketplace. Let’s
from various sectors in the market to illustrate that
give a couple of examples. Let’s take a company like Ford. Would you associate this company
- it’s hard to put a name to what the vision of those
with a vision of being the biggest innovator in the automotive sector? I guess your answer
companies is – but we know that deep down there is
would be NO. Well if we look at Ford now I guess you’d be right, but let’s look at the same
a significant difference in a way they do business and
company and its founder at the beginning of the 20th century. While it wasn’t Henry Ford
achieve success. Let’s have a look at Harley Davidson
who invented the car it was certainly him who made it accessible to a wider audience. Ford
and Honda Motorcycles – both successful – totally
was the cutting edge of innovation when it comes to automobiles – they’ve created their own
different visions and customers. Let’s look at Apple
car concept in the form of Model T and were the first who optimized its mass production –
and Microsoft – both successful – totally different
pretty innovative wouldn’t you say? Let’s keep going with another association – would you
visions and customers.
associate Ford with the vision of Freedom or Movie Glamour? Again, I guess your answer
would be NO. But again, if we look at Ford in the 60s and 70s the company grew exponen-
tially with the sales of their Mustang in the US – the icon of true freedom and being driven
by multiple movie stars and celebrities – it was a huge hit of the 60s and 70s – in fact Ford
needed to limit their production not to surpass the 60% of market share due to the huge
53 / 253
fines they would incur if they did. Currently the vision of the company is summed up into
It all starts with a vision and believe me -
one sentence is „make people’s lives better” and I really wonder – is this something you’d say
is accurate with the way you see Ford as a brand today. Now I don’t know if the visions I’ve words have power.
described for specific time periods of Ford were consciously designed or not, but it does
help to illustrate the fact that it can change the way your customers see you.
THE TOOL
the tool
DESIGN VISION
Ok. Enough theory – let’s dig right into the tool. We can define the vision using a tool
called the Magazine Cover – we design a front cover of a main-stream magazine
10-20 years into the future. This time-frame allows us to grasp the right perspective
– the long-term aspiration of the Executive Team that is sitting around the table.
The tool is built around a lot of different associations because it’s difficult to define
what the vision of a company, service or a product actually is. We can use the fol-
lowing areas of association:
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CREATING YOUR LONG-TERM MOTIVATION
4 / EMPLOYEES
employees quotes
THE DESIGN VISION

What do you want your employees to feel when they’re at work?
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
1 / IMAGES
images that
relate to your vision
5 / WILDLIFE
You need to allow for as much
creativity as possible here so wildlife
that people can open up to how
they feel about their own aspi-
Which animal or plant would you pick to represent your
rations.
company and what value do you feel it represents?
6 / NATURE FORM
nature form
This is where we use what we know from geography, we associate the vision
with massive icebergs, meandering rivers, solid mountains, quite valleys etc.
2 /COMPANIES
companies
in other sectors
Who do you want to be like and

why? – do you want to be the Ap-
ple of or the Uber of or the AirB-
nB of or IKEA of your sector etc.
7 / DESIGN VISION
55 / 253
3 / CUSTOMERS
customer quotes How would you summarise the vision in one sentence?
What do you want your custom-

ers to say about you?
Images – what kind of images relate to your vision
the tool
DESIGN VISION
– you need to allow for as much creativity as pos-

sible here so that people can open up to how they
feel about their own aspirations
Companies in other sectors – who do you want

to be like and why – do you want to be the Apple
of or the Uber of or the AirBnB of or IKEA of etc.
Customer quotes – what do you want your cus-

tomers to say about you
Employees – what do you want your employees

to feel when they’re at work
Wildlife – which animal or plant would you pick
to represent your company and what value do you
feel it represents – there’s a lot of associations that
we have developed over the years and they usu-
ally help. Someone could choose a turtle and all
of its associations like wisdom or how slow it is,
some people could pick an elephant for its memory
and family values, some could pick apple as being
the fruit of creation
56 / 253
Nature form – this is where we use what we know

from geography, we associate the vision with mas-
sive icebergs, meandering rivers, solid mountains,
quite valleys, rainy forests, desolate deserts etc.
Each one of those associations has a different story behind
the tool
DESIGN VISION
it, a different environment and might trigger a thought that

will help with the definition of the long-term aspiration. What
I would usually do is give these associations as a preparation
exercise approx. a week before the workshop takes place
so that the Executive Team has time to look around their
immediate environment, do some soul-searching and look
for a deeper meaning of why they’re a part of the business
they’re trying to change and how would they express the end
state of that transformation.
Once you meet the Executives on your workshop all you need to do is give them
the opportunity to individually present what they’ve found in their pursuits and
how they’d visualize it. After each participant has presented their vision it’s time
to have an open group discussion and try to synthesize it into a Magazine Cover.
You can put it all together using all those associations and summarizing it into
one main sentence, a main photograph as well as a few quotes and highlights. It’s
not really about the visual representation or the words – it’s just a mind trick – it’s
57 / 253
really about the discussion the Executive Team has, that leads to everyone being
on the same page regarding the design vision. A great tool for this currently you
could use is FotoJet.com or Canva.com - both let you design magazine covers on-
line. You could also go properly old-school and use markers, some glue and paper
and leave it on the canvas itself. You can use as many associations as you need or
might come up with but the ones I’ve specified usually work pretty well for me – and
hey – it’s supposed to be fun.
RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
0 34 / BC U S ITNOEMSESR HPYEPROSTPHEECSTI ISV E
Using what we’ve just learned let’s apply that to our restaurant business. Let’s
imagine that our executive team has spent some time with the guidelines for asso-
ciation use, and now it’s the time they present the results. I’m going to go through
the actual results so that we can try and synthesize them together.
58 / 253
CREATING YOUR LONG-TERM MOTIVATION
4 / EMPLOYEES
employees quotes
THE DESIGN VISION

“These guys are

“I was scared that the “The dishes we pre- “Working with
really switched on
youngsters coming pare are so much young people was
regarding the tech
01 /
in are going to wreck more fun to prepare great – it allowed us

stuff and it’s much
the place – I’m pretty and there’s far less to understand their
easier to sort out
mindset better and
1 / IMAGES amazed they didn’t.” complaints.”
worry less.”
payments and bills
with them.”
images that
You need to allow for as much 5 / WILDLIFE

creativity as possible here so wildlife
they feel about their own aspi-
rations.
Cheetah Potato Chameleon Palm tree
6 / NATURE FORM
nature form
2 /COMPANIES
companies
in other sectors

Sea Beach Sunny vineyard
AirBnB Uber Spotify Snapchat
7 / DESIGN VISION
final vision
3 / CUSTOMERS
How would you summarise the vision in one sentence?
customer quotes

ers to say about you?
“Really great “They’re open to “We always
“Feeling that, young people – you
place that go there after
I can really Together looking
understands don’t have to pay and school – some-
trust these towards sunny
what i want they let you hang out times even
guys” future.
and who i am” and spend time.” during school“
images
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
We’ve received quite a few image examples from the team:

1 / IMAGES
4 / EM
images that
relate to your vision emp
What
• Young girl waiting for the bus with her face stuck in her phone – always connected creativity as possible here so
they feel about their own aspi- “I wa
with her friends rations. youn

in ar
the p
ama
• Youngster riding on roller-skates with huge headphones on, with their cap supporting
5 / WIL
the local team – mindful of what he wears – wants to be fashionable wild
Which
Couple of friends coming back from school smiling and hanging out together – they
comp
•
can trust each other and count on each other
• Hanging out on the beach in the afternoon – they love the outdoors
2 /COMPANIES 6 / NAT
• Hanging out in a nearby skatepark with some huge skateboard doing tricks that are companies
in other sectors
natu
This i
being filmed by other friends to be put on social sites – want to be famous Who do you want to be like and
with m

• Eating out with friends with a lot of laughs – good juicy healthy’ish foods – they’re
young – they don’t need to worry soooo much about what they eat – although it would
be great if someone considered it in a transparent way
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7 / DES
• Sitting on a grass with a laptop on and some music playing on the headphones 3 / CUSTOMERS
final
How w
customer quotes

ers to say about you? “They’re open to “We always
“Really great
I can really don’t have to pay and
understands school – some-
trust these they let you hang out
what i want times even
guys” and spend time.”
and who i am” during school“
companies
1 / IMAGES
4 / EMPLO
images that
relate to your vision employe
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
What do yo
creativity as possible here so
they feel about their own aspi- “I was sca
rations. youngste
in are goi
in other sector
the place
amazed t
5 / WILDL
wildlife
Which anim
company a
Ch
2 /COMPANIES 6 / NATUR
The team did an excellent job of finding other companies they aspire to be:
companies nature fo
in other sectors
This is whe
with massi
• AirBnB – we like that every home can be a hotel – we feel that in some way you could
bring us with you and your home can become a restaurant
• Uber – we want to make the experience seamless – specifically when it comes 7 / DESIG
final visi
to paying for our services and always being at an arm’s length 3 / CUSTOMERS
customer quotes How would
• Spotify – we like the fact that there’s so much value for such a little price – the sub-
“Really great
I can really Toget
towa
scription model is definitely relevant to us but we have no idea how to use it

trust these they let you hang out
what i want times even
guys” futur
• Snapchat – it’s all about the photo and video content – we don’t want to be left
behind
• TikTok – we want to give the stage to our younger generation so that they can
61 / 253
explore themselves and find the true artist within – we also know that music is a big
part of who they are
• Apple – we love the way it’s always about being different rather than better – we
want to be different as well
relate to your vision employees
What do you
they feel about their own aspi- “I was scare
rations. youngsters
in are going
the place –
amazed the
5 / WILDLI
wildlife
customer quotes
Which anima
company an
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
Che
2 /COMPANIES 6 / NATUR
companies nature for
in other sectors
This is where
with massive
This is where we look at our future business with our customer’s eyes: S
• “it’s really great that I can finally be in a place that understands what I want and who 7 / DESIGN
final vision
I am” 3 / CUSTOMERS
customer quotes How would y
• “I just feel like I can really trust these guys” ers to say about you?
“Really great
place that
“Feeling that,
“They’re open to
young people – you
“We always
go there after
Togeth
I can really don’t have to pay and
understands school – some-
trust these toward
guys” future.
and spend time.”
“They’re just so open to young people – you don’t even have to pay and they let you
and who i am” during school“
•
hang out and spend time – it’s very unique”
• “we always go there after school – sometimes even during school“
• “having a place that we can hang out when the weather sucks is really great”
• “it’s so cool that they let us control the place and make it our own”
• “how did they come up with all this stuff – I’ve never been to a restaurant like this”
• “when it’s time to do homework I like to do it on my own terms – but sometimes

I would really love to have someone close to me to help me out when I’m struggling”
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employees quotes
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
A new young customer group might be quite challenging to handle but this
time the Executive Team did a fantastic job:
1 / IMAGES
• “I was really scared that the youngsters coming
imagesinthat are going to wreck the place – I’m
4 / EMPLOYEES
employees quotes
pretty amazed they didn’t – they’re actually pretty laid back and easygoing”

“These guys are
they feel about their own aspi- “Working with
“The dishes we prepare are so much more fun to prepare and there’s far less com-
“I was scared that the “The dishes we pre-
•
really switched on
rations. youngsters coming pare are so much young people was
regarding the tech
plaints from these guys”

easier to sort out
amazed they didn’t.” complaints.” mindset better and
payments and bills
worry less.”
with them.”
• “It’s awesome that we can talk freely with these guys without the Sir and M’am ap- 5 / WILDLIFE
wildlife
proach thanks to the proper communication set up by restaurant management – this Which animal or plant would you pick to represent your
is great we feel like a great big happy family”
“working together with the young people as part of our new training sessions was
Cheetah Potato Chameleon Palm tree
•
great – it allowed us to understand their mindset better and worry less”
2 /COMPANIES 6 / NATURE FORM
companies nature form
• “Thanks to these guys being really switched on regarding the tech stuff it’s sooo
in other sectors
much easier to sort out payments and bills with them than it is with our usual cus-
tomers”
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7 / DESIGN VISION
final vision
3 / CUSTOMERS
customer quotes

“Really great
guys” future.
wildlife
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
1 / IMAGES
4 / EMPLOYEES
images that
relate to your vision employees quotes

Now let’s see how did they manage to use these kind of associations – more
“These guys are
they feel about their own aspi- “I was scared that the “The dishes we pre- “Working with
really switched on
rations. pare are so much young people was
abstract and weirder for some definitely:

youngsters coming regarding the tech
easier to sort out
payments and bills
worry less.”
with them.”
5 / WILDLIFE
• Cheetah – thanks to new technological and process improvements and a new young wildlife
customer group we feel like the company is much more agile and just works faster
• Potato – it’s so adaptable and there’s so many things you can cook with it – we feel Cheetah Potato Chameleon Palm tree
like we can adapt to any new challenge with the right treatment and approach
• Chameleon – we want to be invisible to the companies
human eye – we’re just a scene for nature form
in other sectors
the best moments of your life to be played – we’re not pushy but we are listening

Palm tree – we want you to feel like you’re always on vacation whenever you’re
• AirBnB Uber Spotify Snapchat
visiting our space

7 / DESIGN VISION
final vision
3 / CUSTOMERS
customer quotes

“Really great
“Feeling that,
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place that young people – you go there after

guys” future.
1 / IMAGES
nature form
4 / EMPLOYEES
images that
relate to your vision employees quotes
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION

“These guys are
they feel about their own aspi- “I was scared that the “The dishes we pre- “Working with
really switched on
rations. youngsters coming pare are so much young people was
regarding the tech
easier to sort out
payments and bills
worry less.”
with them.”
5 / WILDLIFE
wildlife

It’s time for the big one – how did our team deal with this area of association
– as it turns out – brilliantly: Cheetah Potato Chameleon Palm tree

• Sea – it’s the ultimate freedom – if you know companies
where you’re going that’s enough –
in other sectors
nature form
there’s a million ways to get there – just stay the course’ish

• Beach – the sand may be coarse but you can shape it into any form, given the right
tools – we want to be this way as a company
• Sunny vineyard – we want you to feel peaceful and safe and that you can always
7 / DESIGN VISION
trust us like we’re the long-gone part of your family
3 / CUSTOMERS
final vision

customer quotes

“Really great
guys” future.
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restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
As you can see the Executive team has done a great job
of coming up with multiple exciting associations to define
the future of their business. Now it’s time to synthesize
the information into something we’ll be able to put our finger
on every step of the way throughout the design process. It
will be our guiding light towards the shiny future we all hope
to create. It’s time to give some time to the team to put their
heads together and discuss the ideas and come back to us
with a consistent story but let’s help them out a little and try
to cluster these elements together so that they just need
to sort out a few things that might not fit together to well
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or even be contradicting. What we want them to come back

with is the following:
Main tagline of the vision – one sentence that summarizes the en-
restaurant example
DESIGN VISION
•
tire discussion – it can be short and simple – the team has discussed all
of the aspects that go into it so that they know exactly what it means
• Main photograph – we need to pick an image that best represents

what the vision is all about – if we can’t find it online or in a stack of old
magazines we take to the workshop we can create a stick-figure drawing
– it’s just a visual representation of what we mean
• Key Quotes – we pick from the key customer and employees quotes
to have this aspect covered as well – we never forget about the people
behind the vision
• Key Highlights – A couple of additional sentences summarizing the ma-

jor values that this vision brings
Great! We’ve got the Design Vision in our hands – we’re already making great pro-
gress and know much more about what the business aspirations are. Believe me
– this is a crucial step – I’ve been involved in many projects that lacked this step
and every time we’d run into a decision to be made – the Executive Team was all
over the place when it comes to what their motivations are.
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BUSINESS GOALS
introduction
BUSINESS GOALS
INTRODUCTION
Having a design vision is a massive leap forward but it’s very rarely tangible. We need to have
a way to quantify it into something concrete. This is where business goals come in very
handy. There’s a lot of different models of how to define business goals but again I would like
to give you the one that works really well for me. It’s called SMART Goals. It allows you to fully
understand what the goal is, who is responsible for it as well as which area of the business
does it affect. The main purpose is to not only define the goals but also make sure that
they somehow are adequate to the design vision – this is the additional challenge we’ll be
tackling at this stage.
Trying to design new value for a business is really difficult without

goals. Think of it this way – you can have the best ship and the best
tools and the best crew but if the captain doesn’t know where to go
– they will just drift around. We need a compass that will determine
how and when we’ll get to our destination.
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We have a dream but we need goals – these need to be short-term and long-term –
they need to me monthly, quarterly, yearly goals that we put in front of ourselves.
If the time-frame is too long – the goal will fade over time – it needs to be tangible
and actionable.
THE TOOL – SMARTER METHOD
the tool - smarter method
BUSINESS GOALS
The tool is built around an abbreviation SMART – there’s an extended version

of the tool called SMARTER and I think it would be great if we’ve covered the ex-
tended version. So, let’s break it down into what each letter means and why it’s
going to help us to define concrete business goals.
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DEFINING
THE GOALS
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
ACTING ON THE VISION
S M A R T
specific measurable assignable realistic time-related
Name the specifi c area of the Specify the level of impact you’ll Name the person resopnsible Check your track record and the Define when do you want to
business you want to impact. be measuring - 3% | 30% | 300% for the achievement of the goal. competitors. achieve the goal - 6 | 12 | 36
months
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KEY GOAL
key business goal
Choose one business goal and re-write it here.

