by Iryna Karaush (Wilson School of Design, Kwantlen Polytechnic University)
and Thomas Carey (B.C. Association of Institutes and Universities)
In a previous post, we explored the instructional rationale for a pilot Design Thinking and Workplace Innovation course offering. The course project applied Design Thinking to investigate future opportunities for sustainable growth at the Tsawwassen First Nation Farm School. To explore Design Thinking as a tool for innovation in other workplace contexts, the students also undertook a Case Study of IBM’s implementation of Design Thinking –as both a team design tool and a strategic company-wide approach.
IBM Enterprise Design Thinking is highly regarded as an exemplar of Design Thinking scaled across large enterprises. In addition. Deployment of Enterprise Design Thinking has delivered stellar improvements to the financial bottom line along with the promise of ongoing organizational transformation. IBM Canada made available to the students the online learning module for a first level micro-credential, the IBM Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner digital badge.
The students were asked to work through the model and create an analysis of the similarities and differences between the corporate process and the one in which they had engaged at the Farm School, and in addition to assess their strengths and areas for improvement (in the form of prepared answers and questions for mock job interviews with an IBM hiring manager).
alt text: photo of students engaged in the practice of design thinking.
What we learned: The students responded very positively to the exposure with a corporate environment for Design Thinking. In addition to completing this Case Study assignment and discussing it in class, students had the option of requesting certification from IBM in the form of the Enterprise Design Thinking Practitioner micro-credential, indicating base level awareness of the Design Thinking process as implemented by IBM. Every student in the course opted to acquire this credential, which included a digital badge they could post on their social media profiles.
The results regarding the increased understanding demonstrated by the students were mixed. Some students clearly picked up on the limitations of their Design Thinking experience and were realistic about how it could be extended in a supportive and knowledgeable working environment:
““This class, it’s just the beginning of design thinking. It’s mainly helping every student to try to think about having empathy for the user. This IBM program is diving into every situation, exercises and successes. It’s taking the next step and learning more about design thinking and listening to real situations that have worked.””
““Some improvements in my design thinking capabilities would be creating open ended questions for clients, encouraging them to tell a story rather than answer a question.””
In other cases, it was clear that the students had missed much of the emphasis on the finer points of team collaboration at scale, in which the IBM case study had been particularly strong:
““In my opinion, as long as a group of people like each other and get along well, they can accomplish many great things.””
““Our textbook explained the steps of the design process by using very simple, catchy short stories - to which I could relate very well…The IBM videos were interesting but very formal. I felt like explaining prototyping by telling a story of a child and his Lego block is just so much more inspiring.””
We’ll certainly be using the case study again based on the positive reaction from students, while at the same time experimenting with other ways to maximize its potential value in exposing students to professional practice with Design Thinking at scale.
What we’ll likely do differently: One conclusion from our preliminary analysis is that the Case Study might have been more effective if it had been integrated into the course unit on a step-by-step basis rather than as a supplementary exercise at the end. We had originally thought it would be confusing for students to be exposed to more than one process model and set of terms; however, some students pointed out that much of the interactivity in the case study assumed that the participants were actively engaged in a team design project, and that some of the issues raised and suggestions offered in the module might have been more appropriate while in the throes of their major design project.
Another conclusion was that we had been overly concerned about the corporate nature and scale of the case study. Somewhat to our surprise, no students mentioned the presence of IBM-specific terminology throughout the case study resources – e.g., The Principles (shared values), The Loop (process framework), The Keys (collaboration enablers) – and none remarked on the frequent mention of the need to target improved products or Return on Investment in addition to user satisfaction with improvements in quality of work life.
[A more comprehensive exploration of these issues, reporting on all our 2018 pilot projects at Kwantlen Polytechnic University in Workplace Innovation as a Graduate Attribute, can be found in our upcoming book chapter Carey, T., Dastur, F., & Karaush, I. (2019). Workplace Innovations and Practice Futures. In Challenging Future Practice Possibilities (pp. 229-242). Brill Sense Publishers.]