Summary
Chances are good that every department in your enterprise already uses some design thinking tactics in their work. Helping these other partners and departments understand the power of this design thinking is a key to scaling the influence of the design organization and infusing the entire enterprise with more creative problem-solving, collaboration, and purposeful fun. Define design thinking for your design org and also understand how it applies to product management, engineering, marketing, and other departments. Hear about tactics for sharing design thinking and its positive results with partners across your organization. See how design thinking can be built into the systems that fuel design, product development, and critical business processes such as planning.
Key Insights
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Organizing design teams around customer journeys fosters deeper collaboration across disciplines.
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Design thinking should be seen as a shared mindset, accessible to all roles, not an exclusive design discipline.
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Design research is crucial to spread the voice of the customer beyond designers to the entire team.
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Design systems enable rapid prototyping and iteration critical to effective design thinking workflows.
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Direct involvement of customers (e.g., agents) in the design process accelerates feedback and reduces recruiting pains.
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Artifacts like persona maps and affinity diagrams help maintain cross-team alignment throughout design iterations.
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Balancing large and small team collaboration requires careful timing of feedback and managing fidelity of deliverables.
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Building trust within the organization, especially with leadership unfamiliar with design, is key to scaling design thinking.
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Communicating without using design jargon and framing exercises as inclusive collaboration makes design thinking more approachable.
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Patience, low ego, and shared ownership are cultural pillars supporting successful design thinking adoption in large organizations.
Notable Quotes
"Everything is customer centric, so we orient around the problem our customers are trying to solve."
"Design thinking is really everybody can do it, it’s not within the discipline of design only."
"Silos naturally form, and design thinking helps break them down by aligning people around a singular problem."
"The design system lets you ship a small test case fast, try again, and fail quickly without six months chasing pixel perfection."
"Our teams are multidisciplinary, partnering closely with product and engineering across workflows, not just features."
"Having customers built into the process takes a lot of pain out of recruiting and speeds everything up."
"Artifacts like journey maps capture decisions and help keep everyone aligned on why and how we pivot."
"Small groups help flesh out ideas before bringing them to larger groups to manage feedback effectively."
"You have to build trust gradually by starting small, leveraging data, and being transparent about decisions."
"Low ego and patience are critical because culture change takes time, and frustrated people don’t move change forward."
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