Letter “S” – stands for Specific. In order to make
BUSINESS GOALS
the goal Specific we need to address the following

questions:
Which area of the business will this affect?
As you know there’s a lot of areas in a business

and this is one of the many reasons it’s important
to have people from multiple fields on your work-
shop. Each person should know in detail how their
area works and what could be improved. The exam-
ples of areas would include, Sales, Customer Loy-
alty, Service Quality, Costs Structure, Social Media,
Brand Awareness and many more.
Is there room for interpretation?
We must have an unequivocal definition of the area

that doesn’t leave any room for interpretation.
Everyone on the team must fully understand what
the specific area of the business is.
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Letter “M” – stands for Measurable. In order
BUSINESS GOALS
to make the goal Measurable we need to answer

the following:
How will we know that we’ve reached the goal?
This means putting a number against the goal. After

all we can’t measure if we don’t have a quantified
benchmark. This is sometimes difficult to address
for business people but the main purpose is to un-
derstand the scale of the achievement. We don’t
need to have a precise percentage like 27% - what
we need to understand is the level of magnitude – is
it 3%, is it 30% or is it 300%. Obviously if the busi-
ness has a record of its achievements in the past
and very specific numbers are available then by all
means let’s make this as precise as possible.
Is it an increase or a decline of a specific area?
We must specify the direction of the goal – do we

want a specific area to be increased by a given
number like Sales or Customer Loyalty or do we
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want to bring the number down like in the context

of Costs or Customer Complaints.
Letter “A” – stands for Assignable – I’ve explic-
BUSINESS GOALS
itly changed this letter from its usual description

being either Achievable or Ambitious. The question
below will specify why:
Who is responsible for the achievement of the goal?
This is extremely important to address as in many

cases this responsibility spreads over the manage-
ment structure and trickles down the organization-
al chart. It becomes a group responsibility and if
everyone is responsible – no one is responsible.
Is this the right stakeholder?
We must make sure that each goal has its own-

er and that the owner is excited to have the goal
in their hands. Sometimes it’s difficult to assign
the owner due to organizational constraints and
processes and multiple stakeholders affecting
the goal – nevertheless it needs to happen.
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Letter “R” – stands for Realistic – this is a re-
BUSINESS GOALS
ality check for the business and needs to address

the following:
Do we have enough resources and time to deliver

this goal?
This allows us to bring the goal closer to the ground

and have a pragmatic look at it. We need to be con-
fident that it’s credible and we’ve achieved similar
goals in the past.
How ambitious are we?
It’s not about defining goals that are easy to achieve

– we need to aspire to more and be impressed by
the goal. There’s a fine line between the goal be-
ing realistic and ambitious enough to tackle it –
the workshop will help you get there.
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Letter “T” – stands for Time-related – now it’s
BUSINESS GOALS
time to start the alarm clock and look at each goal

with a plan for its delivery using these questions:
When do we plan to achieve the goal?
The more accurate the time the better the out-

come. There needs to be an unmovable point in time
that we’ll be monitoring against. It’s difficult to put
a date stamp in but thanks to the work we’ve don’t
so far it should be a little easier.
Should we deliver it in stages?
If the task is too big for the Executive Team to han-

dle with a given Timeframe – maybe it’s best to de-
liver the goal in stages working their way back from
the achievement. If we give ourselves 2 years for
success – what needs to happen over the next few
months so that we know that we’re on the right
track?
What time-frames should we use?

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The intervals we use vary depending on the goal

but in my experience it’s best to use months, quar-
ters and years to a maximum of 3 years and even
then, break it down to something more tangible like
quarterly goals
Letter “E” – stands for Exciting – this is the mo-
BUSINESS GOALS
ment where we come back to our Design Vision

which motivates us from the very start and answer
the following:
Are we enthusiastic about the delivery of the goal?
By no means should any goal be neutral – we need

to feel inspired to go after it – otherwise we won’t
get very far. It needs to validate that by its delivery
we move closer towards our design vision.
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Letter “R” – stands for Recorded – this is the ac-
BUSINESS GOALS
tivity we’re being a part of during the workshop

– we’re recording our conversations on pieces of pa-
per. It requires a proper synthesis after the work-
shop and getting commitment from the Executive
Team on the delivery. It’s a commitment they give
to themselves – we’re just the helping hand.
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BUSINESS GOALS
After the in-depth discussions we usually end up with, quite a numerous list
of business goals. We need to prioritize them in accordance with one element
– the fulfilment of the Design Vision. The way I recommend you do this is
drawing a horizontal axis with the Design Vision at the end. You take the first
goal and put it on the wall – its location on the wall determines the scale
of the axis. Next goals you consider will either be more impactful or lead
you more astray from your Design Vision. Therefore, the goals will either be
closer to the vision or further away from it. Once you’ve done this exercise you
pick the top business goal and this wraps up this stage of the process. You
can obviously consider taking more goals to the next stage but for the sake
of this course I’ll keep things simple so that we don’t get overwhelmed with
the amount of content.
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RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
BUSINESS GOALS
Since I’d like this training to be adaptable to the future students let’s
create a benchmark date which would be the end of the Restaurant
DT project – it’s a specific but a relative date and it will work for
this exercise. The Executive team sat down together and listed out
the following business goals. Let’s break down the first goal and then
20% (Measurable) of our current customer base to be made up of young
follow up with the next ones.
people (Specific) within 12 months from the end of the Restaurant DT project
(Time-related) assigned to the Restaurant Management (Assignable). The
Executive Team acquired other customer groups in the past through promo-
tional activities (Realistic). It targets young people who form the crucial
part of the Design Vision (Exciting). It has been written down and signed
off (Recorded).
40% increase in the social media chatter about our restaurant in the local
area within 6 months from the end of the Restaurant DT project assigned
to Marketing Department
30% increase in restaurant brand awareness among young people in the city
within 9 months from the end of the Restaurant DT project assigned to Mar-
keting Department
20% increase in the kitchen efficiency 3 months from the end of the res-
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taurant DT project assigned to the Kitchen Chef
30% increase in the service quality among young people 12 months from
the end of the restaurant DT project assigned to the Waiter Management
20% increase in the online orders within 12 months from the end of the res-
taurant DT project assigned to the IT Specialist
restaurant example
BUSINESS GOALS
Please note that we’re not specifying how we’ll

measure the achievement of the goals we’re only
saying what will be the result. We’ll cover all aspects
of how we’ll make sure those are delivered during
the last stage of the process the Impact Delivery
– at this stage it’s too early to get to that level of de-
tail. For the sake of the course we’ll pick the first
business goal.
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STAKEHOLDERS
MAPPING
introduction
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
INTRODUCTION
It’s time to look at the stakeholders in the project. We know what we’re trying to achieve
but who are the crucial people we should consider. There’s lot of stakeholders surrounding
the business. There are people we partner with as a business, there are our customers and
many others. I usually define two main groups of stakeholders:
Internal Stakeholders – in essence these are External Stakeholders – these are the people and
the people and business relationships you are able business relationships that are out of your control.
to control. These are your business partnerships, These are your current customers, these are the cus-
people you count on delivering the products you sell, tomers you’re trying to attract, these are influential
people responsible for your advertising, these are personalities that can affect your brand, these are
your employees, these are companies that provide your competitors, these are local and global author-
services that could be a potential link to your busi- ities, these are administration and educational in-
ness, these are your potential business partners that stitutions.
could create new opportunities and services
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The idea is to keep the list as broad and exciting
as possible within the context of our business goals
and the design vision. You might run into some
overlaps in the aforementioned areas and that’s
ok – it’s just a guide of how to look at this topic.
introduction
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
Our job is to name multiple internal and external

• For stakeholders that are people:
stakeholders that can have an impact on our cho-
sen business goal. In many cases this turns out Demographic – make sure that you describe the people
to be the customers themselves as that is very you’re talking about using their age – how old they are, gender
– are they a woman or a man and location – where do they live
often what we’re chasing, but in other cases these
or spend most of their time. On top of that add some small de-
might be your employees or social media influenc-
tail that will characterize them like being really busy, stressed
ers that will affect most of your business. For each or laid back and loving life. Try to add a totem to bring them
of the stakeholder names I would suggest to use to life like a baby carriage, smartphone, shopping bags or
the following structure: a skateboard etc.
Psychological – give more insight into what they need or

aspire to. Why are they on the list of your stakeholders – what
is the context of their relationship with your business. Are
they looking for something you’re offering, are they upset
with your competition etc.
• For stakeholders that are organizations:

Structural information – give more insight into what is
the size of the organization you’re referring to, where is it
located – is it nearby or does it have a global reach, what
sector is it from – is it something adjacent to yours or more
remote but with a big potential of cooperation.
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Business drive – what is the main purpose of this organi-

zation and does it have any needs you’d be able to fulfil – add
more context into why is this stakeholder on the list.
THE TOOL
the tool
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
Once we have the entire list of internal and external stakeholders in place it’s
time to put it to use. We need to prioritize the list in accordance with one thing
in mind – the business goal we’re trying to achieve. As we did with the prioritization
of the business goals we’ll put a horizontal axis with the chosen business goal at
the end of it and put the first stakeholder from the list on the wall. This again will
form the scale and every additional stakeholder we include will either be more or
less impactful on the business goal. For the sake of this course we’ll pick the top
stakeholder and this will conclude this stage of the process. We can obviously take
more stakeholders into account when doing the actual work but I don’t want you
to be overwhelmed with the amount of data we gather.
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DEFINING
THE WHO
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
LISTING THE STAKEHOLDERS
1 / KEY GOAL 2 / STAKEHOLDERS

key business goal stakeholder list
Put your key business goal here - this is what List out all the stakeholders that
you’re prioritising your stakeholders against impact your business goal.
internal external
stakeholders you control stakeholders you have no affect on
people
stakeholders that are people use their

age group and motivation
organisations
stakeholders that are organisations

- use their size and business drive
3 / MAPPING
stakeholder mapping
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prioritise all of the above stakeholders in accordance

with the impact they’re having on your business goal
RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant examplel
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
The Executive Team had a great time coming up with numerous stake-
holders and we’ll name a few here using the framework we’ve defined. • A boy living in the immediate restaurant neigh-
Please keep in mind that this is an example to show you the structure borhood hanging out with friends always carrying
of how to put the information together and during your design work his skateboard – looking for inspiration related
there should be far more stakeholders on the list. Some of the exam- to skateboarding tricks
ples would be as follows:
• A young couple going to the nearby school that
can’t keep their eyes of each other, always tak-
ing selfies showing their love to the world – they
like the outdoors but would love to have a place
to crash when it’s raining
• A mid-sized food-truck business covering

the seaside part of the city – needing a storage
or ingredients supply
• High-Schools located near the restaurant – need-

ing to stand out from their competitors with ad-
ditional offering to their students’ free time and
education
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• A mid-sized fishery business located in the city

harbor – needing an outlet for their freshly caught
fish – they need an openminded partner that will
be flexible due to the uncertainty of the catch
There will be far more stakeholders to think about
restaurant example
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
when considering the business goal and this ex-

ercise should allow a lot of room for generating
stakeholders with even the slimmest chance
of success – after all we will prioritize the stake-
holders regardless. The important thing to notice
is that it’s not just about saying “young people” but
to subdivide this very wide stakeholder group into
more meaningful categories that we can easily im-
agine. It might seem like there’s too much detail
in these groups and I agree to a certain extent and
this is why we’ll take the top stakeholder and move
to the next tool where we’ll create an archetype
on its basis – this will broaden our view enough
to consider a more tangible group. This concludes
this stage of the process.
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ARCHETYPE
CREATION
introduction
ARCHETYPE CRE ATION
INTRODUCTION
Before jumping into the next stages of the process let’s spend some time refining our chosen
stakeholder group to have a better understanding of who they are. The goal of this exercise is
to broaden the perspective so that the stakeholder we’ve imagined in the previous section can
now be represented by numbers with the addition of some variety. I usually use the following
dimensions to define the chosen stakeholder group in more detail:
Age – we’ve covered this attribute in some respect Gender – if it has a big impact on the business goal Needs – it’s good if we diversify the needs of our
but now we need to be more specific about what do let’s specify that – if it doesn’t I would recommend stakeholder group. We can specify what do the peo-
we actually mean. This property should be described keeping it open and varied. ple that are their age, and live where they live need
with a number so instead of saying that a person is on a daily basis. It’s important to keep it pragmatic
mature – let’s say exactly how old is the person ie. and down to earth.
Location – this characteristic could also benefit
34 years old. In addition to that let’s add a little more
greatly from additional diversity. Instead of focusing
variety so that we can catch a wider audience ie. let’s
on one specific location we could say that it’s any Aspirations – it’s important to try and have an un-
add a range of years we’re looking at like 30-40. It
location in a given country that meets a specific set derstanding what is the underlying reason they act
still matches what we’ve initially said but gives a lot
of requirements for example lives in a city of ap- a certain way, what is the motivation regarding their
more room for interpretation.
prox. 50 thousand inhabitants close to rural areas relationships and other aspects of their lives.
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and commutes to school approx. 30 kilometers away.

I fully appreciate the fact that the Executive Team
might have a problem with specifying the above.
Please make sure you remind them that it’s just
a hypothesis we’re creating and this will be validated
during our research. This entire stage is more about
imagining the future.
introduction
ARCHETYPE CRE ATION
I fully appreciate the fact that the Executive Team

might have a problem with specifying the above.
Please make sure you remind them that it’s just
a hypothesis we’re creating and this will be validat-
ed during our research. This entire stage is more
about imagining the future.
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RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
ARCHETYPE CRE ATION
The Executive Team though it was really difficult for them to imagine
came up with the following archetype definition:
Age – 13-17 years old
Location – city of approx. 500 thousand inhabitants with a harbor, goes to school
in the central part of the city, spends time outdoors
Needs – hanging out with friends, being constantly connected via social media
to a wider network of people they know, standing out from the crowd with their
own unique style
Aspirations – being an artist in whatever field they’re in – constantly looking for

new inspiration, being free to do what they want with their time, having friends
they can trust and count on
This doesn’t need to be very detailed – it’s just a quick exercise for the Executive
team to think through and define the stakeholder group a little more. This archetype
is missing a lot of dimensions and that’s on purpose – we don’t want to get into
profiling or design personas just yet. All we want is to get a more detailed picture
89 / 253
and get everyone on the same page that we have a good idea about the stakeholder
group we’re targeting.
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
MAP
introduction
INTRODUCTION
We have most of the building blocks ready. We know what the overall Design
Vision is and how it translates into the Business Goals. We know who we
should target first to achieve these goals and what this stakeholder group
is all about. Now it’s time to add the last piece of the puzzle and then put it This is the moment we put the Executive Team
all together into the final deliverable. If we had to deliver on the business through its paces – we need to generate as many cur-
goal that we’ve defined in the previous chapter and incorporate the needs rent activities as possible keeping in mind the busi-
of the chosen stakeholder group – what would it look like with our current ness goal we’re trying to achieve. Each one of the ac-
state of the business. The main goal is to assess which parts of the business tivities listed should at some level have an impact
on the business goal as this is the element that ties
are key to deliver on the goal and which ones are unnecessary. Also, how
the Design Vision together with the key stakeholder
they differentiate in the context of the stakeholder group.
– every activity that affects it – affects the rest just
as well. This is where the hypothetical mindset really
needs to kick in – we’re looking at what could happen
if we progressed towards the goal without chang-
ing anything in our business. Each executive team
90 / 253
member has their own area of expertise and this is

the moment he needs to shine – we need to use this
area knowledge to list as many activities as possible.
With the right team the list grows pretty fast. These
activities can vary from strategic, through tactical
to everyday – as long as it affects the business goal
it’s allowed in.
DEFINING
THE WHY
Using the Profi lig Card Deck list out the primary elements of your archetype.
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
Put your key business goal here - this is what you’re

prioritising your stakeholders against.
3 / GREAT
2 / GOOD
1 / ACCEPTABLE
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0 / NOT ACCEPTABLE
List out all of the current activities that

you could do for the potential stakehold-
er in the reference of the goal.
Once the list is created it’s a good idea to have
introduction
an open discussion and try to cluster the activities

into groups of similar nature. I would like to propose
a framework that I have been using in the past that
Awareness – these are all the activities you undertake as a business
structures and speeds up the process of grouping
in order for your current and potential customers to find out about
these activities. It’s built around a customer lifecy-
you, your products and your services. This usually comprises a lot
cle – many different companies define it differently
of your marketing and promotional activities.
– for the sake of this course we’ll use 5 steps:
Consideration – this is an area where your current or potential
customer is starting to consider your product or service and any
activity you undertake here that helps with that consideration ends
up in this cluster.
Purchase – if the consideration is positive you need to act and make

sure that the purchase process and how you onboard your customer
into your business world is exceptionally well designed.
Use – once your customer bought into your service you need to make
sure that you properly maintain the quality of the experience, deal
adequately with any issues, be proactive and make sure they’re happy
with the service you provide.
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Share – if all of the above elements work properly this is the area
where your customer will become your advocate and will share his or
her thoughts with their immediate network. Every activity that you
put to incentivize your customers to do so end up in this area.
The time has come to combine all of the elements together to create the Busi-
ness Hypothesis. We take all of the activities subdivided into areas mentioned
introduction
and put them on the horizontal axis. We take the stakeholder group and put
it on top so that we can look at our activities through their eyes. The last
part of the hypothesis creation is the stakeholder assessment. For each
of the activities we need to assess what the stakeholder experience would
be like – what would they say? How would they feel? Why would It matter?
Instead of answering all of these questions for each activity we just need
to represent the responses with one number in the range from 0 to 3:
0 – meaning that the activity is neutral to them – there are

no issues
1 – meaning that the activity has some issues currently
2 – meaning that there are real issues that need addressing
3 – meaning that there are huge issues that if not addressed

will deter the stakeholders from interacting with your busi-
ness
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On some level most business intuitively feel where
introduction
these issues are and at this stage it should be

a pretty simple exercise to highlight the prob-
lematic areas. At the end of the day it’s their as-
sessment and their perspective even though we’re
trying to empathize with a stakeholder group it’s
still their view. But hey – that’s exactly what we need
at this stage of the project. Once the assessment is
done for each of the activities it’s time to connect
the dots and we’ll end up with a wonderful visual
representation of the Business Hypothesis.
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RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
• We have great seasonal dishes

Our Executive Team spent a long time listing out the activities
from each area of the restaurant businesses – let’s see what • We serve the best and the freshest fish in town
they came up with. • We have a breakfast buffet
• We have a Facebook page

• Social Media posts about promotions
• We have a website where you can find
• Waiter giving all the specific details about the dishes information about new deals
• Providing healthy and fresh ingredients • We give out leaflets about our restaurant
• Putting a sign outside that shows the deal of the day in the oldtown
• Having a hostess that invites people inside • We have a TV that the guests can tune according
to their needs
• Playing local music inside to make the place feel lively
• We’re able to host bigger groups of guests
• Local radio station ad
• We have a pool table
• Having a very competitive pricing strategy
• We have darts
• Providing meal bundles for better deal when more people coming in
• We have very comfy chairs
• The menu has been designed by a professional graphic designer
• We have air-conditioning
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• You can order meals online to be delivered to you

• We have free wi-fi
• There are special discounts for returning customers
• You can gather stamps for each visit – after

you’ve gathered 10 you have a free lunch
SUMMARY
SUMMARY
This concludes the entire Business Hypothesis step of the Design Thinking process. Let’s recap.
We’ve started with the Design Vision which has shown us what the true aspirations of the busi-
ness are. We enforced the vision with concrete business goals and we chose the crucial one. In
reference to that choice we’ve analyzed the entire scope of potential stakeholders that might
have an impact on that goal and again we’ve chosen the key stakeholder group. Afterwards
we’ve broadened our understanding of this stakeholder group so that everyone on the team
was on the same page. Subsequently we’ve taken all current business activities and through
the understanding of our stakeholders we have mapped the hypothetical experience with the full
assessment of each activity. This forms a great first step into the world of fully understand-
ing what the design challenge will be. We can now take the hypothesis and validate all of its
dimensions in the next phase of the Design Thinking process namely Customer Perspective.
See you there.
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04 /
CUS-
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
RESEARCH SCENARIO
• introduction
TOMER
• research method types
• research methods - brief description
• choosing the right method for the job
PESPE-
RESEARCH METHODS
• in-depth interviews
• online questionnaire
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
CTIVE
• business hypothesis map validation
CUSTOMMER PERSPECTIVE SUMMARY

