Government Innovation Series: Establishing Design Thinking through Workshops

To prepare the workshop participants for the programme, we guided them through a rapid design hour-long process using the case “How can I show up to work happy?”. This not only engaged their creative abilities, but the rapid design session prepared them to interact with the principles of divergent and convergent thinking, timeboxing, and thinking from an end-user perspective. As facilitators, it gives us the opportunity to get to know the learners, set goals, and establish the ground rules for working together.

After selecting the cases and dividing the group into teams of four or five, the design sprint can get started. In the understand phase, learners are forced to confront the problem. When problem cases are presented, it is inevitable that some participants can’t resist suggesting solutions. “I would just do…” or “can’t you just…” are sentences to watch out for and provide a good opportunity to comment on the human reflex to start solving without a clear understanding of the problem at hand. Tools to use during this phase are creating a persona, going through a customer journey, and conducting 5x Why interviews. At the end of this phase, all teams have a “how might we question” that is human-centred and balances between the too-specific and too-broad.

From the “how might we question”, it is finally time to get creative and brainstorm as many ideas as possible. In this phase, the divergent and convergent principles are very important. When working in a government or other complex organisational context, it is important to start with divergent thinking. In a complex context, the reflex is often to immediately list the constraints of a possible solution. In this phase, it is important to put creativity before reality, and to put quantity over quality. A tool that encourages this approach is the ‘Crazy 8s’ (see text box below) where everyone is asked to draw eight different solutions to the “how might we” question. Getting the obvious answers out of the way in the first three solutions, learners often surprise themselves with the crazy ideas they come up with afterwards.

When deciding on which idea to prototype first, ideas need to be checked for viability, feasibility, and desirability. One way to do this is to use the Now How Wow Matrix. This involves plotting ideas into axes of originality and difficulty to implement. Through this you can find the “WOW” sweet spot between innovation and ease of implementation. In this phase, it is important to keep in mind that the idea is a solution to the problem formulated in the how might we question. It is easy to fall in love with your idea and forget about the problem you are trying to solve.

The next phase moved onto involves prototyping and concept development. In most cases, it was not possible to create a testable prototype because of time constraints. After selecting that “WOW” idea, the concept was developed by using creative methods such as drawing a storyboard⁠—acting out a new service or creating a mock up for the proposed functionalities of a website. In the development of the concept, it becomes clear if the idea is still missing something, how the organisational context can be taken into account, and what assumptions still need to be tested.

During the workshop learners wrote down their assumptions about the end-users, problem, and solutions after working with each tool. By now, learners are eager to test their riskiest assumptions. Through using the mom test, learners interview the end-users to check if their idea works. After the interviews, it becomes clear if they have to go back to the drawing board and iterate either on their “how might we” question or their solution. Checking their assumptions is always one of the pinnacle moments during the workshops, as most people are a little hesitant to ask for feedback at first. However in doing this, the value of design thinking becomes more clear to them.

On the final day, management and other relevant stakeholders are invited to join the workshop to participate when the groups present their solution. Management then plays a vital role in connecting the groups to the right people within the organisation to make their ideas come to live. Just creating a toolkit and organising workshop innovation is not guaranteed, the idea must gain support from management to be successfully implemented.