Workshop | Approaching the Problems Faced by HR Employees with Design Thinking
Online Design Thinking Workshop
Workshop Overview
Who is Crenvo IK?
In addition to basic trainings such as conferences, workshops and corporate trainings, we prepare development programs tailored to your company’s needs. We ensure that your employees adopt a performance-oriented work culture that they will be aware of their responsibilities regarding their professional development.
Who is Userspots' IoX Digital team?
With UX Methodology, it researches the needs / motivations / barriers of your customers, creates the customer journey and designs digital experiences suitable for this journey. It optimizes your product with its data and test-oriented design process.
37 participants achieved:
- They learned basic Design Thinking principles and techniques,
- They learned the inseparable connection and history of Design Thinking with the design process,
- While applying the principles and techniques they learned, they developed an idea over a problem related to their professional field.
My Role
I took part as the Instructor and Facilitator in this workshop.
Team
Ömer Berk Yüksel – Instructor and Facilitator
Burak Çevik – Instructor and Facilitator
Tools
Miro
Year / Duration
2020 / 3,5 Hours
Hello there! I’m Ömer, an UX/UI Designer and Facilitator at Userspots. We wanted to share the Online Design Thinking workshop with Burak Çevik with you. Due to the Covid pandemic we are in, we focused on networking and the memorability of the subjects which are described in the workshop. It was a very enjoyable workshop / writing experience for us. We hope you enjoy it too, We wish you good reading.
What about Networking?
This period we spent together showed us that many things can be done digitally and online. However, since we know that it causes us to lose some interactions such as networking. When we are physically together, we held a session both to get to know the tools we use and to meet.
Miro
Let’s talk briefly about Miro, which allows us to do all these in an easy and practical way. Miro is an Online Whiteboard application. It was our first choice to be a tool where anyone can edit content instantly and make many interactions easily.
Zoom
A tool that we use to facilitate the Workshop and to apply efficiently the flows we physically achieve in digital. With the breakout rooms it contains, you can use it efficiently to randomly divide into groups and to interpret jointly after a certain time. In this workshop, it facilitated us to divide 37 participants into 6 different groups and to practice together.
Icebraker
We have prepared a space where everyone promotes themselves and mentions the super power they want to have and leave linkedin links. In this way, we aimed to meet our networking needs online.
You find and use this icebreaker’s template in Miro’s Miroverse area.
Design Thinking 101
Design thinking is an approach adopted by the world’s most innovative and successful organizations. The ideal product is at the ideal point of intersection of desirability, feasibility and vitality.
Historical
The Design Thinking process started with the Industrial Product Design of the 60s, and later on, with the contributions of people from different disciplines, towards the end of the 2000s, it began to be among the business plans of different professional fields, extending to business development and economy.
Herbert Simon
“Everyone designs who devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones“
Did you know that Braun branded shavers were the first user-focused designs? After the product designers analyze the hand movements of a person while shaving to the average human face, you can examine the products of the 60s, which they designed in terms of usability experience and we see the first stages of design thinking.
Design Thinking Stages
Empathize
Indispensable for the human-oriented design process. Empathy is the first step in understanding the user in the design process. This process is to understand the physical and emotional needs of the users, what they use and why, how they think and what they mean.
Define
It provides to clearly define the areas that need to be focused in the design process. In this step, meaning is commonly made from the information gathered from users. The focus is on problem detection and its variables.
Ideate
Represents a broad process mentally, in terms of concepts and questions. The idea generation step provides both fuel and resources to build prototypes and find innovative solutions for your users. The focus is on the variety of Brainstorming, Mind Mapping and Workshops.
Prototype
The development of the ideas that arise to answer questions that bring closer to the final solution repeatedly and in their simplest form. The prototype can be a product cut out of cardboard or a role-playing work that allows you to experience the process.
Test
It is a phase where users get feedback on prototypes and observe how well the design is suitable for users. This phase is another important opportunity to understand the user.
Nice Example — Dipjar
We talked about DipJar as an example that applies Design Thinking methods at every step. DipJar is simply a donation box where you can donate $ 1 by credit card. We talked about how the idea of this product came from birth, and the results of the methods used, based on a true story.
Defining the Problem – Human Resources
The definition allows to clearly indicate the areas that need to be focused in the design process. Meaning is made according to the information collected from users. The focus is on problem detection and its variables.
In this study, we gave a definition of a problem to the participants with whom we shared the fundamentals of Design Thinking, that they can apply from their own fields and with a current topic. We aimed for them to learn the methods in a much more memorable way by applying them on a subject they have mastered in their field.
The problem definition on which we will develop ideas for the participants – An employee starts work on May 20 and you have not met this person physically before. How can you do remote onboarding?
The Methods We Apply
Think about the last time you had tea or coffee. Maybe it was this morning. How did it make you feel? Why did you drink? What else were you doing while drinking?
Probably your answers to these questions are different from anyone who has had a hot drink recently. These answers represent your experience. We made the following methods with our participants to make these existing experiences subjective and objective, such as pain, gain, how it will touch the user, derive and explain your opinion to others.
Empathy Map
This method helps teams develop deep understanding and empathy for other people. People use it to help them improve the customer experience, design better work environments, and many other things.
5 Whys
We use the “5 Whys” method to dig deeper into the root of the problem. Most of the time, you will get the answer you’re looking for as the fifth reason. This doesn’t mean you have to use exactly five – you can use less or more depending on the answer you would like to receive. You will make your sentence with a business problem more human-oriented after 5 reasons.
Mind Mapping
It represents a wide process mentally, in terms of concepts and questions. The idea generation step provides both fuel and resources to build prototypes and find innovative solutions for your users. Ideas are generated by focusing on various Brainstorming, Mind Mapping and Workshops
Product Idea / Storyboard
Since we have limited time with our participants, after the Empathy Map, 5 Whys and Mind Maps studies, the ideas of most of our participants started to become concrete in their minds. In order to keep these ideas in the mind and not to disappear, we made one more session to embody the idea with the written version of the idea and the various images we found from google images.
At the end of the 3-hour workshop, we had more than 20 ideas, 6 of which were concrete. Participants both met 5 different people during the practice sessions and also had common working experience.
Feedback
While planning this training, our goal was to teach by explaining and applying the essence of Basic Design Thinking principles and techniques. The best way to understand that we achieved our goal was to get feedback. We asked the participants to tell what kind of experience they had by leaving a round sticker in the graphic area you see below. In a 3.5 hour online workshop, we focused on the application without overwhelming the participants with too much information. The fact that the area of “I learned little and applied” is intense as we aimed, shows that we have reached our goal.