Again, like we did in the previous phase

of the Design Thinking process before we
start building the Customer Perspective let’s
first review a few questions so that we know
what to expect.
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this stage of the process is all about the customers and these are the people
we’ll be involving and interacting with regularly.
Chosen stakeholder group

Since we’ve defined one stakeholder group in some detail we’ll be covering
that and adding additional information so that we can get in touch with
the actual people behind it. In the real-life scenario, we’d probably choose
two or three main stakeholder groups and define those using the same exact
tools you’ve already learned but for the sake of this course we’ll just cover one.
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Executive Team
We’ll obviously need to be in touch with our Executive Team but only to gain
feedback and give them updates about our progress and sometimes ask
them for a few favors here and there. Most of the time though it’s our job
as a Design Team to deliver the result in conjunction with the research we’ll
be undertaking. It’s very important though to invite the Executive Team
members to where you’re undertaking the research so that they can hear
for themselves some of the insights live from the participants – it always
creates this “buy-in” effect – it’s good when that happens.
External recruitment agency

Since this part is quite research-heavy we might use external resources
to recruit some of the research participants to make our lives a little easier.
We’ll cover how to deal with these entities in detail.
restaurant example
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Since the stakeholder group we’ve defined are the young people these are exactly
the individuals we’ll be focusing on. We’ll report back to the Executive Team but
probably from now on we’d pick a Single Point of Contact so that that person could
coordinate the information flow throughout the organization – that really saves a lot
of time and hustle when there is a person like that on your team as well – basically
a proper Project Manager on both sides.

the design team?
When it comes to the Team numbers we just need a Project Manager
on the business side to receive the information from us and have the Ex-
ecutive Team at the ready to reveal what we’ve learned after the research
has been synthesized. It’s good that there will be at least one representa-
tive of the Executive Team during our research. The Design Team should be
formed of at least two people – one undertaking the research and the other
taking care of the back-office – making sure people are on time, there’s
coffee and cookies on the table etc.
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restaurant example
I would make sure that there is the following structure:
• one person dedicated from the restaurant that the Design Team can communi-
cate with
• one person from the executive team preferably the restaurant owner or other
team members if he’s not available
• one person responsible for the back office as part of the Design Team
• one person undertaking the research as part of the Design Team
• one person dedicated from the Design Team to deal with the communications –
could be the same person taking care of the back-office
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Usually research if taken seriously takes a bit of time. We need to properly
prepare for it, create the research scenarios, recruit the participants, un-
dertake the research and then synthesize it. I would say that in a very fast-
paced environment with close to no budget and small window of time this
could take as little as few days to quickly prepare and do some quick guerilla
interviews. If we have some budget and more time I would provide approx.
5 days for the prep, 10 days for recruitment but depending on how difficult
it is to find the people this could take longer, 5-10 days to undertake the re-
search given the right methods and 5-10 days to synthesize the information
into tangible result.
restaurant example
For our case I would say the preparation would take 2-3 days, recruitment
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of the group since they seem to be pretty openminded and accessible should take
about 5 days, the research itself should take approx. 5 days and I would suggest
the same amount of time for the synthesis.

The preparation is probably the most crucial part of the process. There’s
a lot of things to prepare and a lot of things can go wrong.
The preparation needed by the Design Team

We need the team to prepare the following:
• Research scenarios – we must know what questions need to be answered through research
• Recruit the participants – we must manage the recruitment process properly
The preparation needed

by the Executive Team
We need constant access to them as things tend to change dynamically and they need to be
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prapered for the following:
• Sign of on the research scenarios – they need to validate that the questions we plan
to ask are the questions they seek answers to
• Sign off on the recruitment profile – they need to validate that the people we plan
to speak to are the right people
of the activities?
The main goal is to validate the Business Hypothesis with meaningful in-
sights from actual people that represent the group the business is aiming
to understand.
To tackle this entire phase of the Design Thinking process and address all of the questions
we need to recruit the right respondents. After we know how to do and manage that we can
then create research scenarios which basically give us the detailed list of questions we
need to answer to satisfy the hypothesis validation. After we’ve picked the right methods for
the job and undertaken the research we make sure the insights are properly recorded and
synthesized. This will help us intensely with the creation of design personas which in turn
will lead to the final validation of the business hypothesis.
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RECRUITMENT
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
PROCESS
I’ve witnessed this going wrong so many times that
I really wanted to emphasize the importance of this
step. Having great research methods in place,
the design team and the best hypothesis is worth-
less if we don’t confront that with our customers.
I’d like to focus on three areas namely.
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Incentives
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
This is the way you motivate the respondents you want to recruit to take part
in your research study. After all, regardless of the method you use you’re
going to need their attention – and that requires remuneration.
Motivating with money

For the most part cash incentives will work efficiently for your qualitative methods and
depending on the country you’re in and the amount of time you want to have with the re-
spondent this varies from 25 – 100 $. Bear in mind that the maximum time it makes sense
to meet with the respondent is 1,5 – 2 hours – after that time the person you talk to is pretty
tired and the insights you get are forced and not thought through.
Motivating differently
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There are stakeholder groups and quantitative methods of research where cash incentive
is either too expensive to handle due to the size of the group and the difficulty of the pay-
ment process or the stakeholder group is wealthy and even couple of hundred dollars won’t
convince them to give you their attention. In this case I usually try to find out what my
stakeholder group cares about and try to build an incentive around supporting that cause
or getting them closer to their interest.
Using external
recruitment
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
agencies
There are times when the stakeholder group you define is very diverse or
spans the entire country. These situations require professional support and
the recruitment agencies are there to help you out. They usually price their
work per person recruited and they deal with the incentivizing of the re-
spondents – so you just need to show up for the interviews and not worry
– right? Wrong – there’s quite a few elements we need to manage to make
sure we get the right quality of respondents – let’s review them:
Recruitment profile
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This is a starting point and gives the agency detailed information about the demograph-
ics as well as specific requirements of the recipients you want them to recruit. We need
to specify their age brackets, their gender if critical, where they live, where they spend
most of their time, their profession, their education, their family and relationships, their
past experiences if they’re relevant as well as the context of the business etc
restaurant example
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Let’s come back to our Restaurant example – we have a broad-

ly defined archetype so let’s add more information to it:
Age – 13-17 years old
Location – city of approx. 500 thousand inhabitants with

a harbor, goes to school in the central part of the city, spends
time outdoors
Spending time – they spend a lot of time playing sports and

being outside. They’re not professional athletes – they don’t
aspire to be - sport is more of a fashion for them. A lot of their
time is being taken by smartphone devices and multiple social
media platforms. We want to focus on simultaneous Insta-
gram, Facebook and Snapchat users – this definitely brings
more focus to who we’ll be recruiting.
Family – we would like to find out more about people who

have at least one sibling and would like the recruitment profile
to be spread 50/50 when it comes to respondents from fami- As you can see the recruitment profile doesn’t cover any emotional
lies with married parents and families with divorced parents. parts of the person – it focuses mainly on facts and things that can
Relationships – we would like to recruit people who are in a re- affect the recruited group of people. It’s very down to earth and prag-
lationship or have been in one within last year. We’d like to also matic. The more details you put in the smaller the potential recruit-
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talk to people that have at least one friend they’ve known for ment sample and the more time it will take for the recruitment agency
a minimum of 5 years. to find them so make sure that the requirements you put forward are
Business context – since we’re doing research around the res-
sensible. Additionally you need to accept this profile with the Exec-
taurant business we’d like to find people that go to a restau- utive Team before you give a green light to the recruitment agency.
rant at least once a month. We’d like to research people that
spend minimum 50$ a month on eating out.
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
Recruitment Brief Time Management Quality Management
Depending on the sector we’re doing the research for Like with any project activity there’s a deadline so In addition to the time we need to manage the qual-
there might be specific legal requirements we need you must be in daily contact with the research agen- ity of our recruited respondents – it’s good to have
to follow, there might be procedures we need to take cy and get an update on how they’re progressing with a pre-interview to make sure that the person we’re
account of. You should make sure that the recruitment the recruitment. You plan the research to take place interviewing fits the recruitment profile. Just a few
agency knows about any restrictions the recruitment on specific dates and your calendar needs to be filled questions that validate the key information will suf-
process should consider. Additionally you must re- with the people the recruitment agency invites for fice.
member to provide the respondents with the infor- specific times during those days. Plan for unforeseen
mation that you will be recording the audio or video circumstances and recruit more people than you need
of the conversations you might have with them and as some percentage won’t show up or give you their
that they will need to sign a legal document that allows time online.
for that to happen.
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RESEARCH
SCENARIO
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
INTRODUCTION
In order to validate the hypothesis, we need to ask the right questions for each of the activities
we’ve highlighted on the business hypothesis map. This is why it has been created in the first
stage of the Design Thinking process – we can now use it to its full extent to help us with deriving
the right questions to verify its accuracy. All we need to do is take the hypothesis map and look
at the key areas of impact ie. the highest peaks of the experience map and start there – work
your way to the activities that hypothetically matter the least – remember this is the hypothesis
we’re dealing with here. I recommend you to sit down with your team and go through each one
of the activities and individually generate minimum 3 questions you’d like to ask to validate
the experience of the customer. Each member of the team should spend 3 minutes generat-
ing the questions for each activity and then present those questions to the team. The more
members you have the more time it will take so keep this sensible and down to a maximum of 5
people. After the questions have been presented see if you could summarize them into 2-3 key
questions that need addressing for each activity. Very quickly you should end up with a massive
list. This is the first building block of our research scenario.
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introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
Please remember to keep the questions open-ended – these

types of questions usually start with words like Why, What,
How, When, Who, Where, Which and end up giving you the best
answers because the respondent cannot answer them with
a simple Yes or a No. Additional element when asking the ques-
tions, you need to watch out for is to not include the answer
in the question itself eg. “How do you usually make sure that
you stay in shape?” – unless you did not recruit people that
you specifically know work out – asking a question like that
assumes that the person stays in shape – what if they don’t? Once you have the questions written down now it’s time to pick
You might end up in awkward situations and damage the qual- the right method for getting them answered. I would suggest
ity of the interview. You can ask these types of questions picking the qualitative method like In-depth Interviews first
once you’ve established the facts that mitigate the risk of you to tackle the areas of the business hypothesis map that need
being wrong. the most exploration. And then leave the rest to the online
questionnaire. This will allow you to find out the most about
the areas where the business senses the most issues arising
and still cover the entire map with proper responses. If there
are new things you’ve found in your online research that you’d
like to find out more about by all means the qualitative method
is there for you to do that with another iteration of research.
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RESTAURANT Waiter giving all the specific
restaurant example
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
EXAMPLE details about the dishes

• How do you usually decide about what you’re going
Let’s see how our design team would tackle the list to eat in a restaurant?
of questions for each of the activities in the busi- • When is the ideal time for a waiter to take your order?
ness hypothesis map. Let’s review some of the ac-
• What was the best experience you ever had with
tivities below and go through the questions we’d
a waiter and why?
ask to validate them so that you understand how
we’d go about doing this:
Providing healthy and fresh
Social Media posts about ingredients
promotions • How would you describe a healthy meal?
• How would you recognize that a dish has been pre-

• How often do you look for promotions on social media
pared from fresh ingredients?
when looking for good deals?
• What would be your ideal dish in a restaurant?
• Which social Media Platform delivers the most value
for you and why?
• How much time do you spend on each of the platform

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you use and does it differ during the week or time

As you can see we’re trying to get the respondents to tell us a story and
of day?
provide context to what we’re trying to validate in order to learn more
• If you had to imagine an ideal promotional add what about what they actually feel about the business activity. We want to be
would it need to comprise? able to assess if they have strong emotions associated with is or is it
a neutral aspect of the service that they don’t pay that much attention to.
RESEARCH METHOD TYPES
research method types
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
I would like to highlight two main types of research methods namely Quali-
tative and Quantitative methods of research. I would like to show you some
of the differences and emphasize how best to use the methods to validate
the Business Hypothesis. I believe that it’s not an absolute must to use both
types in your research. The key is to understand how they work and what
to expect and then choose the right method for the job – don’t feel like you
need to use up the entire arsenal of complex methods to get through the val-
idation process. We can compare the methods using a number of different
dimensions.
Questions we answer
This is the simplest way to determine the difference between these two
types of research methods. Quantitative methods like online questionnaires
are employed when we’re looking to find out what is happening within our
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product or service whereas qualitative methods like In-depth Interviews

are being used when the questions we’re trying to address concern why is
something happening
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
Participants
With quantitative methods we can get pretty quickly into thousands of re-
spondents if we’ve picked a broad range of multiple stakeholder groups
– the information we’re going to gather is closer to statistical analysis and
therefore there needs to be a good representation in the respondent groups
to make the results credible. With qualitative methods we can talk to as little
as 5-7 respondents per stakeholder group. In my experience when we under-
take research on a particular stakeholder group and we have 15 respondents
to interview I find that the 14th or 15th person I speak to rarely delivers any
new astonishing insights – it is said that 15 people will exhaust the insight
pool so it’s better to undertake research on 5-7 respondents as they will
already cover 80% of the insights. It’s just not worth doubling the effort
for the additional 20% - it’s better to do another iteration of research after
you’ve reviewed the results and have additional areas you’d like to find out
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more about.
Time spent with
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
the respondent
Nother very important aspect of choosing the right method is the amount
of time you need with the respondent – if you’re doing a massive quantitative
study and wish to research hundreds of people they will probably give you
5-10 minutes of their time if you want to have higher conversion rates on your
online form and have people actually filling all the blanks. If you require
more time with your respondents you should opt for qualitative methods
like Interviews where you can sit down with them and a cup of warm coffee
and spend an hour and a half to dig really deep into their beliefs, concerns
and aspirations.
Respondent location
This is a crucial part of choosing a type of method we’ll use. If you want
to get a grasp on things that matter to the entire country or on a global
scale the qualitative methods of research are just not feasible – they require
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you to either to go to your respondent or get them to visit you. You can do
the interviews online and get around some of those logistical obstacles and
that’s how you’d probably do it anyway but I would use them in the additional
research to find out more once you’ve learned something from your quan-
titative methods.
Incentives
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
With quantitative methods there’s either no incentives or they are close

to none – people don’t usually expect to get a huge payout when they spend 5
minutes online to answer some questions about a product. The story is vastly
different when talking about qualitative interviews – people need to take
time from their lives to get to your lab, spend an hour with you and talk about
things they might not care about – they expect to be paid. It’s even more
interesting when the group you’re trying to research is more difficult to get
to or is very wealthy – we need to be really clever about how we incentivize
them – sometimes it’s giving them the opportunity to meet someone they
admire, sometimes it’s the opportunity to help a cause they care about.
I hope you understand the main differences between these

types and when to use which method. It’s fantastic when
there is time and budget to do proper research in the project
– I find that this part is very often neglected as people want
to get to thex results as soon as possible. This however forms
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the most crucial part of the process – if we get this wrong

– everything we come up with later on is built on the wrong
assumptions.
RESEARCH METHODS
research method - brief description
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
– BRIEF DESCRIPTION
There will be two methods that I would like to cover in this course. One
of them being quantitative and the other being qualitative. I wish to make
this as simple as possible and also these are methods I use on a daily basis
and I just know that they work and deliver every time.
In-depth Interviews - it’s a qualitative method of research Online Questionnaires – it’s a quantitative method of re-
and it’s also pretty simple in its assumptions. It however is search that is very easy to use. The biggest challenge here is
a little trickier as you need to pursue the insights a bit more to pick which questions to ask using this method and the lim-
and depending on who your respondent is and how that person ited time you have with the respondent which in turn limits
behaves you need to use different tricks to get them to talk the number of questions you can ask. You have access to a large
about what you want rather than what they feel like talking. number of people but since the incentive is nonexistent you
need to worry about the conversion of your form. Conversion is
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nothing else but the % of respondents that made it to the very

end of your form and answered all of your questions.
CHOOSING THE RIGHT
choosing the right method for the job
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
METHOD FOR THE JOB

Now that you fully understand what methods we’ll be using we can now decide which method
will be applied to which part of the business hypothesis map. This tends to be very subjective
but I’ll do my best to give you some hints on how to tackle this. I usually look at the experience
map and start with the highest experience peaks and see how many of those can I cover with
the In-Depth Interviews bearing in mind that I need to take 5-7 participants and cover the same
area with enough questions to fit a maximum of 1,5 hours of their time. Depending on how much
budget and time you have you can cover 2-3 areas with 2-3 groups of participants from the same
recruitment profile. Everything else that is left to be validated on the business hypothesis map
I would leave to the online questionnaires with some sections that could potentially overlap
with the areas covered by interviews just to get more insight into these. This approach will
allow you to cover the entire experience map and gain understanding for every activity so that
you can use the data and assess it from the perspective of the actual customer.
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RESEARCH
METHODS
in-depth inter views
RESE ARCH METHODS
IN-DEPTH INTERVIEWS
We need to validate the critical elements of the hypothesis and in order
to do so we must dig deep and get to the bottom of the underlying issues.
In-Depth Interviews are a perfect method to do just that. You have more
time with each respondent so that you can really derive a lot of meaningful
insights. Let’s review the structure of the interview and what to look out for.
These interviews usually take place in some location so you’ll need a place
for the respondents to take their coats off, sit down, get comfortable, pour
themselves a cup of coffee or tea and wait for their turn to be interviewed.
They also need to be welcomed by someone so make sure there is a back-of-
fice person taking care of them.
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a / pre-interview
RESE ARCH METHODS
This is a crucial part of our verification that the re-

cruited respondent is relevant to the profile we’ve
defined. We need to ask a few initial questions like
their age, where they live, where they work or go
to school and validate that their relevant to the busi-
ness context we’re researching. If everything is ok
we can give them any legal documents they need
to sign like the agreement to being recorded and
any other legal requirements of our research. This
should have been communicated during recruit-
ment but it’s important we have that on record.
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b / interview
RESE ARCH METHODS
This is the moment we meet with our respondent

so let’s introduce ourselves – this might take place
in a lab environment with some people watching or
listening to it live – far from a comfortable situation
for our respondent so let’s try and make them feel
better. Allow them to speak to you informally, pour
them something to drink and offer a snack. Make
them feel welcome. Start a simple conversation
about something like how they got here, the weath-
er outside, how their day’s going but don’t make it
run for too long – 2-3 minutes is plenty. Let’s look
at the interview structure itself:
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Start by repeating the fact that the session will be recorded but it’s just for
RESE ARCH METHODS
the sake of research analysis and the design team and it won’t be published
anywhere. They’ve just signed the legal document but it’s good to put their
minds at ease with additional reassurance that they’re safe. Additionally,
introduce them to the context of the interview – what kind of business we’re
working for, what we’ll be exploring today and how long this should take.
Questions
We have a whole list of questions to go through. Make sure
you cover all of them but since you have the person in front
of you do explore the ins and outs of their responses. There is
a technique we use very often called 5xY – this is essentially
what it means – every time you receive an answer try to get
to the root of the issue asking a simple “why is that” – do it
enough times and you should get to the bottom of the issue
at hand. With the exploration there might be situations when Ending
your respondent goes on a little conversational detour and
starts talking about things that are not that important or in- Once you’ve covered all the questions this is the moment
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teresting to the research scope – allow for some of it and where you can provide some room for the respondent to ask
then gently steer the conversation back to where you left of. you questions if they have any. Respond politely. Thank them
Manage your time so that you get through all the questions very much for their time and walk them to the door and say
in your form with the time you have. It’s good to mark some goodbye. Allow for a few minutes between the interviews so
time benchmarks on the form to see where you are vs what that you can prepare yourself and the room for the next per-
time it is. son.
c / interview observers
RESE ARCH METHODS
It’s great to have the Executive Team members dur-

