About our expertise :
Mr Shanavas, have been a design practitioner for the last 25 years. Currently he is the Design Director of Teqzo Consulting, one of the leading product design/ industrial design agency based in Bangalore, India. We design products from toys to medical devices, from room sized machines to wearable devices. We are an expert in design thinking, we use design thinking extensively to stay on top of our business. Often, we conduct Design Thinking workshops for educational institutions, corporates and for NOG’s. This session was focussed on Design Thinking for Social Entrepreneurs.
About the intervention :
Design thinking techniques can help discover huge potential ideas leading to unique solutions whenever one confronts any problem or opportunity.
Mercy Mission fellowship program has invited us as a design thinking expert to equip the fellows with design thinking skills. It was amazing to see NGO’s wanting to use top notch innovation tools in their social entrepreneurial process. It’s also a great opportunity of the fellows to get introduced to DT tools which are normally used in technology innovation.
Read more about Mercy Mission, Social Media
Key Focus :
In this design thinking intervention, we were mostly trying to focus on training the fellows on goal settings, and also to help them find triggers that could lead them to newer solutions. We also helped them find unique ideas through multiple divergent-convergent thinking process. The course also trained on building resilience to handle these unique ideas and build them into practical solutions.
Workshop Structure :
For a quick overview, a single part session of 3 hrs would be ideal. However, for a more effective and practical understanding, we recommend a two part session. One part being introduction of the DT tool along with few hands-on activities and the other being a follow-up session to measure the practical impact of the application of design thinking. This will have to done with a gap that would give the participants an opportunity to apply DT tools in any practical scenario.
Conclusion :
Design Thinking is a tool that you have to try to consciously use frequently to an extent that it starts blending into your regular though process. It is hard, but if you can get there, you can see your thoughts inspiring people around you and creating new benchmarks.