Driving Synergy Through Design Thinking: An Explorative Problem-Solving Journey
My role:
Planning, content design and key facilitator
Team members:
Amy Low, JingWen Wong
INTRODUCTION
The real estate developer, a subsidiary of a renowned corporation, sought to develop an integrated app involving multiple business units. This case study explores how a design thinking workshop can foster synergy and alignment among internal stakeholders, thereby driving the development of the integrated app.
THE CHALLENGES
Lack of synchronization:
Each service operates on its own platform with distinct reward and membership systems, causing fragmented customer experiences and operational inefficiencies.
The absence of a unified strategy and direction poses a challenge in seamlessly integrating various services (township management, building management, theme parks, sports clubs, ESG) into a single platform.
WORKSHOP GOAL
Streamlining access and enhancing experience:
The goal is to create a seamless digital experience for customers by breaking down silos, aligning internal stakeholders, and harmonizing processes.
The Design Thinking Process
In summary, the following outlines the process implemented during the workshop:
/ Stakeholder Alignment
Goal Setting:
Introduced the purpose of aligning internal stakeholders from different business units towards developing an integrated app. Clarified workshop goals, objectives, and expected outcomes.
Review 360 & User Research Findings:
Shared insights from both customer research and 360 research, providing a deep understanding of user needs for informed discussions.
Identify Common Objectives and Priorities:
Split participants into "home groups" based on business units. Discussed how the app could support each unit's goals and contribute to overall success.
Cross-Functional Collaboration:
Promoted empathy by having participants rotate between breakout groups, forming "expert groups". Facilitated a holistic understanding of roles and contributions across teams.
Participants were divided into home groups based on their respective business units for initial discussions, followed by rotation into expert groups to encourage cross-functional collaboration and communication.
Integration and Alignment:
During the plenary session, shared insights from breakout discussions. Identified opportunities for integration and alignment across business units.
Agree on Key Decisions and Action Items:
Collaboratively crafted a problem statement capturing the key problem, proposition, and unique selling point.
PROBLEM STATEMENT
For community seeking a safe and integrated living space, the mobile app serves as a comprehensive hub, delivering a seamless living experience. Unlike competitors, it offers automated and personalized services, tailoring solutions to meet the specific needs and preferences of each user, guaranteeing a uniquely satisfying experience for all.
/ Brainstorming Ideas
Developing Personas:
Initiated the creation of personas, designed to encompass essential traits, individual goals, challenges faced, and expected interactions with the new app. These personas provided a comprehensive understanding of user requirements, setting the foundation for subsequent ideation.
How Might We (HMW):
Aimed to generate ideas addressing specific challenges and opportunities, such as encouraging sustained usage of lifestyle services, fostering resident feedback, and keeping homeowners informed about house defects.
Aimed to generate ideas addressing specific challenges and opportunities, such as encouraging sustained usage of lifestyle services, fostering resident feedback, and keeping homeowners informed about house defects.
Each group chose three promising "How Might We" statements to catalyze feature ideas for the integrated app. These statements ensured alignment with diverse customer needs and preferences.
Idea Generation:
Following statement selection, teams generated numerous ideas, with each representing a potential feature addressing customer needs.
Prioritization:
Teams collaboratively mapped the pool of ideas onto a prioritization matrix, considering factors like impact on users and implementation effort.
Product Roadmap:
Features were organized into a product roadmap based on prioritization phases, considering factors such as impact on user needs, alignment with business units, and organizational goals.
/ Prototyping
Feature Selection:
Each team chose two significant features from Phase 1, emphasizing creativity and innovation over basic functionalities like registration or updating profiles.
Create User Stories:
Teams developed user stories for the chosen features, outlining functionality and user interactions to provide a clear understanding of the intended user experience.
UI Sketching:
Using the user stories as a guide, teams sketched the user interface (UI) for each feature to visually represent the proposed design and refine ideas and concepts.
Interactive Prototypes:
Teams scanned finalized UI sketches into the Prott App, transforming them into interactive prototypes. These prototypes allowed stakeholders to experience proposed functionality dynamically and in a user-friendly manner.
User Testing Preparation:
Teams prepared for user testing on the interactive prototypes, aiming to gather feedback from representative users. The feedback obtained would be utilized to iterate and enhance the design before progressing to the development phase.
/ User Testing
Hallway Testing:
Due to limited time and resources, teams opted for hallway testing. Teams designed tasks and detailed scenarios to guide users into representing specific personas.
Roles in Testing:
Teams divided into facilitators, observers, and note-takers to ensure smooth testing processes.
Testing Metrics:
During tests, teams tracked metrics such as the number of completed tasks, identified issues, successful aspects, and areas requiring adjustments.
Feedback Utilization:
Collected feedback helped teams validate their ideas and identify issues before making final decisions.
Outcomes and Achievements
The design thinking workshop successfully addressed the challenges by generating outcomes that fostered a unified direction, harmonized internal strategies, and enhanced overall cohesion across diverse business units.
Goal Alignment:
Successful alignment among different business units, establishing a shared understanding of strategies and direction. The strategies and direction identified during the workshop are channeled into a comprehensive problem statement.
Problem Statement:
Problem Statement:
Emphasis on creating a safe, integrated, and seamless living space, guiding all design decisions. This directly addresses the lack of synchronization and disjointed customer experiences, ensuring integration and fostering a cohesive community.
Product Roadmap:
This entire effort is encapsulated into a strategic guide, outlining key features and milestones. It supports the consolidation challenge by providing a roadmap for integrating various services into the app, ensuring a seamless digital experience for customers.
Product Roadmap:
This entire effort is encapsulated into a strategic guide, outlining key features and milestones. It supports the consolidation challenge by providing a roadmap for integrating various services into the app, ensuring a seamless digital experience for customers.
WHAT I HAVE LEARNT
Addressing Stakeholder Alignment Challenges:
Aligning internal stakeholders proved to be more challenging than anticipated. Many business units arrived with preset mindsets, inclined towards executing tasks as they had already envisioned, rather than embracing new perspectives. This may be attributed to various factors, with the primary one being that this alignment was perceived as a task mandated by upper management, rather than an opportunity for collaboration and innovation.
Juggling Daily Operational Distractions:
Internal stakeholders are often juggling the day-to-day operations of their respective business units. Constant distractions, such as calls, emails, and urgent tasks, hinder their ability to fully engage in alignment initiatives. Finding ways to effectively manage these distractions and prioritize alignment efforts is crucial for success.
Addressing Resistance to Prototyping:
The concept of prototyping was met with resistance from the stakeholders. They perceived prototypes as nearly finished products, akin to beta versions, which they believed fell outside their purview. Overcoming this mindset barrier and conveying the value of prototyping as a means of exploration and refinement may require additional communication and education efforts.
CONCLUSION
In conclusion, the design thinking workshop was instrumental in helping the organization align internal stakeholders and drive synergy in the development of their integrated app. By fostering collaboration, and creating a shared vision, the workshop set the stage for success in delivering a solution that meets the evolving needs of the organization's customers.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Din Tan is a UI/UX Design Team Lead with Madison Technologies. With over a decade of experience in design thinking and facilitation, he has a proven track record of driving impactful outcomes for clients across various industries.
