Feb 22, 2019
In this week’s episode of
Agile Coaches’
Corner, Dan Neumann
brings on a colleague of his at AgileThought to explore the topic
of design thinking —
Chris Spagnuolo. Chris is one of
the Product Specialists at AgileThought, serving as Principal
Consultant of Product Management and Innovation. He has a deep
background in a lot of things from a products standpoint and is
incredibly passionate about all things related to design thinking,
Lean Startup, and Agile.
Dan and Chris give their insight
on what design thinking is, where it came from, its core elements,
and how to incorporate it into overall delivery. Chris also gives
his advice around design thinking and where he sees it developing
in the future.
Key Takeaways
What design thinking
is:
- Designing products with people
in mind
- Focusing on understanding the
problem that you’re solving and understanding the person that
you’re solving it for, and then building a solution
- A fluid process with a loose
methodology
- Building a product, having the
real end user test it, and incorporating their feedback
The five core elements of design
thinking:
- Empathize: get to know your
customer on a personal level (who they are, what they do, and what
they’re trying to do)
- Define: looking at how you can
start to frame the problem that your customer has
- Ideate: coming up with as many
ideas as possible that can solve that problem
- Prototype: create lots of
low-fi prototypes to see if these solutions solve the
problem
- Test: give the customer the
solution, test it with them, and collect the feedback without
bringing your own biases or opinions in
And remember: you don’t have to
go through these core elements in this order; you can go back to
any of them at any time to get it right
Chris’ advice around design
thinking:
- Small batch things and solve
small parts at a time
- Support continuous
discovery
- The more feedback the better;
don’t make false assumptions about how to go forward
How to incorporate design
thinking into the overall delivery:
- Getting feedback from real end
users to incorporate
- Start up an input committee and
get real customers that well-represent the end users to sit on the
team
- Get feedback on each
iteration
- Make sure there’s somebody
holding the vision and focusing the feedback back into the
iterative process
Where Chris sees design thinking
being applied in the future:
- Escaping the realm of product
development and instead permeating business in general
- Being brought into the
organizational level for better engagement
- All decisions within the
business
Mentioned in this Episode:
Chris Spagnuolo (LinkedIn)
Stanford Design School
The Five Core Elements of Design
Thinking (Visual + Definition) “What is Design Thinking and Why Is
It So Popular?”
Podcast Ep. 12: “The Importance of
Embedding a DevOps Skill Set into Your Team”
Chris’s Book Pick
The Birth of Loud: Leo Fender,
Les Paul, and the Guitar-Pioneering Rivalry That Shaped Rock ’n’
Roll, by Ian S.
Port
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