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Intro to What Works

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Design Thinking for the Greater Good: Innovation in the Social Sector

University of Virginia

4.5 (82 ratings) | 9.8K Students Enrolled

Do you work for a nonprofit or in the social sector? Are you struggling to solve the problems and meet the needs of the people you serve? Come learn more about how design thinking, a human-centered approach to problem solving, can help you truly understand an issue, generate ideas worth testing and iterate to find solutions that make a real difference. Through global stories from areas as diverse as government, health care, and education, we’ll show you the tools, techniques and mindset needed to use design thinking to uncover new and creative solutions in the social sector. The development of this course was supported by the Batten Institute for Entrepreneurship and Innovation at the University of Virginia's Darden School of Business. For more about the Batten Institute, see: http://www.darden.virginia.edu/batten-institute/ @BattenInstitute @DesignatDarden

Skills You'll Learn

Prototyping, Problem Solving, User-Centered Design, Design Thinking, Social Issues

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From the lesson

ASKING "WHAT WOWS?" AND "WHAT WORKS?"

Welcome to our final week! This week we transition from idea generation to testing by examining the intersection of what stakeholders want and what the organization can sustainably offer. We'll consider the role of prototypes as a way to test our assumptions about a solution, and consider what it takes to launch a solution into practice, and see real-life examples of prototyping and testing in social sectors as diverse as healthcare and agriculture. You'll begin to think about your own social sector challenge you could tackle with design thinking. We end this week with some advice and actions for impact.

Whiteriver Part 1: First Assumptions5:45

Whiteriver Part 2: Reassessing Assumptions4:22

Intro to What Wows: Prototyping4:21

MasAgro: Creating a Space for Experimentation3:32

MasAgro's Hub System4:20

MasAgro's Innovation Network5:12

Intro to What Works3:50

Monash Learning Launch3:59

Monash Initiative: Long Patient Stays5:15

Integrating DT Across Monash Organization4:08

Taught By

Jeanne M. Liedtka
United Technologies Corporation Professor of Business Administration

Transcript

In our fourth question, what works?

We take our ideas to real stakeholders,

first on one on one conversations and then, in field experiments.

The challenges in what works are first designing the experiments and

then listening to the feedback from them non defensively.

Team members who struggled with the first two design questions at the fuzzy front

end of idea generation are often more comfortable now in the what works stage.

Because it requires a different kind of expertise.

Whereas Jeffrey's generally love what is and

what if, it's the George's who tend to excel at what wows and what works.

So an ideal team will include both sets of skills as we talked about in module three.

Because designers are generally taught in studio settings where critiquing is key,

they learn early on to detach their egos from their creations and

to hear criticism non defensively as part of their training.

But you know, the opposite is true for most of us.

When we ask teams to seek feedback and present learning launches,

one major principle is they may not defend their choices.

What matters instead is whether the teams understand the criticisms they're hearing.

As long as team members understand the assessment, they have the choice.

They can accept it and change or

decide that any disparaging analysis is not important and ignore it.

But first, their job is to listen carefully.

For many people, especially the Jeffreys,

design thinking actually gets more difficult in what works.

In many ways we've talked about design thinking as being about emotion, empathy,

human centeredness, an understanding what someone else is thinking and feeling.

All of these are concepts where Jeffreys flourish.

But the experimental phase is about focusing on data.

It's okay to fall in love with your stakeholders, but not your solutions.

So hearing what works for conducting test on our hypotheses and

we need to think like scientists.

Assumption surfaced and prototyping in hand you're now ready to turn to your key

stakeholders to seek their feedback.

Remember, your primary reason is to learn.

Let them teach you.

You might continue for three or

four rounds until you've worked through the issues and the concepts.

Then, you're ready to design your learning launch.

Designing a learning launch itself is pretty straightforward.

First, you need a working prototype that focuses on

the key assumptions you're testing.

Think of mass agro, planting new and old crops side by side in a test plot.

You'll do a series of learning launches as you iterate your offerings to

match the new learning that each one is producing.

Each launch, based on what you learned in the prior one, narrows the search and

focuses the desired outcome

until you've addressed the metrics you set out in your design brief.

Ultimately learning launches result in decisions.

If you decide to move ahead with additional development,

the learning launch should tell you how.

You'll continue your learning launches until all issues and

critical assumptions have been addressed and we hope solved.

And then you're ready to move into implementation.

Let's return to visit our friends at Monash to look at the power of learning

launches in action.

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