ing the live research sessions to get their immedi-
ate feedback and gain their buy-in into the process.
There’s a few things to keep in mind – if they’re
observing and listening to the interview we need
to watch the noise and visibility – if there’s too
much noise coming from behind the wall or glass
it could distract the respondent and we don’t want
to make them more uncomfortable.
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RESE ARCH METHODS
This wraps up the interview process and how to structure

it. Once you get a couple of interviews under your belt this
should be a great experience not only for the design team but
for the business stakeholders as well.
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ONLINE QUESTIONNAIRE
online questionnaire
RESE ARCH METHODS
The questions are ready so now let’s put them together, create the questionnaire
and distribute it among the customers to get their feedback. Let’s review some
of the key elements of online form creation as well as a few examples of tools I would
recommend you use.
Welcome Screen Can you help us make this course better for fu-
ture students? It will take 5-7 min.
The questionnaire like any other interaction with your respondents needs Sure I can!
to have a beginning. We need to put them into a relaxed state and manage
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their expectations. Just because they received a link and some incentive
to do the form doesn’t actually mean they’ll jump at the occasion. We need
to give them some information about the background context, tell them that
they don’t need any training or competences to answer the questions and
explicitly say how much time it will take them to fill it out. And yes, we need
to repeat the incentive they’ll be receiving for spending their time.
Questionnaire content
RESE ARCH METHODS
This is mainly questions obviously but there are multiple ways to provide
the answers and the less friction you have the better. Let’s review some
of the examples for the way you can answer questions and see their pros
and cons:
Multiple Choice What types of browser are You using?
This is a great method as it allows people to easily read the potential responses to your Google Chrome
questions and pick multiple ones that make sense to them. It’s good to always add addi-
Firefox
tional answer eg. “other” with a possibility for the customer to fill it out manually if any
of the answers we’ve provided don’t match his preference. Safari
Add other
Short Text
Comments/ Suggestions
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This type adds a little more friction as the person needs to manually input the information
– this is specifically difficult when they’re filling out the form using a mobile device. Make tell us what You think
sure the question allows for a short answer or even motivates it.
Long Text
RESE ARCH METHODS
How would You describe Your last shopping

experience?
This is one of the most difficult ways to give responses and if you need to use it – use it
wisely and only for the critical questions where it can add great value to your research. tell us how did You feel
This usually allows for some line breaks to get the points across and sometimes has a word
editing plugins so that you can edit the typefaces but I would really avoid this way of an-
swering at any cost.
1. How would you rate our website, based on:
Statements Continue
It’s sometimes good to break up the questionnaire into sections divided with simple state-
ments telling someone what the next set of questions will be referring to.
What Your coffee looks like?
Picture Choice
A great way to make people’s lives easier is to provide pictures so that they can make up their
minds just looking at and choosing pictures that best resemble the answer – this leaves a lot
of room for interpretation though – a picture is worth a thousand words – but which words?
Yes/No Do You like jogging?
Online questionnaire is definitely a place where you can provide these simple kinds of ques- Yes
tions every now and then so that the person has an easier time – it’s important to mix things No
up so that the questionnaire is a journey from the difficult to the easy and back again.
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Opinion scale How do You feel about Our customer service?

You can add opinion scales so that the respondent can give you an indication of how much Worst Bad Neutral Good Best
they agree or disagree with the statement – very useful and good to use this on some
of the key elements of the hypothesis map.
Rating
RESE ARCH METHODS
How do You rate the interior design in the hotel?
This is a great question for the person to assess something for you – it’s very direct so make
sure you structure the question properly so that you get meaningful results – after all it’s
important if a person gives you 5/5 stars vs 4/5.
Date What is Your date of birth?
Month Day Year

If you want someone to give you a specific date on something you’re re-
searching this is a simple question to add.
Number How important are things below for You?
Not Important Very Important

If there is a specific number or amount you’re looking to identify this question is a good
Interface
add on.
Dropdown
What is the quickest form of communication?
This is similar to the multiple choice type as it shows many possible answers with the main
Select an option
difference that this only allows the respondent to choose one of them instead of multiple.
Legal
Click here to indicate that you have read and agree to
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This is a great way to get to the end of the questionnaire if you need some clauses to be the terms presented in the Terms and Conditions agree-
read, understood and accepted at the end. ment.

Thank You Screen
RESE ARCH METHODS
We are done! Big thanks.
is there anything more You want to share with us?
This is the final screen that your respondents will welcome with relief – make sure it’s
lively and gives a way to get to the incentive. It’s sometimes good to add a short text
input here so that respondents can tell you anything that hasn’t been covered in the form
and might be important to them.
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Online questionnaires are a great way to gather insights and
RESE ARCH METHODS
there’s a few tools I’d like to recommend – the first one being
Typeform.com that creates great and interactive forms with
a lot of tool to analyze the results in a statistical manner. The
other one I would suggest you use is Google Forms which pro-
vide a massive amount of value and are free and easy to use.
Subjectively I would go with Typeform.com due to the exciting
interactions but whatever you use you’ll get the results.
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RESEARCH
SYNTHESIS
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
We’ve undertaken the research. We’ve covered the entire business hypothe-
sis map with various questions and research methods. Now it’s time to syn-
thesize the raw research data into meaningful insights. There are several
steps to cover in this crucial part of the process so let’s dig right in.
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Raw Data
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
This is the starting point. We’ve received a lot of information from

our respondents but at this moment in time it’s just data – these are
the recorded responses to our questions on the online questionnaires
as well as the in-depth explorations recorded on the interviews we’ve
completed.
Result:
• recorded data
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Insights
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
We need to turn the raw data into something more meaningful. We

need to derive the maximum out of them. This means putting the data
through its paces and gain insights. These are the observations we
had, this is our interpretation of what people told us through the vari-
ous means of interaction. This tends to get quite subjective therefore
the team members dealing with this step need to keep an open mind
and preferably allow for multiple iterations of feedback internally. Problems – these are the negative aspects that
Each recorded response should trigger a thought and these thoughts we’ve noticed have an impact on how the person
brought together should allow the team to derive their observations. perceives a certain activity on a hypothesis map
Each observation must have a direct link to an activity on the busi- Needs – these are the unfulfilled aspirations that
ness hypothesis map – if it doesn’t it’s either irrelevant or it highlights a person has that also lead to the negative impact
a new part of the experience map which makes it extremely relevant on how the person assesses their experience
– remember that each insight needs to be connected to an activity
on the map therefore if you’ve found a new issue it needs to have
an activity that goes with it – this is usually the case as it’s the activity Result:
that triggers the issue. Each participant should be treated individually • list of problems and needs attached to each
so that we end up with a clear picture of the area covered by each
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experience map activity identified for each

respondent with the list of insights divided into individual activities. research participant
The essence of the insight is built around two main aspects.
Quantification
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
Once the list of insights for each participant correlates with each
activity on the experience map we need to assess their relevance
as far as the experience quantification is concerned. Again, we’re
doing this for each research participant separately so that we have
a clear quantified picture of what the experience map looks like for
each respondent. The quantification should have the exact same scale
as the hypothesis map namely from 0-3 on the scale of the experience.
Result:
• the list of problems and needs quantified
for each experience map activity for each
research participant
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Patterns
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
The quantification unifies our view of the research result for each
respondent and makes it a lot easier to find similarities between re-
spondents which we call patters. Let’s imagine that we’ve undertaken
research on a group of 25 respondents and 8 of them show similar
quantification values at similar activities - it’s a very relevant pat-
tern. We undertake this analysis separately for each research method
as they cover separate areas of the hypothesis. I would usually find
2-3 patterns per research method but sometimes the online question-
naire just gives us the statistical information about the entire group
of respondents which basically ends up being a single pattern – it’s
a compromise I’m willing to accept since the online tool has been used
for the less important activities. Coming back to patterns if you really
think about it, these patterns were there from the very beginning –
even when we were undertaking the research we felt like some people
have similar issues on similar stages of the experience map. This is
basically a proof of this intuition being right.
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Result:
• 2-3 patterns of insight quantification
identified for each research method used
Design Persona
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
Because it’s very difficult to think about so many different respondents we

need to have a communication tool that aggregates them. The essence of this
aggregation are the problems and needs we’ve recorded the patterns for.
Once we’ve identified 2-3 patterns per research method it’s just an exercise
of connecting the dots that should lead to the creation of 2-3 design perso-
nas with a very obvious distinction between them. This can now be followed
up by listing out all the problems and needs gathered from the respondents
that are a part of this persona and clustering them into groups so that it’s
easier to comprehend. With the addition of some demographic information
this forms something we call a Persona Document.
Result:
• 2-3 Persona Documents that combine
the patterns and add more information
to fully visualize the aggregates respond-
ent group. Don’t worry if you don’t have
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2-3 design personas – there are many

situations where you just end up with one
and that absolutely fine.participant.
I know that this sound pretty complicated but really once
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
you follow the steps of turning the data into problems and
needs and attaching them to each experience map activity
it really doesn’t take too long to get to a full understanding
and visualization of our stakeholder group. The main value
with this kind of approach is the fact that it’s determinis-
tic – it follows a very strict sequence of events to get from
your starting raw data all the way to the persona document.
If you feel like there’s still a lot of questions regarding this

method please reach out to me and I’d be glad to respond.
Also, there are weekly streams where we discuss this and
many other methods described in this course on my YouTube
channel so be sure to subscribe to Almanac Designers.
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BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
business hypothesis map validation
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
MAP VALIDATION
Now that we have a full understanding of what our chosen
stakeholder group says about the current state of the busi-
ness activities, it’s now time put the two together and see
where we stand. There are a few things to take care of:
Quantification
Each Design Persona is an aggregation of many respondents accord-
ing to their similarly quantified problems and needs at each activity.
We were able to do this thanks to the quantification of our research
insights but these were done for each respondent. The missing link is
how do we assess the experience of the persona since it has so many
respondents aggregated inside. I would recommend looking at each
activity and calculating the average value of the experience given by
each respondent and putting that calculated assessment as the design
persona value – one decimal point from 0,0 – 3,0 will suffice.
Insights
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We have a numerical representation of the insights but we need

to have a verbal illustration of the value as well. Some of the activi-
ties will have more insights than others – I leave it up to you but make
sure you list at least one problem or need for each of the activities.
This will vastly improve our workflow while working with the next step,
naming the Design Challenges.
Additional activities
business hypothesis map validation
RESE ARCH SYNTHESIS
There might have been additional activities that we need to include

on the experience map – these usually refer to a specific design per-
sona and should be treated as such. We take any new activity and
put it at the end of the lifecycle area it refers to. This will keep things
organized once we get into more advances analysis.
All we need to do now is to take the full list

of activities, the design persona quantifi-
cations and the verbal examples of insights
and put them on the experience map and
pretty much just connect the dots. We have
created the final view of the Customer Per-
spective. We have validated the Business
Hypothesis and created the As-Is Customer
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Experience Map.
RESEARCH
SYNTHESIS
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
DESIGN PERSONA #1
AWARENESS CONSIDERATION PURCHASE USE SHARE
1
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0
SUMMARY
CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE SUMMARY
This concludes this part of the Design Thinking process. We’ve covered all
the aspects starting with the recruitment process and what to watch out
for followed with an in-depth analysis of how to create research scenari-
os. We’ve covered how to create the list of questions for research as well
as which method should be used to answer them. We said a lot about what
are the differences between qualitative and quantitative methods of re-
search and covered in detail how to use them. We finally looked at how
to synthesize the results and derive meaningful Design Personas which we
then managed to map back onto our business hypothesis in order to validate
it and create the As-Is Customer Experience Map. We can now use what
we’ve learned from confronting the Business Hypothesis with the Customer
Perspective to define the actual Design Challenge and conclude the under-
standing part of the Design Thinking Process. Looking forward to seeing
you there.
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05 /
DESIGN
EXPERIENCE MAP OVERL APS
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
DEFINITION
CHAL-
PRIORITISATION
LENGE
05 / DESIGN CHALLENGE
Before we start defining the Design Chal-

lenge let’s first review a few questions so
that we know what to expect.
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01 / Who should be involved at
this stage of the process?

This stage involves your Design Team and the Executive Team working to-
gether in order to get to the root cause of the problems and needs we’ve
identified in the Customer Perspective part of the Design Thinking Process.
This is the stage when we take the validated as-is customer experience
map and look at the results in more detail. Each problem or need that we’ve
highlighted needs to be looked at in order to establish the root cause. We’re
becoming Design Thinking Doctors for a while trying to diagnose the cause
of the symptoms we see in the experience.
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the design/research team?
The Design Team and its structure remains the same although now the pro-
ject manager can take a little rest since we’re in a more relaxed stage where
we don’t need to deal with recruitment and external agencies. The Executive
Team needs to help us understand what underlying issues might be causing
the problems for their customers so the entire team should be available to us.
Restaurant example
Each one of the Executive Team members can add more detail to the highlighted issues.
The Waiter Manager can cover aspects of their interaction with the customers, the Chef
can relate to the dishes and internal processes that might affect the waiting time and dish
quality, the IT specialist can tell a bit more about the issues their dealing with software-wise,
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the Marketing Director can share their thoughts on the social media. Every person around
the table can add to the equation.

You can definitely cover this in a 1-2 day workshop with the business depend-
ing on their availability and focus. You need a little time to prepare as most
of your work for this stage has been done during the Customer Perspective
stage but I would give 1-2 days also. You also need approx. 2-3 days to record
everything and deliver the final assets for the executive teams approval. If
you’re running in a very agile environment all of the above could be done
in one day also – if you don’t need the fancy deliverables and can leave ele-
ments hanging on the walls.
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This is the final step of the understanding so we need the teams to be avail-
able and open minded to see this part through.
• The preparation needed by the Design Team:

We need to have a very good understanding of our Design Personas and how they fit onto
our Business Hypothesis Map – what has been confirmed, what hasn’t been confirmed and
which additional elements should be highlighted.
• The preparation needed by the Executive Team:

They need to keep an open mind to the discussions as many of the topics we’re going to be
discussing are going to have a root cause in someone’s department – we need to strongly
advise against judgement – we’re not here to blame – we’re here to get to the root cause
and cure it.
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of the activities?
We want to find out what needs to be addressed in order to elevate the cus-
tomer experience to a new level. We need to find and prioritize the design
challenges we will be facing in the upcoming stages of the Design Thinking
process.
We’re going to start with putting all of the Design Personas

together on one map in order to find as many overlaps as pos-
sible. Afterwards we’ll start arranging the problems and needs
into Design Challenges and finally prioritizing the design chal-
lenges in accordance with the relevance for the Customer and
the Business Goals achievement.
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EXPERIENCE MAP
OVERL APS
We need to begin with takin the 2-3 Experience Maps we’ve cre-
ated for the 2-3 Design Personas and put them together. There
might be some overlapping issues as in some cases there are
additional activities we’ve found for a specific persona but since
we’ve covered the way to deal with these they’re nicely lined up
at the end of each lifecycle area. For multiple design personas
we just need to add the subsequent activities in the appropriate
order starting with design persona #1 followed by #2 and so
on and keep the order for each lifecycle area. This should give
us a clear view of how the identified design personas correlate
with each other. Thanks to the visual representation of the ex-
perience values it so much easier to identify the key areas
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of overlap.
We have a specific order of looking at these things so let’s

review it:
Highest Overlaps Highest Individual Medium Overlaps Medium Individual
We look at any overlaps regardless We identify any areas of the map We take the areas of design per- This should be the last area we
how many personas they encap- that have individual design persona overlaps that have an ex- consider – these are all the areas
sulate with the experience value sonas with the experience value perience value of 1.0 to 2.0 and on the map that for individual per-
of 2.0 to 3.0. Afterwards we write of 2.0 to 3.0. We take the ver- put the verbal representations sonas were valued at 1.0 to 2.0. We
down all the verbal representa- bal representations and write in the next part of the canvas. then take the verbal representa-
tions of problems we’ve included them down in the second area tions and put them on the last part
in the Customer Perspective part of the Root Cause Tool. of the canvas.
of the course – I told you it will be
useful - and we put it in the top
area of the Root Cause Tool I’ve
created for you.
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We have a full list of problems and needs on the left

priorities into 4 areas of impact. Now it’s time
to identify the root cause of these.
ROOT CAUSE
TOOL
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
This is the moment where we really start discussing why

the problems occur. We’re going to use a Root Cause Tool. It
identifies why is a specific problem occurs which basically
highlights another problem which is subsequently broken down
into another problem down the line. The tool is built around
a method called 5 Whys. You start with a problem you’ve found
in your research and then start asking why does the problem
occur – what is the underlying reason for it being there. Once
you find that out you usually end up with another problem so you
do the same thing and ask why does the subsequent problem
occur and so on. You need to ask “why” questions to determine
the real cause of the problem occurrence.
It’s a great and a very simple tool to use but there are a few
things to consider to make the most use out of it:
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ROOT
CAUSE
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
THE TOOL
6 / ROOT
5 / WHYS CAUSES
1 / HIGHEST OVERLAPS why #1 why #2 why #3 why #4 why #5
2 / HIGHEST INDIVIDUAL
3 / MEDIUM OVERLAPS
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4 / MEDIUM INDIVIDUAL
keep the responses factual
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
Make sure that every time you respond to the question your response is accurate and based
in reality – it’s something you know that is happening not just assume is happening.
Restaurant example
Imagine that there is a problem when the customer is trying to choose what to eat. A
simple problem statement would be: “Customers don’t know which dishes to choose”.
Let’s run with this:
• Why don’t they know which dishes to choose? Because they don’t have
the right amount of information Summary
• Why do they not have the right amount of information? Because the menu As you can see it only took us a few Whys to get
only provides the basic dish names to the root of the actual problem at hand here which
could be reframed into “the restaurant staff needs
• Why does the menu only provide basic dish names? Because the team re-
proper onboarding and training in order to inform
sponsible for the menu printing does not know what the ingredients are
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customers about the dishes” and “restaurant staff

