Week 2

Case Study Approach:

Design Thinking
GIL-HONG KIM
This Class Coverage
• Check new class members’ attendance and situation
• Update of Class Evaluation and Team Allocation Schedule
• Design Thinking Approach
• Case Studies, used Design Thinking to solve problems
Update of Course Evaluation
•Attendance and participation (20%)
•Presentation 1 (30%: other teams’ evaluation 10%+ instructor’s evaluation 20%)
•Presentation 2 (30%: other teams’ evaluation 10% + instructors’ evaluation 20%)
•Case Report (20%)
•No examinations
•Individual’s performance at presentation and report will be considered in
addition to team’s performance
•Pass/Fail course: Minimum of 60% for passing.
Update of Team Allocation Schedule
•Team member allocation will be shared at the next class
- Need to reflect final registration list and students’ attendance/ situation
•After next class, team members will communicate each other and decide
team’s name and each member’s role (who are team leader, presenters,
and reporter).
•Team will submit team’s name with team member’s list with roles at the
following class.
How to build Problem Solving Capacity?
Design Thinking
Design thinking is a methodology for creative problem solving.

Source: interaction design foundation

5 Steps of Design Thinking
•1. Empathising: Understanding of the problem to solve.
- Find out more about the area of concern through observing, engaging and
empathizing with people to understand their experiences and motivations, as
well as putting yourself in customers’ shoes or the physical environment so you
can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved.
•2. Defining: Re-framing and defining the problem in human-centric ways
instead of defining the problem as your own wish.
- Put together the information created and gathered during the Empathise
stage. Analyse observations and synthesise them to define the core problems
identified.
•3. Ideating: Creating many ideas in ideation sessions. “Think outside the
box" to identify new solutions to the problem, and look for alternative
ways of viewing the problem.
•4. Implementation and Prototyping: Adopting a hands-on approach in
prototyping.
•5. Testing: Developing a prototype/solution to the problem.
Embrace Infant Warmer Case
•At Stanford D. School: Team project at Design for Extreme Affordability
class: A student team chose to research and design a low-cost baby
incubator for use in developing world.
•Team could focus on systematically reducing cost of existing incubator
design by eliminating parts or using cheaper materials. But then how to
apply “empathize with the end users?”
•One team member visited Nepal to deeply understand firsthand the
unmet needs associated with incubators.
•She noted something odd: many of modern urban hospital’s donated
incubators were empty even if premature babies needed them to
survive. Truth is that babies who needed them were often born and
treated in mother’s home in rural villages 30 miles away.
•After discussion, Team decided to tackle the human needs-designing
solution for mothers in remote areas rather than sticking with technical
challenges-designing low-cost incubator for hospital use and finishing
by end of class. The solution was now about the parent not the clinician.
•They developed a simple, but
powerful solution, shaped like
a tiny sleeping bag, containing
a paraffin-based pouch, that
once warmed in a heater, can
maintain its temperature up to
four hours (with ok indicator
to check temperature level).
•It’s easy-to-use medical device that costs 99% less than traditional baby
incubator and has potential to save millions of newborns in developing
countries.
•Team established Embrace to sell products to government facilities in
India. Now Embrace partnered with NGOs in 9 more countries, and
contracted with GE Healthcare on global distribution.
Airbnb Case
•Airbnb is a global online marketplace for arranging or offering lodging,
primarily homestays, or tourism experiences.
•In 2009, Airbnb was on the verge of bankruptcy. Its revenue barely reached
$200 per week and losses were crippling.
• Founders were not able to solve in front of computers for months
• One member began to examine the behavior of their ads in NY, and then
recognized common patterns on 40 ads.
- photo quality was not good and not all rooms of the home were not shown
→ people were not booking rooms because they could not actually see what
they were paying for.
•Travelled to NY, rent a camera and spent time with customers in their
homes to take a good pictures of the houses.
•After enhancing the pictures, Airbnb began to turn over and was able to
avoid crisis.
•More than 1.5million ads in 192 countries and 34,000 cities with 40million
+ roomers in 2015.
• Lesson: Talking to the customers and putting oneself in their shoes is
vital for ideas to be successful.
Bank of America Keep your Changes
•In 2004, BoA wanted to boost enrollment numbers of new
customers, especially from customer segment of boomer-age
women with children.
•They observed many families.
•In one checkbook of a woman in Atlanta, they noted that she
recorded rounded up numbers.
•This simplified calculations, but it also added a little buffer
each month – at the end, a few unexpected dollars were left
over.
•The researchers realized that this behavior revealed an unaddressed
need in banking, and offered the opportunity to create value for
customers and the bank.
•BoA developed the “Keep the Change” program; a service that
automatically rounds up all purchases made with a debit card, and then
transfers these rounded up cents to a savings account.
•The program attracted 2 million customers in less than a year after
launch in 2005. Since then, more than 12 million customers signed up for
the program and saved more than 2 billion dollars.
Oral-B Electric Toothbrush
•Oral-B initially wanted to develop a sophisticated data-tracking tool,
recording and processing sensor-based information.
•The designers observed customers’ experience.
•Based on findings, they convinced management to instead think about
how additional technology could solve a couple of really big frustrations
with the product.
