Participant Insights on the Influence of the Design Thinking Process

During the interviews three impacts were identified relating to the use of design thinking: the impact to the design team participants, the impact to the organization and the impact on the design thinking process. To begin, the design team members outlined the new ways in which they would either approach business or other personal interactions as a result of their experience. Table 11 presents this feedback from the participants:

Table 10: Design Team Member Personal Impact from the Design Thinking Session

Design Team Member

Participant Responses to “How did the design thinking approach affect your approach to organizational transition?”

R01 In my mind it’s perfectly in line with what I think should be done and… I

think when I look at it. It is the way that I would do it. So, it’s not that it affected or impacted my approach as much as is was in line with it

D05 Gave me a whole different perspective on it

M09 This diagram and doing the interviews actually was pretty eye opening to the different perspectives

B07 You have an opportunity to have a program that works, a system that works, and it’s nice cause it can be applied to any king of work situation…So this had given me the opportunity to inadvertently learn about the company itself and what we do.

B02 I would say one word – eye-opening. And I think that the way that I say eye-opening is there are a lot of people who are surprisingly optimistic.

A03 I think it really made me think on how to do things differently…I think it made me think how to do things differently because you always think, Powerpoint. Or, How am I going to do this? Sit down, town hall maybe. There’s always a pattern we like. It’s like a rest button, right?

M06 I mean being involved with this was cool because you feel like you have a seat at the table, which everyone wants.

L10 And so the ‘Yes, and’ brainstorm was really cool for me. I just think that

can be applied to not just professional but personal life as well and help a negative person become more positive.

S08 So I think it helped me think about how I want our group to interact with other groups more, more so in the new organization.

T04 I actually learned a few things from it [design thinking session]. I’m

actually going to steal a few things from it…This ‘Yes, and’ thing, it’s really funny because not until you sort of brought that up, that I realized how much we really don’t truly brainstorm because we discount before we really go through ideas. So, I’m stealing that. I really like

that…Kinda give me another thing in my toolbox…I’m struggling with that right not now on something. I might be pulling this chart out.

One impact was evident throughout a few participant discussions. During the empathetic interviews, design team members’ enthusiasm declined. M06 noted, “[Enthusiasm] probably dipped a little bit below [neutral]. Just not knowing anything, we didn’t hear anything for a while. Listening to other people, probably dipped a little bit below.”

Design team members also mentioned the design thinking session’s impact on the rest of the organization. M09 explained,

I think they [the empathetic interviewees] appreciated that. And then most of the people that I talked to, I think I did three, came back and asked me for some feedback. So I just very generically took all of the interviews and gave them some feedback. And told them how we were going to use it, that we were going to plan activities.

The empathetic interviews have also created extended relationships between the design team and the employees that were interviewed. Design team members noted additional conversations between the empathetic interviews and the team. A03 offered, “And then I talked to them recently and it’s like, ‘Yeah, but not I want to know what I’m going to do. Before, I was OK with it. What’s going to happen, but now, I want to start working on it.” Four members revealed that they were still in contact with the interviewees. The additional conversations were described as a connection to share information, reconnect, gauge current feelings and feel a part of the process. Design team members disclosed that, in their opinion, the Phase 1 interviews provided

an opportunity for their colleagues to feel heard. The continued follow-up affirmed that new connection within the organizational transition.

Lastly, in addition to the impact on the participant, the participants impacted the design thinking process. Normally, the intent of the empathetic interviews is to gain insights into the user’s feelings to more clearly define the problem and then work to find a creative solution. With this session, the design team was composed of ‘users’ who were also going through the organizational transition. While their personal insights strengthen the information related to the employee transition experience, design team members sometimes struggled to reference their empathetic interview information and tended to focus on their own feelings and emotions. R01 explained,

I noticed it was a little difficult for folks to stay on…not all folks, some folks, to stay on “what have other people said?” and not to start to bleed into “I wonder if, I’m curious about,” and start thinking and talking a little bit some of their own uncertainties questions and curiosities.

At times, the researcher did observe, and also discovered in some of the audio recordings, that design team members may have placed more emphasis on their own feelings and concerns than the collected interview data from their colleagues. The line between the thoughts and opinions of those outside of the room blended with those concerns within the room.

VI DISCUSSION