• Why does the team not know what the ingredients are? Because they haven’t needs to communicate better so that every team
been introduced into the restaurant menu member knows what is on the menu”
the number of whys
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
It doesn’t matter – what matters is the quality of the answers – if you

no longer get factual responses that bring you any value or you feel
like you’re going back to other responses you’ve already covered, it’s
time to move to the next problem and tackle its root causes.
keep it dynamic
Don’t let the team get drowned in the detail – there’s a lot of problems
to cover so if you feel like the team is struggling let them move onto
the next one and if the time allows go back and look at it with a fresh
mindset.
multiple reasons
Here might be multiple reasons for the problem occurring – record
them all and link them together. There will come a time when coming
up with additional reasons will feel difficult and nonrealistic and this
is the moment you need to move on to the next problem.
record the links

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Remember to have a good understanding how the root causes are

connected to the problems we’ve started with so that once we start
generating solutions we’ll have a good idea about what impact
they’re going to have on the problems.
types of reasons
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
There are three main types of reasons for problem oc-

curring:
• Physical – there is a physical aspect that causes a problem,

this can be the building layout, computer or a mobile device
not working, vehicle damage, faulty door etc.
• Human – this is a person, a team or a department that is

the reason for a problem occurring – remember to avoid
placing blame on people – it’s about keeping an open mind
and getting to the reason why something is happening not
who is responsible
• Organizational – this is referring to elements like company

processes, internal policies and guidelines as well as sys-
tems and automations that are a part of the organization
that cause the problems occurrence – this can be a faulty
organization process or a unusable internal system.
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ROOT CAUSE TOOL
Getting to the root cause is key to create a mean-

ingful design that has an impact. It’s difficult
to get comfortable with this technique at first –
although it might seem simple at the beginning
– but the more you do it the better the results.
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DEFINITION OF
DESIGN CHALLENGE
DEFINITION OF DESIGN CHALL ANGE
Once you have multiple different root causes for your prob-
lems we need to specify a structure that each Design Challenge
should follow. The Design challenge is basically one sentence
that best summarizes the root cause you managed to find
in your analysis. It is built of three main elements:
• The stakeholder– this is the person that is the main ben-

eficiary of the root cause being resolved.
• The need – this is a specific need of that stakeholder that

must be fulfilled in order to resolve the root cause
• The context – this is to give a little bit of information

about why is it important and what is the expected outcome
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RESTAURANT EXAMPLE
restaurant example
DEFINITION OF DESIGN CHALL ANGE
We took one problem and ended up with two root causes – which is There is a specific reason why we’re changing the defi-
fine. There is a big potential that some of those already identified root nition structure of a root cause into a design challenge
causes have impact on other existing problems. that is defined as a need of a stakeholder. I believe that
thanks to this approach we’re getting into a more ac-
“waitering staff [the stakeholder] needs proper onboarding and training [the need] tionable mindset – instead of problems and root causes
in order to inform customers about the dishes [the context]”
which are negatively saturated – we can talk about pos-
“waitering and kitchen staff [the stakeholder] needs to communicate better itively wrapped design challenges – we want these to be
[the need] so that every team member knows what is on the menu [the context]” closer to inspiring aspirations to get into the creative
stage of the process with more optimism. The design
challenge card is included within the curriculum of this
course so that once you have all the necessary details
your team can write these down and have a standard-
ized format of putting them together. This is optional
and just adds a little more order to the upcoming task.
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DESIGN CHALLENGE
PRIORITISATION
PRIORITISATION
Defining all the root causes listed on the canvas can be a daunting exercise but once you get a hang of it and remember about
the structure it should become easier with every step you take. It’s crucial to have this structure as it can then be easily prioritized.
At this stage with all of your challenge definitions you might sometimes feel like you’re addressing some of the stakeholders that
are more internal like your employees and that we’ve somehow lost the customer in the process. This is exactly why we need
two axes for our prioritization:
Customer Relevance – this is very key to address – we need to prior- Business Goals achievement – we can’t forget about the thing that
itize all of the design challenges starting with one thing in mind – how got us here in the first place – what are we trying to achieve here. We
will this affect the experience of our customers. We put all of the design tackle this as a second part of this exercise because we always want
challenge definitions on a horizontal axis with the Customer at the end. to put the customer first. So now that you have a horizontal axis that
The Customer as you remember is now represented by a mix of our design covers the need of the customer we now want to see how that reflects
personas with the biggest overlaps of needs and problems. We don’t need on the business. We start with the design challenge with the biggest po-
to be activity specific here it’s just a prioritization exercise and again like tential and work our way back. We assess how each one of the challenges
with the others the first design challenge we put on the wall determines if solved will affect our business goals. We always need to take note
the scale. Every additional design challenge we take will be either more of those each step of the way. As you remember they are tied together
relevant to the experience of your customers or less. The relevance is with the Design Vision and the Stakeholders we’ve targeted. The Business
defined as an answer to a question: “If we solve this challenge – how Goals achievement potential is a vertical axis with the list of business
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important will it be to our customers?” goals at the top. If solving a challenge has a big potential of achieving
our goal it goes up the ladder – if the potential is lower – it goes down
the ladder. Again, like with the initial prioritization – there are no two
equal challenges.
PRIORITISATION
Every design challenge that ends up in the top right corner

gets a green light – it means that it not only fulfils the needs
of our customers but also has a great potential to achieve
our business goals. The second tier of challenges would
be the ones that solve challenges for our customers and
have a lesser impact on the business goals. The third tier
are the challenges that have a big impact on business goals
but lesser effect on our customers. And whatever ends up
in the fourth quadrant goes to the bin.
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DESIGN CHALLENGE
SUMMARY
This concludes this part of the Design Thinking Process. We’ve taken what we’ve learned from the confrontation of the Busi-
ness Hypothesis with the Customer Perspective and learned even more. We’ve overlapped the experience maps, taken
the key problem areas and put them through their paces in order to identify the root causes of our problems. We made
sure that we’re solving the right challenges and not just the symptoms. We’ve then prioritized every challenge in order
to get to the final list of the design challenges to be tackled in the future stages of the Design Thinking process. This is
the last stage of the Understanding part of the process – we are now armed with all the tools and all the knowledge to start
using our creative minds and get many exciting concepts out into the world. I’m looking forward to seeing you in the next
chapter where we’ll be looking at how to generate as many solutions to the challenges as possible.
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06 /
IDEA-
INTRODUCTION
• transformation method
• brainwriting method
TION
IDEATION SUMMARY
Before we start generating solutions let’s

first review a few questions so that we know
what to expect.
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This stage is very exciting. This is the creative part of the process – hence
the team should put their creative hats on. This will include the Executive
Team as well and your design team. In addition to that though I recommend
a few more groups that you should involve at this stage:
Customers – doing the creative design work and coming up with ideas External experts – this is a crucial element that is very often over-
on how to solve them is great but it only uses the pragmatic approach looked within this stage of the process. Inviting people that are experts
of the business. Involving your customers and allowing them to come up in other market sectors other than your own for example: architects,
with the way they would approach a certain challenge brings you more doctors, lawyers, airplane pilots, local government officials, engineers,
to understanding what they imagine it could be like. In my experience this retail store managers and many more - really has a massive impact
sometimes generates solutions that are not feasible to implement due on what kind of solutions you’ll be able to come up with. Something
to their costs and resources needed. Nevertheless it’s really important that might be an obvious solution in one market can be an outstanding
to include them at this stage of the process and keep your design office innovation in another. Finding these patterns and connecting the dots
doors open all the time. using these multiple perspectives is key.
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a part of the project both from

the Client’s side and the design/
research team?
This stage of the process is pretty engaging and I would suggest having 3
teams working either in parallel or on separate workshop days depending if
you have the resources to properly facilitate 3 group workshops. I would 5-8
people from the Executive Team – their buy in into the solutions they come
up with is very important although very subjective. I would apply the same
structure to the other teams as well so 5-8 people on the Customer side
as well as 5-8 people representing the external expert group.
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In order to prepare yourself for the workshop I would suggest that 1-2 days
should suffice followed by 1-3 workshop days depending on the teams struc-
tures and 2-3 days for synthesis of the results. Again, as mentioned before
this could be all tied into a single day of heavy duty work if needed and various
approaches will be covered within this course.
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The preparation needed by the Design Team:
A very good understanding of the design challenges as well as their underlying

problems and the activities they’re associated with.
The preparation needed by the Executive Team:
An open mind with the lack of criticism will go a long way at this stage. We
need to generate a lot of alternative solutions to the challenges and this
unrestricted mindset is key. They also need to make sure that they’re ready
to make decisions and define priorities as well as have a good grasp on how
to assess the feasibility of a certain solution – people from various areas
of the business will add value to this equation.
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of the activities?
The main goal is to generate as many solutions to the design challenges
as possible and then prioritize them so that they can form the backbone
of a tangible prototype experience.
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This stage is the very beginning of an extremely exciting part

of the project. To my amazement many projects start here
– a lot of ideas are being thrown around without a proper
understanding of what challenge we’re trying to solve or for
whom. Not to mention the business goals or the design vi-
sion and how to keep it all together. We’ve obviously covered
all of these aspects and can now safely move to generating
solutions. I’ve prepared two amazing methods we’ll be using
– they are really simple to use and approach the challenge
from different perspectives. There are hundreds of tools out
there – as I’ve mentioned before – it’s not about the tools – it’s
about understanding what you’re trying to achieve each step
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of the way. I’ve chosen the tools that work very well for me
and I hope you find them useful. Let’s dig right in.
IDEATION
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
The previous step of the process has delivered to us a prioritized list of design challenges. Now it’s time to generate
as many solutions as possible. We’re going to be using 2 methods of ideation. I’ve used these methods and they’re so
powerful that I’m using these on a daily basis on a lot of the design projects.
Transformation Method - this is a very effective Brainwriting Method - this is a second method that
way of generating ideas that end up being very im- I’d like to show you. This is a little simpler method but
pressive and very often lead to unique solutions. It also works very well. The standard way to use this
sometimes also leads to simplification of current pro- method is for the participants to write ideas on a piece
cesses. It takes an existing process or challenge con- of paper and then pass the papers around the table so
text and instead of pushing for more ideas it initially that the next person can build additional ideas on top.
creates blank spaces in the process so that the team
members can come up with meaningful and excep-
tional ways of bridging the process gap.
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I’ll cover both methods in detail so you’ll be able how I undertake these and what tips and tricks I use to make them more
tangible. I believe that it’s not really about the method but how you tackle it with the team. There are a lot of methods
out there – if you feel that there’s a need to include more methods please let me know – my main goal is to make you
understand the purpose of this process step so that you can then choose any method you’d like from a wide variety. I’m
covering two of my favorite ones.
TRANSFORMATION METHOD
transformation method
INTRODUCTION
N O S TA K E H O L D E R N O WA I T E R I N G
This must be one of my favorite methods of all time. It’s sim- STUFF
ple and makes a huge impact. It creates very unique solutions
to the challenges and I see it working in some of the biggest
market disruptors – although I’m not sure if they used it or were NO NEED NO ON-BOARD-
just plain lucky. If you look at companies like Uber or AirBnB ING OR TRAINING
they’re entire business concept is an effect of this method. Ok
so how does it work. I think the easiest way would be to illus-
trate it with an example so let’s do exactly that. NO CONTEXT NO DISHES
restaurant example
Let’s take one of the design challenges we’ve defined and use the method Let’s firstly get rid of the stakeholder and imagine there is no waiter
on it. The way that this method works is instead of focusing on the solution in the process – in fact there are no waiters at all in the restau-
of the challenge it firstly eliminates elements of the challenge to make it rant. How would we make sure that the customer knows what they
incomplete and then analyses what would need to happen to make it whole want to order and how would we take that order and translate it
again and solve it in the process. Sounds difficult I know – let’s dig right into to the kitchen? If you’ve ever been to McDonalds restaurants you can
our example. You can look at each element of the challenge and start taking see that they’ve installed these digital stands where you can order
elements out. Let’s look at the challenge definition below: your food without talking to anyone, pay for it and just pick it up once
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it’s done. And this is just one solution. Another would be to change
“waitering staff [the stakeholder] needs proper onboarding and training
the restaurant into a buffet so that the dishes are displayed and there
[the need] in order to inform customers about the dishes [the context]”
is no need for a paper menu. As you can see already these ideas very
Sounds fair enough. We have the stakeholder, the need and the context. often are very impactful and generate quite a lot of change within
the business – but isn’t that the price of being different?
Let’s now look at another element – what if there is no onboarding or train-
transformation method
INTRODUCTION
ing for our waiters – how would we make sure that they still can talk about
the dishes in a meaningful way. How about we make the restaurant a fixed
fee entrance for our customers and they can spend as much time there
as they need and the waiters are constantly walking around with new dishes
– the customer can decide there and then if he wants to try it or not. The
waiters don’t need any training about the menu – they just carry the dishes
and present them to customers. A model that has worked great in Brazilian
pizzerias. Made me go there several times over.
Let’s now look at another element – what if there are no dishes? This would
mean it’s not a restaurant anymore right. Maybe – but what if we could
provide the facilities to the customers – instead of tables there would be
kitchen stations and the it would be customers that cook and we’d just
provide the chef that supports them and they basically cook for each other.
Or maybe there is no chef and they literally just cook for each other and
just have a good time.
This method doesn’t get you to generating hundreds of ideas a minute –

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but the ideas it does generate are pretty special. It really allows for some
amazing conversations around the table and with the right mindset can lead
to some amazing out of the box ideas that not only solve the challenge but
most of all change the meaning of the business.
BRAINWRITING METHOD
brainwriting method
INTRODUCTION
+ 30 s
This tool in contrast with the Transformation method allows for generating more ideas to a cer-
tain problem. I believe you can get into a few hundred tangible ideas in one workshop day and
this makes this my go to method if the high numbers are my goal. The way it usually work
is you take a design challenge from the top of the list and you give a piece of paper to each
workshop participant. Their task is to write 3 ideas for the solution to the aforementioned + 3 IDEAS + 3 IDEAS
problem. Each person does this individually for 180 seconds. Timing them is a crucial part here.
After this time has lapsed we ask the participants to pass the papers with their 3 written ideas
around the table. Each participant then ends up with his neighbors’ card with 3 ideas already
written. The task now is to read these ideas and try to use them to spark 3 additional new
ideas on the basis of the written down ones. This time though you give the people additional
30seconds to read the ideas first. With each pass there’s more ideas to read so you add 30 + 30 s + 30 s
seconds of time to the task at each turn. With a team of 8 people this will mean that you start
with 3 minutes and end up with 6,5 minutes for the last stretch. These times are not mandatory + 3 IDEAS
you can adapt them to the agility and creativity of your team.
The thing that I would like to change in this method is twofold. Firstly, I would suggest that
instead of pieces of paper that each participant passes along I would recommend huge
sheets of flip chart paper glued to the wall and giving people markers instead of pens so that
they can write in huge letters for the next person to easily digest the written information.
Secondly, because the sheets of paper are glued to the wall the participants need to walk
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around the room instead of sitting behind a table. This makes them move around a bit and
get the creative juices flowing a little more – they can’t reach for their laptops, phones and
other distractors. They’re completely focused on the job at hand, they’re standing up so
they’re in this more energetic state for this short period of time. There’s always a little bit
of giggle with people tripping over each other – I found this added more value to the meth-
od and made it more fun. The drawback is that you might need a little more space but he
additional benefit is that you have everything written down with huge letters so that it’s
also easier for the design team to synthesize.
SYNTHESIZING
THE INFORMATION
Each method works great and delivers on the promise but also has different ways of going
about it and what’s the most impactful focuses either on the amount or the quality of the ide-
as put forward. It sometimes requires to pick the appropriate method for a specific design
challenge but in most cases, it just works. Now that we’ve got a lot of ideas with various
levels of quality and detail. Now it’s time to put all of the ideas together and prioritize them.
The Solution Card is included within the curriculum of this course so that once you have all
the necessary details your team can write these down and have a standardized format of put-
ting them together. This is optional and just adds a little more order to the upcoming task.
For the prioritization we’re going to be using two axes: Customer Experience
and Delivery Ease.
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CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE
PRIORITISATION
IDEA
04 / CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE 176 / 253
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
Customer Experience
This will form the basis of our horizontal axis. We need to make sure that we pick the solutions
that have the biggest potential fulfilling the needs of our customers. Like we did with every
prioritization scale in this training we take the first solution card and put it on the wall – it
creates the scale of the axis – every solution we put next is going to either affect the customer
experience more or less. This means that it’s either going to be closer to the top of the axis
scale or further down towards the bottom. We already know that the design challenges we’ve
chosen are key to our customers and the business – this is just to validate that whatever we
want to create has the biggest potential to elevate the customer experience to a new level.
Delivery Ease
Generating solutions is a lot of fun. Specifically, when you undertake this task with multiple
groups of people that have a vastly different outlook on things. This approach however can
bring solutions to the table that might not be feasible to deliver. Therefore, at this stage they
need to be validated from this perspective as well. This means looking at each solution with
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a magnifying glass with the following aspects in mind:

• Physical constraints - will the creation of the solution require changing a building layout. Would
it need a lot of investment into infrastructure? Would the organization need to allocate resources for
the purchase of new devices or vehicles?
• Human constraints - will the creation of the solution require a lot of human resources, will we need
to recruit or train more personnel?
• Organizational - will the creation of the solution require a lot of change management. Will it affect
company’s procedures and is the company ready to be disrupted?
• Implementation vs Maintenance - the final aspect of this consideration is looking at the two main
stages of the solution’s lifecycle – will it be difficult to implement and what will happen after.
Please don’t spend too much on the aforementioned – these are just guide-
lines to assist when it’s difficult to assess if one solution is easier to imple-
ment and maintain than the other. I would highly recommend leaving these
types of detailed discussions when it’s really hard to determine the differ-
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ence. Otherwise just try to use common sense. The Ease of Delivery forms
the vertical axis of our prioritization. The further up you go the easer
the solution is to implement and maintain. All you need to do now is take
each solution starting with the most customer facing and move it either up
or down the scale of the delivery ease axis.
Every solution that ends up in the top right quadrant of your

prioritization is our obvious choice as it has a great poten-
tial to deliver fantastic customer experiences and shouldn’t
cost too much time or resources to create. Second in line
are the solutions that ended up in the top let quadrant
of the chart – these are maybe not the most impactful but
at least they’re really cheap to implement. Third in line are
the bottom right quadrant solutions – they tend to be costly
but they affect our customers very much. The solutions that
end up in the bottom left quadrant go to the bin as they don’t
affect the customers and cost a lot of cash to implement.
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IDEATION
SUMMARY
IDE ATION SUMMARY
We started off with a list of design challenges that we knew have the biggest
impact on our customers as well as our business goals. We’ve tackled them
with various methods of idea generation. We have created a lot of poten-
tial solutions. We’ve got things here that are very impactful and might go
as far as disrupting our current business model and on the other hand we
have solutions that are more to the point and be just as effective. We have
put them together and prioritized them according to how we expect them
to perform and how much will it take to put them in front of our customers.
We have a final list of solutions that will form the basis of our design work
during the upcoming stages of the Design Thinking process. I’m looking for-
ward to seeing you in the next chapter where we’ll be looking at how to bring
these solutions to life through the creation of tangible prototype experiences.
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07 /
PROTO-
INTRODUCTION
MINDSET
• tools for prototyping
TYPING
PROTOTYPING SUMMARY
Before we start creating tangible prototype expe-
07 / PROTOTYPING
riences let’s first review a few questions so that we

know what to expect.
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01 / Who should be involved at
07 / PROTOTYPING
this stage of the process?

