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.

Learn | Self Discover and Personal Development Through Writing

Attended a wellness talk because it involves writing, and found it brought positive impact to myself. As stated on the title of this post, the talk is about self-discovery and personal development, writing is just one of the tools for it. Several writing techniques have been shared by the speakers during the session including:

1. Making a list
2. Catharsis/Free writing
3. Reflection/Self-observation
4. Self Affirmation
5. Sketchnote

Making a List

Making a list calms us down in the cluttered stuffs waiting to be done wandering inside our brain. The process is pretty simple: Sit down, grab whatever undone stuff out of your mind, and put them into a list. This will effectively ease workload for your brain and free you from the stress of you might miss some of the item undone. In addition, splitting the master list into more specific steps makes you be more assured by the list you made, and make you believe in the list more. Ah yes, make it a good habit to list something down immediately before you forget.

Example:

• Team meeting in the morning
• Check meeting agenda
• Compile notes into the week's todo list
• Examine hardware, label, and compile a list
• Labeling
• Installation
• Testing
• Compile hardware list
• Email report

Catharsis/Free Writing

This is like any simple one-liner Facebook status we always put on our status update. It doesn't need to mean anything, but Facebook is not the place for it. We all find that out the day some nasty or sarcastic comment were left below your status. So it is highly recommended to do the catharsis or free writing somewhere isn't public.

Example:

• I want to drink a cup of coffee now.
• I missed my dog.

Reflection/Self-observation

Write down something just happened to you that makes you couldn't stop thinking about. Start from a single line, then rewrite the story, over and over again, until the story sounds right and feels right.

Example:

Version 1: My friend had a bad day.

Version 2: My friend had a bad day, I felt sorry about it.

Version 3: My friend had a bad day. When she told me about it, I can't really help. I felt sorry about it.

Version 4: My friend had a bad day. When she told me about it, I can't really help. I felt sorry about it. I've made myself a good listener.

Self Affirmation

This one is more like the inspirational quotes, but you will write your own. 

Example:

I think I'm gonna start writing again.

Sketchnote

Just draw whatever you feels like on a piece of paper and post it on the wall. To be honest, sketchnote doesn't work for myself.