Design Thinking for Tech Selection, Part 3: Ideate (Video)
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.
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 for a digital workplace. Following empathy, and definition, the third phase is ideation.
“Okay. So now, we've had our stories. We have our short list, what's next? Well we have to get the vendors to prove that they're the best fit for us. Hopefully, we have a short list of vendors of all of which are perfectly viable options, but let's suss it out,” Gingras said.
“What we want to do during the ideation phase is create a series of demonstrations where the vendors actually show you how their products meet your needs; not how they meet their other clients' needs— how they meet your needs,” he said.
The worst thing that an organization can do is leave the vendor to their own devices and allow them to come in and give the same canned demonstration that they give everyone else, explained Gingras.
“It's going to look slick and it's going to look good and it's going to work every time and you just wasted all these people’s time in that meeting across the week, and guess what? That's a pretty expensive week if you add that up. So instead, I want you to make them as real as you possibly can. I think it goes without saying that you want to make sure your team is represented at every single demonstration over the course of demo week, but here's where you want to really prescribe to these vendors how they should use their time during their demos. Don't let them come in and tell you what they're going to do.
Instead, he suggested, ask a vendor to provide a quick overview of their company because you already did your due diligence in making sure you have the right shortlist of vendors on the list and ask that they spend the bulk of the time showing scenarios targeted to your needs. “So again, no canned demos, demo the scenarios that you wrote. And then you force the vendors to come in and give the same scenarios in the same order day by day by day so that you're able to truly compare apples to apples to apples.”
Gingras added, “It sounds so basic but I can tell you, so few organizations do this and enforce the vendors to stick to this model.” For those that do, however, it is a much better use of their time. “And, as you go through this process, after you see day one, it's really interesting, but day two, at the end of day two, you're able to say, well, which one do we like better? And then by day three, you're saying, okay, we have either a clear leader or at least some clear finalists. This is your opportunity to not just let this be a one-way flow of information from the vendor to you.”
Many speakers have made their presentations available at www.kmworld.com/Conference/2018/Presentations.aspx.