Prototyping is a very fun stage of the process but it requires getting your
hands dirty hence it’s not for everyone. The design team needs to take a lead
here on creating prototypes that deliver the required target experience or at
least aims at that goal. The executive team can definitely play an active part
but from my experience not every company leadership is ready for this kind
of involvement. There’s a way that I would recommend to tackle this when
there’s an opposing force on the executive team. I would encourage them
to be part of the very early prototyping sessions with the Design Team and
then once they’ve communicated what matters to them they can then leave
the design team to its methods. In essence we will include the Executive
Team and work very closely with them while doing Low Fidelity Prototypes
but rather go back to our design drawing boards once we start dealing with
High Fidelity Prototypes. We’ll discuss the details as we go.
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07 / PROTOTYPING

research team?
There’s usually a lot of work associated with prototyping of the solutions and
therefore we might need help from all sides, people dealing with delivery,
operations, marketing, software development, designers, project managers
from other teams – anyone who can contribute but please keep the list and
numbers sensible in essence have multiple teams and depending on how
many solutions are you trying to prototype have them do the work simultane-
ously – you can have the teams working on many smaller solutions in teams
of 2-3 people or you can have a couple of bigger teams of 5-8 people working
on 2-3 prototypes. It would be good to have at least one person from your
design team being part of the prototyping team. Firstly, you’ll have someone
that has been on the project from the beginning and understands the con-
text of the solution being prototyped. Secondly, has the necessary skills and
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methods to make the prototyping run as smoothly as possible.

07 / PROTOTYPING

I would recommend having 2-3 days for preparation – gathering the proto-
typing kits and materials needed for the sessions – we now know what we’ll
be prototyping which could give us some clues as to what might be needed
apart from scissors, markers, paper and glue. 2-3 days for prototyping itself
– this will vary dramatically depending on the fidelity of the prototype you’re
trying to make but I would specifically try to minimize this time in order
to keep the prototypes simple in the early stages of the Design Thinking
process and more advanced in the later phases. In addition to that we need
to remember that we’re prototyping for the purpose of testing therefore
we need a few days to clean them up and transport them so that they can
be placed in front of users. The time you spend on those can be obviously
shorter – one day should be enough to create low fidelity prototypes with
a creative team of people. We’ll cover different approaches to the entire
Design Thinking Process regarding the time it takes vs the result you get.
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07 / PROTOTYPING

Prototyping is a fun stage and I think that the preparation is pretty minimal.
We need to make sure we know how many teams we’ll be creating, who will
be in which team, which solutions are going to be prototyped and what kind
of materials might be useful.
They need to spread the word in the organization among people that are more
operational and involve them into this process – they will have vital input
into the workings of the prototypes and how to create them in a tangible
way that they can represent the target solutions in any way shape or form.
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of the activities?
The main goal is to aim high and try to get as close to the target experience
as possible with our prototypes.
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07 / PROTOTYPING
Prototyping is all about bringing the ideas to life. It

helps both the Design Team and the Executive Team
to get to the bottom of how the solution will work.
This is the moment where we really define what are
the key values of the solution and why they matter.
It supports the designers in going from an abstract
idea to a tangible thought through product.
The whole concept of prototyping is all about fail-

ing sooner rather than later. It’s about investing
the least amount of effort, time and resources
to validate if the solution we imagined will bring
the expected return. Additionally, when a solution
fails we can derive conclusions and correct the er-
rors at an early stage of the process. This mitigates
any business risks associated with investing into
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something that hasn’t been validated. There are

two main types of prototyping:
Low Fidelity
Prototyping
07 / PROTOTYPING
This involves the use of very basic materials and models of in-
teraction with a potential customer. It conveys only the basic
principles of operation and the key features. It is very useful
as is requires very little work to create the prototypes and also
to repeatedly change and improve them. It is a very powerful
communication within the team creating the concept as it turns
the abstract thoughts into tangible product features and makes
everyone understand what people mean. This solves a lot of fu-
ture miscommunication issues that might arise.
The only issue with this kind of prototyping is that it produc- I recommend using this method of prototyping when you’re trying
es a very primitive product that lacks the realism – basical- to get everyone on the same page and come up with a strategy for
ly the potential customer knows from the get go that they’re the way to tackle the High-Fidelity Prototypes. This is not to say that
dealing with something that doesn’t work and therefore any they’re not good for testing – by all means we can still learn a lot from
research undertaken might not deliver relevant testing infor- putting them through their paces in user testing. However, the fidelity
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mation. Additionally, this type of prototyping requires a physical of the prototype has an effect on the level of detail of questions we’ll
presence of someone from the design team to explain how it be asking during testing – with low fidelity the questions are going
works or make it work at all – I feel this is one of the main dif- to be more fundamental – with high fidelity they’ll be more detailed
ferentiators between low and high-fidelity prototyping. and relevant to the prototype function or value proposed.
High Fidelity
Prototyping
07 / PROTOTYPING
This involves the use of more advanced materials and tech-

niques and usually takes a lot longer to deliver. However, de-
pending on the solution we’re prototyping this also varies – with
a clever approach we can create something that looks and acts
like the end product but only on one very specific path - it’s our
job to prepare the prototype and the testing scenarios so that
the customer stays on this path – the person using the proto-
type doesn’t need to know that for example the app we’re testing
only schedules meeting in April and if you click anywhere off
Sometimes if we put enough of constraint on how the person uses
the screen it’s going to crash.
the prototype we might end up with something that very closely re-
sembles the end result. If we accomplish this task it then allows us
to put the prototype in front of a person and just observe the inter-
action from afar. The prototype is complex enough to defend itself
– this type of validation gives the strongest insights as we’re not
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interfering and I believe this is the critical component of what High

Fidelity Prototyping allows you to do. There is one thing to look out
for – since it takes a long time to deliver – it usually takes a long time
to implement changes also – the design team tends to resist.
MINDSET
PROTYTPING
07 / PROTOTYPING 191 / 253
MINDSET
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
target experience
Not target product - even the most advanced solutions can be
prototyped. It took the team at Google 1 day to prototype Google
Glasses – they’ve used whatever materials they could to come
up with a way to put a person in a middle of the experience
and validate if this is something that they should be pursuing.
Once they got a hang of it - it took the same team 45 minutes
to create a prototype of the Minority Report interfaces where
you can interact with a huge screen without the user touching
it. It’s all about creating the target experience not the target
product. Specifically, Low Fidelity prototyping is built around
this concept – the aim is to speed up the process of creating
and then improving the prototype in a fast-paced manner. This
allows us to quickly get to a tangible concept that can be val-
prototype for testing
idated with a customer.
Make sure that you always keep in mind that you’re creating
a prototype that will be used by someone. You need to look
at every feature you design from the perspective of the cus-
tomer – keep his needs and challenges close to heart and let
them guide you through the creative process. This very often
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needs a very good plan of what are the key values we’re trying
to convey in the concept and how the customer is going to find
out about them and validate their significance or usefulness.
Additionally, we need to consider where the prototype will be
used, what is the context of that use and will whatever we cre-
ate fit into that situation.
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
keep it simple
This process is very creative and fun and make sure you keep
it this way. The environment you create around this process is
a very important aspect of the creation. The team responsible
for the fabrication is usually in a very vulnerable state as there’s
a lot of room for judgement not by other teams or the facilita-
tors but by the teams themselves. You need to make sure that
you encourage simplicity and action – illustrate how you tackle
the challenges with very simple examples. According to Brene
Brown – an amazing speaker and researcher - vulnerability
is the birthplace of creativity and joy but also emotions like
fear and shame. Create an environment where these negative
emotions have no place – once the team will start to defend focus on the value
themselves from these emotions they will also automatically
switch off their creativity. It’s impossible to selectively numb Every solution has a core element you should be making very
emotions – keep an eye on that. Also please make the teams evident. Make sure that each prototype has a list of those key
aware that the prototype doesn’t need to work – it just needs features and that these have a good representation in our
to act as if it does. prototype. Don’t get stuck with meaningless login pages when
you’re trying to show off your amazing dashboard designs. Also
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keep in mind that the value you’re looking to present is rele-

vant to your customer – not the design team. We’re in the midst
of the human centered process – let’s not forget about that.
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
anything goes
Use any measure necessary to create your prototype. There
is a certain moment when you can see that the team is really
going at it, you can almost hear their creative process. They
might go over the top when it comes to using the available
materials – like taking the room apart for the sake of the cre-
ation – I would suggest letting it go – unless they’re really go-
use existing facilities
ing to wreck the place – let them do it. You’ll see that the end
product of your workshop and the atmosphere gets hotter and When you’re working on prototypes that deal with a physical
better every step of the way. Although there might be a certain aspect or are built to improve infrastructural elements it’s
point when you feel overwhelmed – don’t worry – that just means great to use the existing accommodations. This applies very
that it’s working. well to Restaurants, Bank Branches, Hospitals, Petrol Stations,
Retail Stores, Shopping Malls, Airport Terminals and Office
Spaces as well as many more. Putting prototypes in existing
be prepared ecosystems that customers use on a daily basis is a great way
of verifying where and how the solutions should be located so
Before we get our hands dirty it’s always a good practice to pre- that they deliver the most value to our customers.
pare for the creative activities. For each of the solutions we’ve
chosen to prototype we need a comprehensive list of features.
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Additionally, we need to confirm that each of the qualities is

mirrored to customer’s value – always keep that in mind and
look at any feature asking yourself this question: “will this bring
value to our customers? Why will this be important to them?”.
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
Creating tangible experience through prototyping

is a very exciting stage and it should be – after all
we’re finally turning our abstract concepts into
something that works. The beginning stage and
workshop cooperation is important and should be
focused on fast delivery of Low-Fidelity prototypes.
The main aim is to communicate the way we under-
stand the workings of a given solution and to put
it in front of our customers to see if they see it
the same way. Once this has been achieved the de-
sign team can go back to their drawing boards and
create more advanced and higher fidelity proto-
types for further testing.
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TOOLS FOR PROTOTYPING
tools for prototyping
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
I would like to share my process and what kind of tools I use to get to prototypes
as soon as possible. These are a great addition to the Low-Fidelity Prototyping
capabilities we’ve already discussed. Through the use of those methods you bring
the prototyping effects to a new level. This is closely connected to whatever has
been discussed and prototyped during our live workshops – it’s an additional step
you can either try and include within your prototyping sessions or get your design
team together and built these having fully understood what the solution is all about.
Both of these methods will be closely connected to a method called Storyboarding –
it’s a basic illustration of the entire solution in a form of a process that the customer
goes through. It’s a very visual representation of that process and is a great way
to validate the value of the solution. The usual way most designers would approach
this is to use pen and paper to get the ideas across and it’s definitely a good way
of tackling the issue. I would like to give you two solutions that I use so that the fear
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of drawing stick figures disappears. There’s an additional benefit – the customers

see a visual product that is more refined and understandable which delivers more
insight into what should be improved. The best thing about it though is that it takes
even less time to deliver the final result than using pen and paper.
tools for prototyping
MINDSET
07 / PROTOTYPING
Storyboarding using Prisma App – this is an amazing way to im-

prove the quality and the speed of the storyboard generation. After
all, why should we draw anything if we have access to a camera in our
pocket – I’m sure it delivers the images faster than we’re able to draw
them on paper. The underlying issue usually is the fact that the pho-
tographs don’t look to professional aa they have different colors, ex-
posure levels, compositions etc. This is where the Prisma App comes
in – we’ll cover that using an example.
This could be a Voice Over for 1. SCENE NAME 2. SCENE NAME 3. SCENE NAME
the Prisma App with a view
of the phone and the process
of how to create the story board
using this approach.
https://prisma-ai.com
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SCENE DESCRIPTION SCENE DESCRIPTION SCENE DESCRIPTION
scene desription telling the story scene desription telling the story scene desription telling the story
of what’s happening on the image of what’s happening on the image of what’s happening on the image
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
Storyboarding using SAP Scenes – another great way to improve

the quality of conversations in the team as well as the result is to use
a tool called SAP Scenes. It’s a premade set of storyboarding elements
with the capability to be adapted to any scenario you’re trying to sto-
ryboard. You have sets of environments, characters, creative spaces,
vehicles, elements of services and many more - you even have a whole
set dedicated to healthcare with more sets being constantly delivered.
No more stick figures- let’s bring our design quality to a whole new
level.
1. SCENE NAME
Same goes for the SAP Scenes
– we need to print them out and
record how we put this togeth-
er – or just play the video of SAP
Scenes and be done with it.
https://experience.sap.com/de-
signservices/resource/scenes
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SCENE DESCRIPTION
scene desription telling the story

of what’s happening on the image
PROTOTYPING
SUMMARY
PROTOTYPIN SUMMARY
07 / PROTOTYPING
Now that we have the great tools at our disposal we can really make a change and deliver
meaningful prototypes of our products and services to our customers. Remember to keep
the prototypes simple and to the point. Look at the features you design from the perspective
of the customers. We’ve started with understandable yet abstract list of great potential solu-
tions to our design challenges. Through the application of Low Fidelity prototyping methods,
we managed to fully grasp their functionality and value they bring. This led us to take it a step
further and design high fidelity storyboards that fully illustrate how a solution is working.
Thanks to this approach we can now take these story boards and the prototypes we’ve
created with our teams and put them in front of our customers to validate if our approach
is correct. Additionally, we’ll be able to assess if the solution solves the design challenge
and what should be improved to make an even more tangible impact. So now that we have
the prototypes and storyboards ready let’s learn more about their potential and put them
through their paces – let’s see how they handle real customer feedback. The next stage
of the Design Thinking process is the Ecosystem Experiment. Can’t wait to see you there.
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08 /
T E S T-
MINDSET
RESEARCH SCENARIO
TESTING METHODS
ING
• List of recommendations
TESTING SUMMARY
08 / TESTING
Before we start validating our design assumptions

with our customers let’s first review a few questions
so that we know what to expect.
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01 / Who should be involved at this
08 / TESTING
stage of the process?

Just like with the Customer Perspective part of the process we’ll need to in-
vite our customer stakeholder group back into the process. We’ll use the re-
cruitment agency once again or try to reach the customer base on our own
- we’ve covered the details of their recruitment within previous chapters.
We’ll do a lot of the work in conjunction with the Executive Team. Their
involvement at this stage is crucial due to the fact that we’re exposing our
solutions to the customer base – their opinion is critical.
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08 / TESTING

research team?
We need at least one person from the design team dealing with the back-of-
fice aspects – this is very often the project manager. We need 2-3 people
undertaking the testing evaluation. Prototype testing is a little different
than building the customer perspective due to the fact that it takes place
in the actual ecosystem – there is no lab. With the exception of one method
we’ll be covering the executive team is small in numbers at this stage.
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08 / TESTING

We need 2-3 days to prepare the location, the prototypes as well as the re-
search scenarios. We need additional 4-5 days for recruitment of our custom-
er base – it’s a little easier since we went through the recruitment process
already but still will require some time to get done. We need 1-2 days of test-
ing followed with 4-5 days of evaluation and synthesis. We need to provide
a list of recommendations for improvements for each prototype – it takes
a while depending on the number of solutions we’re testing.
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08 / TESTING

We need to clean up the prototypes to the best of our abilities so that once
they’re presented to our customers they can give us relevant feedback.
If we’re taking some of the solutions to their existing infrastructures – they

need to process this within their organization. They must decide which
branch will be affected and onboard the personnel accordingly.
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08 / TESTING
of the activities?
The main goal is to validate the usefulness and value of each design solution
prototyped.
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MINDSET
TESTING
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MINDSET
MINDSET
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Try to have a separate testing team

This is not always possible but nevertheless relevant. Design is a process of solving problems in a creative and
meaningful way – there’s one byproduct of the process – the designer starts caring for the solution he’s created.
There’s nothing wrong with that – we should encourage that emotion – after all we want passionate people working
on our solutions. This just means that it’s going to be difficult for them to validate their own ideas – even with
the most openminded designers there is an underlying need to defend the idea, to explain how it works – basically
trying to educate the customer rather than educate themselves about what needs to be fixed. Therefore, whenever
possible I recommend to use a separate team of people for this step in the process – people who haven’t been a part
of the creative process thus far. They obviously will need to be onboarded so that they understand the context
but will have no relationship with the ideas themselves. The results of the validation will be much more reliable.
Know what you’re testing

This is critical. We need to make absolutely sure that we know exactly what ques-
tions we’re seeking the answers to. For each of the prototypes there needs to be
a list of those so that we can pick the right method of validation. This is very similar
to the task we’ve already undertaken in the Customer Perspective part of the Process
– this time though instead of Business Activities we’re trying to assess the validity
of a certain feature. This means we will also need a research scenario at this stage
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of the process.
MINDSET
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Killing the ideas

