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Design Thinking Process
Introduced & Implemented in Trimble ICT

2016 was a year of significant transition for Trimble ICT’s business.

On August, ICT wants to have UX design team to improve user experience

for asset management products.

 

I was part of ambitious projects to introduce design thinking process and implementation in joint venture ecosystem to streamline the product

development process and enhance the user experience. 

To comply with my non-disclosure agreement, I have omitted and obfuscated confidential information in this case study. All information in this case study is my own and

does not necessarily reflect the views of Trimble ICT division.

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Took a moment to identify and interview key roles in my team

Formally and informally started research, interviews and conversation with product owner / manager, project manager, engineer manager, release manager, scrum master, business analyst, front end developer, and quality assurance. (Due to joint venture policy couldn’t connect with finance, marketing, sales and legal).

Put myself in my colleague’s shoes

Getting to know my team members, and identify the characteristics and perceptions within each role to understand how they see, think, say and do by observation and conversation with following questions.

 

The goals from stakeholders interviews: To understand

  • Product vision

  • Schedule

  • Technical constraints

  • Business goals

  • Customers and users

  • Learn about competitors

  • What they are trying to achieve

  • Success criteria

Stakeholders

  • What is the product?

  • Who will use it?

  • What do users need?

  • What customers and users are most important?

  • What will sustain a business?

  • What challenges do we face?

  • How does this product fit into the overall product strategy?

  • What is this product going to be?

  • Using a few key words, how do you want people to see your brand
    (both the company brand and the product?

  • What things do customers complain about or ask for most often, and why?

  • What worries you about this project? What’s the worst thing that could happen?

  • How will you, personally, define success for this project?

  • What technology decisions have already been made, and how firm are they?

  • How large is the development team assigned to the project, and what are their skills?

  • Would you draw a diagram and tell me in lay terms how the system works?

  • What problems do you currently see in development?

  • Support or customer service: What problems do you see most often?

  • Training or technical documentation: Where do users most often get confused today?

 

General insight

  • What does a day in the life look like at their job? Asked to describe it.

  • What do they think about most during the day?

  • Where do they spend most of their time?

 

Inspirations/motivations

  • What are their main motivations at work?

  • What are they trying to achieve?

 

Frustrations

  • If they could do things differently, what would be their ideal situation?

  • If they could wish one thing be made easier what would it be? Why?

 

Delight

  • What do they love about their job?

  • What would they want more of?

 

Softwares/tools

  • What are the tools are using to develop product?

  • What are challenges they are facing to introduce new interface?

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Influenced by Kevin P Nichols’ Content Strategy Current State Analysis and Stakeholder Interview Protocol.

Identified: Key challenges

Identified: Challenges faced

Identified: Key business impact

Picked few stories to design

Applied design thinking process with consideration of above current challenges to few stories.

  • Received design requirement from product owner from onsight.

  • Started interviewing them about persona, scenarios, empathy and business needs & challenges and groomed story with product owners.

  • Invited engineering team for brainstorming and identify the technical challenges.

  • Designed three ideation and presented to engineering team key roles.

  • Then have taken design ideation to product owners.

  • During product owner’s review learned more about users and priority.

  • Finalised one flow design with product owner and shared clickable prototype design.

  • Shared design with specifications to engineering team to develop.

The key impact from initial story design

"It helped us to showcase the forthcoming feature to markets and customers and get feedback very early in the process."

Huber

Head of Product 

“It’s nice approach to solve difficult problems with right analysis and design. Good work!!”

Sanjay 

Engineering Director

"The design approach has been very thoughtful which covers the overall perspective of story Improvements in terms of Design, Performance & Technical parameters."

Priyanshu Shah

Head - QA & Release

“I feel this initiative will be helpful in reducing the rework. Also the development team will get involved from the very beginning which will be helpful when it comes to actual development."

Divya Agarwal

​​​​​​​Sr. UI Engineer

"Research done by Ganesan is highly appreciable. It helped a lot while doing brainstorming about transfer flow improvement. I recommend such activities in future too."

Dinesh Swami

UI Manager

"Good Initiative and it was very helpful from the testing perspective as well. These kind of discussions are value added in case of identifying the scenarios and impacted areas, so that we can reduce the majority of bugs in the initial phase only. It would be more helpful if we continue the same in future activities."

Chaitanya Mullapudi

Lead QA Engineer

Introduced Design Thinking approach to my product ecosystem

After buy-in the process from key roles and head of operations, introduced design thinking approach to product ecosystem. I have outlined, design thinking is not only a valuable approach to solve business problems and create bottom line value — it can also be a tool to improve organisational culture. Happier and higher-performing employees, an abundance of innovative ideas, and decreased risk with success story and market statistics.

Empathise with people

Know the people you're designing for, so you understand their needs better.

 

Define a challenge

Decide on who you want to design for and what you want to help them do.

 

Generate ideas

Come up with different solutions that might be useful to people - remember there are no bad ideas!

 

Prototype your design

Create a user flow and turn your ideas into interactive mockups.

 

Test to learn

Take your prototypes to people and get feedback to continue to learn about people.

 

Share the story

Craft a human story to inspire others towards action.

Used four lens model for current challenges

Key impact

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Design Thinking process creating an open-minded culture, celebrates exploration and experimentation. With a renewed sense of curiosity, team members are free to think big, tap into their enthusiasm, and leverage their strengths.


Division that incorporates design thinking as a process and an organisational culture is setting itself up for innovation, happy employees, and a healthier bottom line. In short, it’s setting itself up for longevity and success.

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