•The two features they decided would be most useful were around
charging the toothbrush and ordering replacement heads.
•At home, the toothbrush charges on a dock through induction
but also comes equipped with a USB hookup for use on the
road.
•The designers also built an app that the toothbrush connects
to via Bluetooth. Pressing a button on the brush sends a
reminder notification to your phone to buy replacements.
•Lesson: Looking for what’s realistic and what’s pleasurable
and beneficial to users.
San Diego Journal
•Editor of Voice of San Diego wanted to create different coverage of 2012
city council election, instead of publishing more stories of candidates’
agenda.
•Team started to find out what’s the most important to residents from the
community.
•The results turned out that their coverage for years had been focused
on things that didn’t matter much to residents.
•Once reporters felt they had good understanding of residents’ concerns,
their coverage focused on what the community wanted.
•Their coverage received very positive feedback from residents and the
journalism community.
•Editor: “Our stories are now based a lot more on real people’s needs
rather than the story being dreamt up in our head about what we think is
important or what document we happen to have or what sources happen
to tell us.”
Mobisol Solar Energy in Rural Africa
• Threeperson start-up in Germany with idea—a light bulb that
could be switched on and off with a text message of mobile
phone.
•They observed villagers’ everyday life in rural Tanzania and
talked to them about their needs for electricity and the potential
use of mobile solar panels.
•Mainstream assumption was solar electricity is primarily
needed for lighting purposes and the system should be cheaper
since people will only pay 5€/month.
•But Mobisol realized that energy needs were about more than just light but also
about radio (information), TV (status) and cell phone charging (communication).
People’s energy spendings already averaged roughly 15€/month and cost was
not the limiting factor.
- If people really want something, they find ways to pay for it.
• Mobisol provided a system that was large enough to power televisions and
radios together with reliable maintenance services and gave their customers a
three-year credit with a rate of 15€/month and introduced the concept of ‘rent-
to-own’ .
•Grown to a market leading company with 350 employees spread across three
countries in Africa. Its newest pilot is a drone delivery service for remote, rural
communities in sub-Saharan Africa.
UberEATS
•UberEATS connects customers to Uber-speed delivery from restaurants in over 80
cities around the world.
•Each city has own food culture, city infrastructure, and unique set of logistical
challenges.
•The Walkabout Program: Every quarter, designers visit an UberEATS city and dive
deeply into that market, food culture and transportation and logistical infrastructure.
•Order shadowing: Follow partners on deliveries, visit restaurants during the rush, and
sit in people’s homes while they order dinner.
•Fireside chats: Invite delivery partners, restaurant workers, and consumers to discuss
their experiences.
•Rapid field testing and A/B testing
Danish Municipality’s Good Kitchen
•Danish municipalities wanted to improve subsidized meal service for seniors.
- Initial approach was simple menu updating since they considered the current
food and service was already high-quality.
•But Team moved further by digging deep into seniors’ behaviors, needs and
wishes and identifying their current situation and unarticulated needs. They
also interviewed and observed the kitchen workers.
•They found that kitchen workers were incredibly boring to prepare the same
menu and seniors receiving meals also suffered from feelings of disconnection
and loss of control over food choices while using one menu for three months in
a row made sense from an operational logistics.
•The result was the design of a wholly new meal service offering higher quality, more
flexibility, and increased choice.
- The process also yielded a new name: Hospitable Food Service became The Good
Kitchen.
- A gourmet chef was recruited to work with employees and the kitchen employees
received new chef-like uniforms. Employees’ perception of themselves and their work
was transformed.
•Reorganizing the menu and improving the descriptions of the meals drove a 500%
increase in meal orders in the first week alone. Within three months, the number of
customers had increased from 650 to 700.
•The Good Kitchen won the Danish Design Prize for Service Design, as well as the Local
Government Denmark Prize for Innovation in 2009.
Orange Vest at Hospital Emergency
Unit
•In emergency rooms, when a patient arrives a bed is prepped, the right
supplies are on hand, and up to 20 nurses, respiratory therapists and
physicians are ready to spring actions.
•Nurses faced a trauma situation in which a huddle of highly stressed
emergency room staff members spoke over one another and there were no
clear roles.
•At Children's Hospital of Eastern Ontario, based on a nurse’s idea, the
emergency team leader now wears a bright, easy-to-spot orange vest to easily
identify the team leader in trauma cases.
•This change has helped clarify who's in charge and strengthened
communication and coordination among members at emergency situations.
Golden Gates Regional Center (GGRC):
Better and Faster Public Services
•GGRC provides services and financial support to people with developmental
disabilities in San Francisco Bay area.
•Based on interview and observance of clients, they found that for parents and
children with disability, it was hard to navigate the long (three months +) and
bewildering bureaucratic processes to get such services.
•Prototype testing: Brining everyone in a same room led to a significant
reduction in waiting time of times for disabled family and to enhancement of
GGRC staffers’ understanding of each other’s work.
•Results: Redesigning of assessment process (50% reduction of assessment
time): Allowing social workers to complete assessment in the field: and Open
Houses for meetings with families who are unfamiliar with their eligibility.