Yes – this is the moment. The entire team needs to be briefed on this from the very beginning of the process.
We’re here to make sure that we either find out how to improve the solution or kill it in the process. No prototype
should get out of this stage untouched. They should all get better or be discontinued. We don’t want to invest into
anything that hasn’t shown promise during this stage. If we end up with hardly any solutions on the table through
the process – so be it – we can always go back to the drawing board and rethink approach – but there’s no excuse
for endorsing mediocre solutions – let’s strive for greatness.
Multiple iterations
Whenever possible do as many as you can. I know there are project deadlines and
it’s sometimes really difficult to convince the executive team to do another iteration
but if there’s anywhere a good place to do it - it’s here. Go back, rethink, redraw,
reevaluate – don’t settle on something you know is wrong. We’re almost at the end
of the Design Thinking process and whatever leaves this station gets approved for
implementation – we need to make sure it works. There will always be time to im-
prove it even further but if we know something requires work – let’s do the work.
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TESTING
RESEARCH SCENARIO
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
08 / TESTING
Much like we did at the Customer Perspective stage of the process this step 0 – no impact on Customer experience
also requires a specific list of questions, an explicit list of assumptions
I would assume there are no features that reflect this but once we’ve
we’re trying to address. Let’s revisit some of the steps to see where we are.
validated the experience map there might be so this level is definitely
We’ve taken the best potential solutions and from abstract ideas turned
relevant.
them into tangible prototypes. Each one of the prototypes had a detailed
inventory of features and values it’s delivering. Now it’s time to validate 1 – some impact on Customer experience
which of those qualities needs more work, which is right on the money and
which needs to be terminated altogether. In order to do that we have to take These are the features that are not key to the solution but are needed
each prototype we’ve created and assess the value it delivers ourselves first. to make the solution work efficiently
We put the prototypes together and use the list of features and anticipated 2 – real impact on Customer experience
values. We put them one a horizontal axis just like we did with the Business
Hypothesis. We have a very similar view but this time instead of custom- These features are very important to the working of the prototype –
er lifecycle steps we have specific prototypes. Depending on the number they form the essence of what the solution is about and make a tangible
of prototypes and associated values this can be quite substantial. Once impact.
we’ve put the horizontal axis together now it’s time to assess how to we
3 – huge impact on Customer experience
expect from the features we put forward – namely we look at each feature
from the perspective of the customer. We use the same scale as we did These features are the ones we anticipate will be spoken about, this
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within our Business Hypothesis experience map exercise but with slightly is the experience that the customer will remember and share with his
different definitions: network. These are the elements that will create the brand advocates.
All we need to do now is assess each feature according to the values above
and connect the dots. This will form a very good basis for the generation
of our research scenarios.
The task at hand is very similar to the task we’ve
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
08 / TESTING
already described in the Customer Perspective

part of the training. I recommend you to sit down
with your team and go through each one of the fea-
tures and individually generate minimum 3 ques-
tions you’d like to ask to validate the experience
of the customer. Each member of the team should
spend 3 minutes generating the questions for
each feature and then present those questions
to the team. The more members you have the more
time it will take so keep this sensible and down
to a maximum of 5 people. After the questions have
been presented see if you could summarize them
into 2-3 key questions that need addressing for
each feature. Very quickly you should end up with
a massive list. This is the first building block of our
research scenario.
Please remember to keep the questions open-ended – these

types of questions usually start with words like Why, What,
How, When, Who, Where, Which and end up giving you the best
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answers because the respondent cannot answer them with

a simple Yes or a No. Once you have the questions written
down now it’s time to pick the right method for getting them
answered.
TESTING
METHODS
TESTING METHODS
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Having the questions is very important. What is even more important is how do we get the responses and
what method will we use to record the data. Again, like with the other chapters I’ve picked the best methods
that work for me and I highly recommend their use. They also work great in conjunction with each other:
Observations – this is a method for testing solu- Shadowing – this is a method that I find very useful Validation workshop – this is a method used very
tions that are closer to the high-fidelity state and for testing solutions on the move. It’s either a pro- often when we’re dealing with service prototypes
have a way of defending themselves - they don’t need totype the customer takes with them and you follow and storyboards ie. the solutions are not located
the presence of a design team member to explain or along to verify how it works or it’s a prototype that in the actual business ecosystem. You invite a group
make them work. They can be operated by the cus- has multiple touchpoints or stages that the customer of 5-8 customers and you present the solution and
tomer. We observe the customer from afar and re- goes through. then rework it with them to suit their preferences.
cord what his reactions are and how the features
we’ve designed work on the basis of that interaction.
Guerilla interviews – this is a method of testing The use if the above methods vastly depends
that works really well with the observations method on the prototype we want to validate as well
when once you observe what a customer is doing as the questions we’re seeking the answers to. We
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from afar you have a quick paced interview that takes take the prototype assessment experience map
5-10 minutes just to get a broader understanding we’ve created and the questions we’ve generated.
of what you’ve observed. Now all we need to do is choose which method we’ll
be using to get to the answers. Once we’ve com-
pleted this task we can now get ready for the field
testing and run our experiments.
observations
TESTING METHODS
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We take our solution prototype and put it in the real business ecosystem
– this means that it’s exposed to real customers with real needs and aspi-
rations with no additional incentive to use it or give you any feedback. This
can lead to very harsh feedback – don’t take these reactions personally –
Let’s review the methods of testing in detail. How to prepare them and take them seriously. This is how a real customer is reacting to the solution
how to operationalize them. The observation method requires us to have you’ve designed – you’ll be amazed how many people will actually give you
a solution concept that is robust enough to interact with the customers positive and creative feedback about the solution and even thank you for
on its own. The goal of the testing team is to figure out a way to record trying to make their lives easier. Take note of everything you see and hear
the findings. Please note that we’re not recording customers – we’re trying and record your insights. You can either sit in the vicinity of the solution
to record what they do and how they interact with or prototypes. We just and observe the prototype being used. You can also place a discreet camera
want to answer our questions about which features are key in the solution that will be recording whatever is happening to the prototype and observe
and what should be improved. Remember that if you want to put any of your the live-feed somewhere in the back room. If you’re in the vicinity the ben-
customers’ thoughts on record – you need their consent to do so. This might efit is that you can quickly step up to the customer and get their feedback
be the case so it’s good to either have a written legal document that they directly after using the solution and do a quick guerilla interview. The risk
sign and this covers your legal requirements or recruit the customers and is that the customer might notice that you’re watching them and if you ask
have them sign the recording consent beforehand. them additional questions right after – other customers will have uncovered
your observation post – you’ll need to reset the machine every time you do
a quick interview – so that you can revert back to your undercover state.
This method is very powerful and if done properly can

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deliver very meaningful results – real customers and

the real business ecosystem make it a hard nut to crack
but it’s really worth the effort. You’ll learn a ton.
shadowing
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Once we have the customer we can now start the testing evaluation. Make
sure we onboard the customer properly telling them that we’re testing
the prototype and not them and that it is a solution concept so there will
be things that don’t work – so that they don’t worry that they’ve broken
Another very useful method of testing is the Shadowing. It’s effective when something. We basically follow the customer as he goes through the stages
your prototype is spread over a few stages or requires the customer to take of our prototype giving him the opportunity to use it freely and without
the prototype with them. This method also exposes the solution to actual constraints and above all allowing for mistakes to happen. It’s not a walking
business environment and real customers but this time there’s a member interview so we need to allow enough time for the customer to use the pro-
of your testing team present that actually shadows the customer using totype on their own and pick the right moments to dig a little deeper into
the prototype so there is some room to actually help with the workings what works and what doesn’t. It’s great to record whatever is being said
of the solution and therefore the prototype itself doesn’t need to be as high for later analysis –a go-pro camera will do the job and add more credibility
fidelity as with our observation method. The way we do this is we first ap- to the test – video can be something we can later show to our executive
proach a Customer and ask them if they’d like to be a part of a prototype team so that they have a full understanding about how the prototype did
testing and get them to sign a legal document giving us recording consent. in the field. Obviously if carrying a camera around is difficult or not feasible
This can also be tackled with ourselves recruiting the customers through at all - a pocket audio recorder will be just as useful.
a recruitment agency and meeting up with them at a specific location and
point in time.
The method is definitely useful and brings a lot of in-

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sights however shadowing definitely takes a longer

time specifically with more complex prototypes there-
fore you might be able to speak to less customers that
with the other methods.
guerilla interviews
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This method is somewhere in between the observation and shadowing. It’s

basically a quick interview allowing us to find out more about why something
wasn’t clear for the customer while working with a prototype. It grants us
the possibility to get to the bottom of the issue at hand. It’s a very good
complementary method to use with the observation method. Once we’ve
observed something that we’d like more clarity on we can speak to the cus-
tomer immediately afterwards they’ve used the prototype. As you remem-
ber each prototype had an appropriate list of questions for every feature
therefore we need to pick the right question that refers to what we’re trying
to validate. Please note that this is not an in-depth interview – we won’t be
able to immerse ourselves in the conversation and ask a lot of why questions
– we need to keep it concise, relevant and short. This interview shouldn’t last
longer than 5-10 minutes – the latter number being a stretch already. There
is one challenge to keep in mind – it’s a very short interview and therefore
if you want to record it and get customer’s consent it sometimes defeats
the purpose of the agility of this method. So just try to note down anything
of value that might be useful in our analysis later on.
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validation
TESTING METHODS
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Additionally, it lets us spend a longer period of time with our customers,

sometimes a full day, and have a very open discussion about their needs.
workshops
Over and above that because we have more time we can not only ana-
lyze multiple prototypes but also invite the customers to re-design them
with us – they can do a little bit of prototyping together with the design
team in order to comprehensively communicate how they see the solution
working. The way you undertake the method is you first present the entire
solution concept to the customers and respond to any questions. Once
Another method that is vastly different than the aforementioned due to one everything is clear now it’s your time to ask the questions. You have your
specific factor – it takes place in a lab environment – not the real business research scenarios for each prototype so you go through them one by one
ecosystem. We invite the customers to our facilities where together with trying to validate every feature of the prototype. Once this has been done
the executive and the design teams we can present our solutions and gather you can then re-imagine what the solution should look like giving the cus-
their feedback. This method is usually used when we’re dealing with solution tomers an opportunity to change anything they want. Recording the efforts
prototypes that are in a form of a storyboard or something that is showing and insights is the easy as you fully control the environment you’re in. You
the way we imagine the prototype to work but cannot be really experienced can use cameras, digital recorders and you’ll have the workshop results
physically by the customers. That doesn’t mean that this method brings less on the table to match. It is a very powerful method of validation as it engages
value – not at all – it’s very relevant. It allows us to firstly communicate how the workshop attendees in a very meaningful way.
we see the idea working in real life with very little investment and validate
our way of thinking. Secondly it allows us to receive a lot of feedback about
what works, what should be improved and what is obsolete.
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LIST OF RECOMMENDATIONS
list of the recommendations
TESTING METHODS
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Once you’ve used the testing methods to the full extent and validated all
of your prototypes now it’s time to assess the importance of the features.
Expose the ones that are obsolete and build a list of what need to be im-
proved on each prototype. We need to come back to our prototype assess-
ment experience map and take all the testing information we’ve gathered.
We now need to look at every feature and analyze what we’ve learned. This
will allow us to undertake a proper assessment of each one. We need to list
everything we’ve learned about each feature and what is the recommended
improvement. Each element of the map should have at least one recom-
mendation for improvement unless the improvement is terminating it alto-
gether. After this has been analyzed and defined we can now easily assess
if our assumptions about this element have been correct, where have we
made a miscalculation and which areas of our prototypes are missing value
altogether.
This form of synthesis is very useful as it not only gives us

a list of all the improvement to our solution concepts but also
prioritizes them in accordance with what our customers value
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the most. Once we’re happy with the synthesis we can move it
into a project backlog so that it’s a little easier to work with.
TESTING
SUMMARY
TESTING SUMMARY
08 / TESTING
This concludes this part of the Design Thinking process. I would strongly advise to do as many
iterations of prototyping and testing as feasible. After all whatever survives at this stage
makes its way to the final implementation. Let’s recap what has been covered. We’ve taken
the prototypes and put them through their paces in the actual business ecosystem. We’ve
used multiple methods of testing as well as defined proper research scenarios for this pur-
pose. We’ve assessed the feature quality of each prototype and then validated it with real
customers. This stage can be iterated upon for a long period of time and there will always be
something to improve. The attitude to take here is “finished not perfect”. Regardless of how
many iterations we were able to undertake we take the final list of recommendations and
move on to the final stage of the Design Thinking process namely Impact Delivery. We’ll take
all of the now validated solutions and put them back onto the As-Is Customer Experience
Map created in the Customer Perspective stage of the process in order to create the To-Be
Customer Experience Map and add even more information to it. Can’t wait to see you there.
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09 /
IMPACT

• business goals
D E L I V-
• key performance indicators
• risk factors
• the tool - ERIC model
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
ERY
IMPACT DELIVERY SUMMARY
09 / IMPACT DELIVERY
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Before we deliver the required final outcome of the project let’s

first review a few questions so that we know what to expect.
01 / Who should be involved at this
stage of the process?

This stage is all about the final delivery and most of the work will be under-
taken by the design team. We need to summarize everything we’ve learned
and put it into one concise image so that the final result as well as the way
forward is easily understandable. The design team takes lead and delivers
the information to the executive team. It is then a joint effort to put additional
information into the mix like risk factors related to the implementation and
maintenance of new solutions, a KPI layer that will guide us through the pro-
cess of monitoring the achievement of business goals as well as the organ-
ization readiness.
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research team?
The entire design team and the entire executive team will be needed at this
stage of the process. We’ll need a good understanding of existing business
constraints in order to identify any risks. The great thing about this step
similar to the first step in the process is that it’s all within our control but
there is a huge additional benefit – we now have all the information required
to make the right business decisions and make the impact happen. I believe
this is one of the most exciting parts of the process as it binds everything
together and we’re really close to the implementation stage.
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We need approx. 2-3 days to prepare for the final workshop it the executive
team. The workshop itself should take 2 days if undertaken in a comfortable
manner. Afterwards the synthesis of the results and the final To-Be Customer
Experience Map will take 4-5 days to deliver which then concludes the entire
project. As mentioned at every stage of the process this can also be narrowed
down to a single day of work if our business model or the area of impact is
slim and the design artifacts can just hang on the walls.
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We need to be fully briefed on the entire process. Have a very good under-
standing of what happened during each step so that we’re absolutely sure
how we arrived at this stage. There might be some difficult questions flying
around the room challenging if the solutions we came up with are the best
solutions possible – after all we’re just about to launch new products into
the market and invest a lot of resources. It takes courage and the belief that
we made the right decisions is key here.
The executive team should do their homework around the solutions we’ve
designed together and have a thorough understanding what it would take
to deliver and maintain them. Knowledge about how their organization re-
sponds to the process is very important as it will help us in putting more
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information on the map.

of the activities?
The main goal is to summarize the entire project and using the information
deliver the final To-Be customer experience map that will guide the business
people through the implementation and maintenance process. It’s a very
strategic document that allows for a proper preparation of the business for
the upcoming impact.
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IMPACT DELIVERY
REVISITING THE
ENTIRE PROCESS
We have come to the last stage of the process. Let’s quickly

review what we’ve done so far and how it all fits together.
Business Hypothesis - we have started with Design Challenge - we then used this map to de- Testing - the features of the prototypes have
a broad and exciting design vision which defined fine the design challenges using the 5 x Y method and then been assessed in reference to our experience
the long-term motivation of the executive team. described them in a consistent manner which then map and then validated in customer testing. Once
We quickly followed up with appropriate SMARTER lead us to prioritization. Final Result: Prioritized list the solutions have been tested with actual customers
business goals to bring this vision closer to reality. of consistently structured Design Challenges. in actual business context they have been properly
We defined which stakeholder group has the big- described as far as the improvements are concerned.
Ideation - once prioritized we’ve turned to gener-
gest impact on our goals and which of the current Final Result: List of recommendations for each solu-
ating solution concepts to the key design challeng-
business activities affect them. We assessed each tion prototype.
es using various exciting methods of ideation. This
activity and created the business hypothesis expe-
led us to multiple solutions to each of the design Impact Delivery - this leads us to the final stage
rience map in the process. Final Result: Business
challenges which at the end have been prioritized of the design process, where all of the gathered
Hypothesis Experience Map.
as well. Final Result: Prioritized list of consistently information will allow us to prepare for the market
Customer Perspective - we then used the stake- structured Solution Concepts. implementation. Final Result: Expected To-Be Cus-
holder group description in order to create a recruit- tomer Experience Map.
Prototyping - we’ve chosen the best possible solu-
ment profile. We listed out all the questions we need
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tions and turned them into tangible prototypes us-

answered to validate the hypothesis and chosen
ing several methods of rapid prototyping and some
the appropriate quantitative and qualitative meth-
exciting tools available online. Final Result: Solution
ods of field research. We have undertaken the re-
prototypes delivering the target experience with
search with the recruited customers and validated
a specific list of features.
the business hypothesis creating the As-Is customer
experience map in the process. Final Result: As-Is
Customer Experience Map.
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
DESIGN CHALLENGE
DESIGN VISION
BUSINESS GOALS
STAKEHOLDER MAPPING
BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS
ARCHETYPE CREATION

EXPERIENCE MAP OVERLAPS
ROOT CAUSE TOOL
PRIORITISATION
RECRUITMENT PROCESS
RESEARCH SCENARIO
RESEARCH METHODS TRANSFORMATION MET
IN - DEPH INTERVIEWS BRAINSTORMING
SYNTHESING INFORMA
IDEATION
ONLINE QUESTIONARE
AND PRIORIZING
RESEARCH SYNTHESIS
DESIGN
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THINKING
PROCESS
STEPS
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
PROTOTYPING
MINDSET
TARGET EXPERIENCE
PROTOTYPE FOR TESTING
IMPACT DELIVERY
LOW FIDELY PROTOTYPING RESEARCH SCENARIO
HIGH FIDELY PROTOTYPING TESTING METHODS
OBSERVATIONS
SHADOWNIG
THOD
GUIRELLA INTERVIEWS
ATION VALIDATION WORKSHOPS
TESTING
MULTIPLE ITERATIONS SYNTHESIS
KPI
RISK FACTORS
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
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None of the design artifacts created are obsolete – We take the As-Is Customer Experience Map we’ve created on the ba-
they all play a part in the process and are meaningful sis of our research at the end of the Customer Perspective stage – it
steps to deliver the impact. This is the moment where will form the basis for the creation of the To-Be Customer Experience
we take what we’ve learned in the Understanding Map. In order to create it though we need to add all the solutions that
Phase of the Design Thinking process and combine we’ve prototyped, improved and that made it this far into the process
that with what we’ve identified in the later stages. without being terminated. We’ve assessed each one of their features
from the perspective of the customer already so now it’s time to in-
clude them within the As-Is Customer Experience map and adding
what we already know into the picture. This should be a pretty easy ex-
ercise as we know exactly how the solutions correspond to the design
challenges, we know how the challenges relate to the as-is customer
experience map – after all it was this map that started it all.
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I recommend you start with the horizontal axis first so that all
the solutions are nicely lined up with the surrounding existing

business activities and are confined within the appropriate
customer lifecycle stage. Once this has been accomplished
we can then turn our heads to the assessment. We’ve test-
ed the solutions with the customers and know exactly what
should be improved for each of the features in order to deliver
the right experience. All we need to do is to assess the solu-
tion using the prototype assessment information we already
have. This should be an informed decision that will define
our new expectations.
Now we just need to connect the dots and our To-Be Customer
Experience Map is ready. We know what customer experience
we wish to create through the implementation of the tested
solutions and how it differs from the As-Is Customer Experi-
ence Map. If done correctly there should be a distinct differ-
ence visible between the two maps – specifically when you
overlap them one on top of the other. Having a view of the fu-
ture from the perspective of the customer is great and a very
powerful view to have. However, we now need to close the loop
and come back to our business – after all these are the people
that will be responsible for the delivery of the impact we’re
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striving for. We will add additional layers to our map so that

we can look at one strategic view of what needs to happen
and what we as a business should prepare for.
TO BE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
PERSONA #1
introduction
RESE ARCH SCENARIO
IMPACT DELIVERY
#1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
#2
#3
KPIs
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RISKS
CHANGE
MANAGEMENT
BUSINESS GOAL
business goal
Now that we have the To-Be Experience Map defined and we have a very good
understanding of our expectations we can now add more information to it.
The first element I recommend adding onto the Map as additional layer is
a Business Goals layer. As you remember this is the binding element between
the long-term vision and the stakeholder group we’ve picked for the project
so omitting it at this stage would not be wise. In the first stage of the Design
Thinking process we’ve listed out all of the business goals relevant to our
design vision. We later prioritized these goals to find the key business goal
to take to the next stage. This is a very exciting moment when we can come
back to the list and review which additional goals might have been impacted
with our To-Be Customer Experience Map.
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We take each business goal starting with the top

one and verify which one of the activities affects
the goal. We assess the positive impact on the busi-
ness goal. Let’s look at an example goal we’ve iden-
tified for our restaurant example:
20% (Measurable) of our current customer base We need to asses every activity in order to identify if it impacts the goal
business goal
to be made up of young people (Specific) within 12 in a positive way. In essence what we’re trying to add to the picture is
months from the end of the Restaurant DT project an additional dimension of looking at each activity on the map from
(Time-related) assigned to the Restaurant Manage- the perspective of the business goal achievement. We specifically
ment (Assignable). The Executive Team acquired want to focus on the positive aspects of the delivery and for the clarity
other customer groups in the past through promotion- of the picture I would recommend highlighting the activities affecting
al activities (Realistic). It targets young people who the business goal in a positive way. If you feel strongly about assessing
form the crucial part of the Design Vision (Exciting). the positive and negative impacts go right ahead and include that
It has been written down and signed off (Recorded). information as well. What this means is that some activities might
bring us closer to the goals while others might work against it. If we
feel that it does we can show that with a simple symbol like “+” and “-“.
If we feel that this approach is too simple we can use a more varied
scale of impact. Using the impact scale, we already covered so many
times within the process should work pretty well:
0 – activity has no impact on the business goal
-1 or +1 – activity has some negative or positive impact on the goal
-2 or +2 – activity has a major negative or positive impact on the goal
-3 or +3 – activity has a huge negative or positive impact on the goal

