Suppose your executive team has tasked you to fill a time slot at your organization’s upcoming annual leadership meeting. Strategic imperatives like greater customer centricity, improved employee experience and innovation prevail as themes. They want something engaging and effective that boosts innovation acumen. What would you choose?
If you would book a design thinking workshop that introduces the principles of human-centered design (HCD), you are on the right track. A design thinking workshop is an excellent place to start experimenting with workplace innovation. They help participants grasp the importance of building products, services, and solutions with people at the core.
In this blog, we look at what you can expect from an innovation workshop. We also examine when investing in a broader programmatic approach can help companies deliver greater business impact on their innovation journeys.
What You Can Expect From a Workshop Experience
Design thinking workshops are a terrific way to introduce organizations to the concept of human-centered innovation. Ideal for project kickoff, conferences, and events with time constraints, these workshops are suited for those with no prior design experience as they provide an introduction to HCD. Despite being more broadly focused, design thinking workshops are well-received by participants who are innately hungry for new capabilities.
“A positive and engaging experience throughout, ExperiencePoint’s workshops are an expert guide in the ways of design thinking for problem-solving.”
-Yaakov Phelan
Check out more of ExperiencePoint’s workshop reviews here.
Design is inherently compelling, so you can expect your design thinking workshop to be a big hit. Participants learn new ways of approaching and solving challenges they encounter every day, which gives them a sense of limitless possibilities. Many are inspired and supported by the workshop to apply lessons back at work. Design thinking workshops, like ExperienceInnovation™, offer participants an experience that makes them fall in love with design thinking.
What to expect from a design thinking workshop:
- An introduction to the topic and an overview of fundamentals
- Hands-on activity that challenges participants to apply new practices to a real-life scenario
- Examples of fundamental practices applied back on the job
- An inspiring experience that activates an appetite for new ways of working
What Comes Next? How to Embrace Human-Centered Design
Suppose some groups in your organization are now excited about the possibilities of design thinking and are keen to embrace these skills and behaviors broadly to deliver more business impact. To truly embrace human-centered ways of working, providing exceptional training is only one part of the puzzle. Those that would like to dive deeper into HCD need to treat the approach as a cultural transformation that helps employees solve problems from the outside in.
In addition to introducing and spreading design thinking knowledge through training workshops, organizations need to help their people develop, apply and support new skills and behaviors. They succeed by fostering communities of practice to ensure change is sustained and that it demonstrates and celebrates outcomes.
ExperiencePoint’s programmatic approach to training provides an innovation journey roadmap, leadership guidance and a system of enterprise-wide training to scale and sustain human-centered approaches.
What to expect from a broader programmatic approach to training:
- Guidance in aligning leaders, change agents and program participants
- Help in building a company-wide infrastructure to scale new behaviors
- Assistance in providing the proper environmental conditions for new skills to prosper
- Additional support in sustaining new learning through bursts of learning and hands-on application
- Ways to measure success and generate KPIs
- Methods of sharing success stories and spreading change
- A time frame of 6-12 months
Finding The Right Training Solution For Your Company
When searching for the right training solution, think about your organization’s goals. What do you want to achieve? What do you hope to learn? Make sure your choice aligns with your company's objectives and expectations.
Still don't know what kind of training is right for your organization?
ExperiencePoint’s assessment can help you determine where your company currently stands in its innovation journey and point you in the right direction.
