Design Thinking for Tech Selection, Part 1: Empathize (Video)
In his presentation at KMWorld 2018, Real Story Group's Jarrod Gingras discussed how to apply the five phases of design thinking—empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing in choosing the right technology, and started with the first phase: empathy.
Gingras suggested to attendees that the first step involves the creation of narrative scenarios that encompass the entire experience of what it is you're trying to create. “Don't focus on the laundry list of features. Think about the entire experience. And we always say, there's a bit of art and science here because you want to be descriptive without being overly prescriptive as to how the solution should be. So, describe your future way of working, but don't prescribe how it could work.”
Gingras said that people should not go out and try to design the system on day-one. “There will be time for that. Instead, I want you to get into the heads of your employees as much as you can.”
While it is tempting to think about technology as a stack of just technologies, but what's missing from those stacks is the people, he said.
“We want you to put people at the center. Think about what applications those people need to work better and do their work in the best possible ways, and then think about the technology that supports that. If you start with the people, you'll start to be able to think about, okay, what do these people need at every step of the way to accomplish what they're trying to do? When you get out of the mindset of requirements gathering and functional requirements gathering, and start to say how can we describe a future way of working, what you end up with is a narrative scenario; a narrative scenario that uses real people, real actors.”
Many speakers have made their presentations available at www.kmworld.com/Conference/2018/Presentations.aspx.
Learn more at KMWorld 2019, coming to Washington, DC, Nov. 5-7.
Watch the complete video of this presentation in the KMWorld Conference 2018 Video Portal.