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I would strongly advise to keep this simple in order to keep the image
business goal
clear and understandable for anyone looking at it. Therefore, using

the negative impact assessment as well as multiple levels of impact
scale with caution. Using color coding to make it easier to read vis-
ually might be a good idea. Once this exercise has been undertaken
for the main business goal we can then take the sub-sequent goals
from the list and include them in the picture as well – this in the end
will create a heatmap showing us the areas of activities with highest
business impact.
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KEY PERFORMANCE INDICATORS
key performance indicators
Once the goals have been properly assessed and put on the map it’s now time to define
the appropriate measures to make sure that their achievement is being monitored on a con-
stant basis. This element of the map is very often described as Key Performance Indicators
– in short KPIs. It represents a measurable value that we’re able to gauge and assess con-
stantly – it basically puts a little more information and context to the business goal. Let’s
use our restaurant example to explain a little more – let’s use a shorter version of the goal
namely: 20% of our current customer base to be made up of young people within 12 months.
The main measurable item is the value of 20%. It’s our role now to attach as many potential
ways of measuring how we progress towards this value. Additionally, we need to fully grasp
what does it actually mean 20% - is it relevant for social media or the actual young people
coming through the restaurant door? Is it the number of school students that register
on our website or is it a combination of all of those? This is exactly what we need to access.
235 / 253
Let’s imagine that our strategy of getting to that number is to use social
media promotional content in conjunction with local influencers cooperation

as well as support of local schools. If these are the 3 main activities we’d
like to assess and measure the example indicators could be:
• Number of “likes” on the social media platforms

where the promotional content has been placed
• Number of “shares” of the promotional content
• Number of Influencer posts regarding our res-

taurant offer
• Number of Influencers in cooperation
• Number of views of the Influencer content
• Number of followers on social media
• Number of schools in cooperation
• Number of school students registering on our

restaurant site
236 / 253
As you can see there is a number of ways to measure our
progress – each one of the above has a potential of influenc-
ing the business goal using the aforementioned 3 activities
and there’s a lot more we could generate. It’s very important
to comprehend how the vaguely identified 20% are subdi-
TO BE CUSTOMER
vided into the appropriate KPIs. This is the first step into
the process of creation and to be honest I would recommend
just putting the indicators on the map and connecting them EXPERIENCE
TO BE CUSTOMER
DESIGN
PERSONA #1
to the appropriate activity and business goal. This is a huge IMPACT DELIVERY
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
PERSONA #1
leap forward because we will have an accurate list of things IMPACT DELIVERY
we want to measure. The process of measuring is the first AWARENESS CONSIDERATION PURCHASE USE SHARE
step to a better future. AWARENESS CONSIDERATION PURCHASE USE SHARE
2 3
2
1
The second step is to have a good understanding of what 0

1
kind of values we’re anticipating – and these usually change #1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
#1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
#2
over time and with the amount of activities we put in front #3
#2
#3
of our customers. This is the additional element that we need

to specify for each one of the measures in place – the time KPIs KPIs
interval and the frequency of how the things we measure

are improving. They need to perform appropriately over time RISKS
RISKS
in order for us to achieve the business goal of 20% with- CHANGE

MANAGEMENT
in the 12 months. We need to see what is the performance MANAGEMENT
CHANGE
on a daily, weekly and monthly basis so that we know that we’re

on the right track. In essence each of the KPIs should have
a required performance value that we’re aiming to achieve.
It’s not just about getting to 100 000 likes of our promotional All of these events can trigger a different result therefore we should com-
content within 12 months – we want to get to a 1000 likes pare the performance of a specific indicator to the contextually appropriate
237 / 253
a day from 10 likes a day within 12 months. We want the per-

period in time. For the sake of this exercise I would recommend just putting
formance to get better. These are just example numbers but
the indicators in place for each activity – this will generate a massive impact
I hope you understand. It’s sometimes tricky to get to the bot-
tom of these and usually requires us to have some track to start with. Peter Drucker once said: ”If you can’t measure it – you can’t
record in place. The performance we measure might change improve it” – let’s measure what we can and then use the data we get to see
over time like Christmas time, new year’s resolution, summer how we can improve the results over time.
vacation break etc.
RISK FACTORS
risk factors
We are in a great position. We have the To-Be Customer Experience map ready, we know what
kind of business impact we should be expecting and most of all we fully understand how we’ll
measure our progress towards them. Now it’s time to properly prepare for the implementation
of the new solutions and their implementation. This means we must have a close look at
the potential reasons not why we’ll succeed but why we might fail – namely – identify risks
associated with solution implementation as well as maintenance. Once these have been
defined we’ll look at ways of mitigating them. This is a reasonably easy exercise to do with
the executive team as their day job is usually built around dealing with potential risks. It’s
good to have many different perspectives considering different areas of the organization.
All we need to do is list as many potential risks as possible for each of the To-Be Experience
Map activities – obviously we want to keep it connected to the new solutions begin created
as they are the ones that need to be implemented. However, there might be situations when
existing activities in the map must be adjusted for the new solutions to work properly and
this is exactly the moment we identify that.
238 / 253
risk factors
Firstly, we identify all the risks associated with the implementation of a cer-
tain solution into the market. What could happen that will lead to failure
of that process? Maybe the technology we’re using to implement the solution
could be outdated during our implementation? Who could affect the solution
implementation and make it fail? Maybe our competition comes up with
a similar solution? Maybe a group of customers will post a lot of negative
feedback on the way we approached the implementation. Is there a time
Secondly, we identify all the risks associated with the main-
period that we should avoid while implementing the solution? Maybe there
tenance period of the solution. After all, once the solution is
is a holiday coming up and there is a risk of missing the shipping date.
implemented we need to make sure that it operates properly
Are there existing processes that could affect the solution’s implementa-
and that we’re prepared for multiple scenarios. What could
tion? Maybe the way we implement the solution damages other parts of our
happen once the solution is operational? Maybe we get over-
business that are crucial for its success. These are the questions we need
whelmed with the number of new customers and our service
to honestly answer and try to come up with as many scenarios of failure
quality suffers. Who could affect the solution after it’s been
as possible. I know it might sound strange but this way we plan for the best
implemented? Maybe we run out of resources or part of our
and prepare for the worst.
team ends up on a sick leave. Are there any points in time
where we should be really careful while operating? Maybe
the holiday season will create a lot of unanticipated traffic
or the lack of it. There are a lot of potential risks associated
with the maintenance of the solution that stretch from scarce
resources, inefficient processes, strong competition to agile
disruptors in the market. We need to list all of the risks we
can come up with.
239 / 253
THE TOOL - ERIC MODEL
TO BE CUSTOMER
the tool- eric model
EXPERIENCE
TO BE CUSTOMER
DESIGN
PERSONA #1
EXPERIENCE
IMPACT DELIVERY DESIGN
PERSONA #1
IMPACT DELIVERY

3
2
3
1
2
0
1
#1 0
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
#2
#1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
#3
#2
#3
KPIs
KPIs
RISKS
RISKS
CHANGECHANGE
M A N A G E MM EA N
NTAGEMENT
240 / 253
Once we’ve listed all the risks associated with the implementation and
maintenance we might get into a very scary place – after all, there
is a lot of things that might go wrong. That’s why we must act and
mitigate the identified risks. There is a great tool for Risk Mitigation
that allows for a very structured approach – the model is called ERIC.
It’s built around the following elements:
E – stands for Eliminate
This means that the first step in risk mitigation is

the attempt to eliminate it altogether. Is there any-
thing we can do to make sure that the risk does not
manifest itself in any way shape or form? If there is
we should put as many ideas on how to make that
happen as possible
241 / 253
R – stands for Reduce
This means that the second step in risk mitigation

is the attempt to reduce it. We can list all activities
that can help with the risk reduction. Is there any-
thing we can do to minimize the impact if the risk
actually takes shape? Can we reduce its negative
effect? If so these are the risk mitigation activities
we put together for the risks we identified.
242 / 253
I – stands for Inform
This means that the third step in risk mitigation is

to provide appropriate information about the risk
being present and viable. If any of the above steps
are not feasible or possible ie. we can’t eliminate
the risk or reduce its effect we need to make sure
that we provide the right information in the right
context to inform everyone about its potential.
243 / 253
C – stands for Control
This means that the if we’ve covered all of the above

steps we actually have a good grasp on the risks
we’ve identified and we control them.
244 / 253
I suggest adding at least one activity for each risk starting

with elimination attempt and finishing with the appropriate
information whenever possible. This should not be an over-
whelming task for the executive team – we’re just trying
to have at least one way of dealing with the risk when it ma-
terializes.
245 / 253
TO BE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE DESIGN
PERSONA #1
CHANGE MANAGEMENT
change management
IMPACT DELIVERY
TO BE CUSTOMER
EXPERIENCE
AWARENESS CONSIDERATION PURCHASE USE DESIGN SHARE
PERSONA #1
IMPACT DELIVERY
3
There is one final element of the delivery we need to cover –

1
the readiness of the organization. There are quite a few chang-

0
3
#1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
2
es coming their way in order to deliver the business impact #2

#3
1
and they need to provide proper support to create the amaz-

0
#1
SOLUTIONS
GOALS NEW
BUSINESS
KPIs
ing customer experiences we’re hoping to supply. This layer #2

#3
of the To-Be Customer Experience Map is built on the backbone R I S K SK P I s
of the discussions we already had – we just need to summarize

them into a few sentences for each of the new solutions. These
CHANGE
M A N A G E M E NRTI S K S
are also actions to be taken but this time we’re only looking at MANAGEMENT
CHANGE
the organization itself.
• Physical constraints - will the creation of the solu-

We can use the breakdown we’re already familiar tion require changing a building layout. Would it need
with from our Delivery Ease analysis we covered a lot of investment into infrastructure? Would the or-
in the Solution Concept part of the Design Thinking ganization need to allocate resources for the purchase
process: of new devices or vehicles?
246 / 253
• Human constraints - will the creation of the solution

require a lot of human resources; will we need to re-
cruit or train more personnel?
• Organizational - will the creation of the solution

require a lot of change management. Will it affect
company’s procedures and is the company ready to be
disrupted?
change management
We’ve used these questions to assess the feasibility of a specific solution.

This time we need to bring answers to the table but the questions still
form a great framework to structure our thoughts. For each one of the new
activities or the ones that show a lot of impact on business goals or have
247 / 253
a lot of risks associated with them we should assess if the three aforemen-
tioned areas have any required action. If there’s anything we need to address
within our organization be it human resources, system updates or physical
constraints we should say exactly what need to happen.
restaurant example
For our restaurant example I would imagine the following potential
change management
actions that need to be addressed in order for the solutions to work

properly and not overwhelm the organization:
• New waiter staff needs to be recruited and onboarded
• Waiter staff needs to be properly trained
• A new system to handle online orders requires an update of the technological

stack
• Additional IT resources are required to maintain the solutions
• Additional Social Media Managers need to be recruited and onboarded
• Communication training should take place in the restaurant for each depart-
ment
• New restaurant furniture will need to be provided and existing furniture

should be refurbished
• Additional staging area will need to be designed and created The list of actions giving more insight into the preparation for im-
plementation and maintenance of new solutions is crucial at this
• Redesign of the restaurant floor-plan will be required stage. There are a couple of reasons. Firstly, it shows the execu-
tive team what will need to change within the organization in order
• And many more
to deliver the new value. Secondly, it brings a tangible feeling
248 / 253
to the entire design process – it is the closest we get to the de-

livery before it actually happens – it turns the To-Be Customer
Experience Map into something really affecting the organization.
IMPACT DELIVERY
change management
We have reached our final destination and have a very good understanding of what needs
to happen now to turn the Design Vision into reality. We’ve started by creating the To-Be
Customer Experience Map enriched by the new solutions and assessed the impact these will
have on the Customers as well as the bottom line. We then added crucial new information
into the mix allowing the executive team to grasp the complexity of their goals and making
sure we know exactly what kind of indicators should be measured and how. Afterwards we’ve
included a solid list of potential implementation and maintenance risks that we should be
prepared for so that we succeed which then in turn were mitigated using the ERIC model
of risk management. We finished everything off adding the information about the changes
that will need to be made in the company to suit the new customer experiences we’re trying
to deliver. This concludes this part of the Design Thinking process and also is the ultimate
step on our journey. We’ve covered every aspect and left no stone unturned – it has been
an exciting journey – but it’s not over yet. I look forward to seeing you in the next chapter
where we’ll discuss how we can continue our experience together to bring even more value.
Can’t wait to see you there!
249 / 253
CLOSING
10 /
THOUGHTS
What a journey this has been. We’ve covered it all. We started with a long- I would like to think that this is not a goodbye but just a beginning of our experience
10 / CLOSING THOUGHTS
term design vision and are now left with a very detailed plan of its execution. together. I’ve set up a Facebook and LinkedIn groups where we can share insights
We’ve spent a lot of time with our customers to try to either get in their about what challenges you have within your design processes. What kind of tools
shoes or have an honest friendly conversation directly with them to find out you like to use on a daily basis and how do you inspire others to deliver. Also I would
what they feel and how they interpret the world around them. We covered love to hear your feedback about what you feel should be improved within this course
all of the questions about how long everything takes as well as who should and what kind of content is missing. What else do you find interesting? I will have
be involved at each stage of the process. more courses coming your way and I will deeply use this feedback in order to adjust
their content. In addition to all that every Thursday at 17:00 (GMT -4 – New York
You have all the tools necessary to run your own projects now and over and Time) I’m running a YouTube Stream where I’ll be tackling design challenges live,
above that you now fully understand the deterministic way of the process share my new insights about the design tools I’m using and what I find useful. I’ll
delivery. This means that you’re now able to adapt the process to your own be covering some useful tips and answer any questions you might have regarding
needs and aspirations and with the right amount of experience you’ll gain Design Thinking, User Experience Design, Visual Design and even Concept Art as well
with each new project you’ll become more and more capable of delivering as how it all fits together. I’m a keen traveler, photographer, filmmaker and a gamer
your impact on the world around you. so feel free to speak about your hobbies and passions – I would love to hear about
them and who knows maybe we’ll be able to meet somewhere in the future on some
distant place where the true Design Heroes reside – a place of tranquility and honor.
I’m really glad that you were here with me and that you committed your
time. I value time very much and this means a great deal to me. After all
we go around this place once and since you chose to spend this time with
me I’m really grateful.
251 / 253
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DESIGN

BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS • the tool

CUSTOMER PERSPECTIVE • restaurant example

DESIGN CHALLENGE ARCHETYPE CREATION

RECRUITMENT PROCESS EXPERIENCE MAP OVERL APS

INTRODUCTION REVISITING THE ENTIRE PROCESS

MINDSET TO-BE EXPERIENCE MAP

PROTOTYPING SUMMARY • key performance indicators

• the tool - ERIC model

IMPACT DELIVERY SUMMARY

MINDSET 10 / CLOSING THOUGHTS

ABOUT DESIGN THINKING

AREAS OF BUSINESS IMPACT

corporate giants like Deloitte Digital. I would like to thank you

Over and above that I have put together a YouTube

After you’ve finished the course you’ll be able to ei-

Going back to Design Thinking. In short it’s an ap-

PRINCIPLES ucts and services for your customers enriched

Putting people, you’re designing for first is one as-

We will be covering all of those in future chapters

is offering as value to the end-customer. On the oth-

As you can see there’s already a lot happening between

There’s one misconception about Design Thinking that I would

People say that if you apply DT to your business you’ll have

Second of all we need to separate the business impacts and

There is a big potential to increase the number of customers. This in turn

The Design Thinking process we’re about to go into in de-

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

The Design Thinking process comes in many different

The process that I find is the most useful and what’s

BUSINESS HYPOTHESIS MAP

ROOT CAUSE TOOL

RESEARCH METHODS TRANSFORMATION MET

PROTOTYPE FOR TESTING

HIGH FIDELY PROTOTYPING TESTING METHODS

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

WHO IS RELEVANT TO THESE ACTIVITIES BEING PROBLEMATIC?

WHY DO WE NEED TO ACHIEVE THESE BUSINESS GOALS?

WHAT IS THE UNDERLYING LONG-TERM MOTIVATION OF THE BUSINESS LEADERS?

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

happens is that we confirm some of the hypothesis, we bring new insights

WHAT ARE THE KEY PROBLEMS AND NEEDS OF OUR END-CUSTOMER?

WHICH OF THE HYPOTHETICAL ACTIVITIES AND PROBLEMS WERE CORRECTLY

HOW DO WE QUANTIFY THE INSIGHTS WE GATHERED?

WHO DO WE NEED TO TALK TO?

WHAT METHOD SHOULD WE USE TO GATHER THE RESEARCH DATA?

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

WHAT IS THE KEY PROBLEM THAT NEEDS TO BE ADDRESSED?

HOW DO WE PRIORITIZE THE PROBLEMS?

WHICH OF THE PROBLEMS ARE KEY TO THE BUSINESS GOALS FULFILMENT?

HOW DO WE DEFINE THE PROBLEMS?

WHAT IS THE ROOT CAUSE OF THE PROBLEM OCCURRENCE?

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

WHICH OF THE MULTIPLE SOLUTIONS IS THE BEST AND WHY?

HOW DO WE PRIORITIZE THE SOLUTIONS?

HOW DO WE GENERATE MULTIPLE APPEALING SOLUTIONS?

02 / DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

HOW ARE GOING TO CREATE THE TARGET EXPERIENCE?

WHAT TOOLS AND MATERIALS DO WE NEED?