Design Thinking Changed My Way of Working

I came across the concept of Design Thinking during a team building session with Khairul Anwar. It was a 3-day introductory programme that Khairul bring us through the overall journey of how companies like Google and banks design their product using this customer-centric process, and of course we went through a really simplified version of DT journey to get some taste of Design Thinking.

Design Thinking Crash Course by Khairul Anwar, DT Leadership.

The crash course started with requesting each of us to send in a T-Profile for the coach to know a little bit about us, that really differentiate itself with normally how we did a pre-training survey using online forms, it makes me feel personal, and the coach care about who I am.

T-Profile

Then we went through the whole design thinking process practice in light speed including the spaghetti challenge, the prototype challenge, and then the all five stages of design thinking.

Design Thinking Process

It was really innovative, but I have a strong feeling that I need to experience the full version myself, and it is something worth exploring. So I googled Design Thinking, and came across a Design Thinking Ambassador programme by Genovasi Malaysia. A new chapter of work life opened up from the second I hit the form 'submit' button.

I got offered to attend the 10-day Design Thinking programme over 5 weekends.

I've met many young minds at the training centre in Petaling Jaya and learned how it's done using the way of design thinking, learn by doing, fail early, and fail often.

Genovasi Weekend Double Shot 2015

I really do work differently with the ability to empathise the people I serve, or work with, and provide visual prototype to help communicate with them. Beside design thinking process, the programme actually makes me understand how important it is to accept failure and keep trying, after the many times of iterating the prototype and get out there to let tester try it. One key thing I realise from the testing attempts, is that most tester will tend to be nice and not tell you what they really think, the ability empathy with the user really help pin-pointing the real customer pain.