The above quote by Larry Leifer sums up one key learnings for me from yesterday’s visit at the final presentation of University of St. Gallen’s “Design Thinking and Innovation” course.
It was a very inspiring afternoon that once again proved to me that thinking from the user and prototyping is the way to go if you want to design products or services – or to create an environment that enables good customer experiences.
The best example was the project commissioned by Swisscom on “Services for Enabling Home Networking Adoption”. The task was: Design a switch box. The result was: A tool that let customers realize the potential they have with a home network. What seems like totally missing the initial point, turned out to be a truly customer centered initiative focussing on the experience rather than the product.
How they did it? The students got out and asked customers. Not surprisingly, they found that hardly anyone was aware of the potential they have from connecting their devices and therefore being able to enhance their lives. Then it was down to prototyping ideas over and over again. The course included numerous stages of prototypes with catchy names like “Dark Horse” or “Funky Prototype”. They all help to shape the final solution. In this case, a tool that showed up desired usage scenarios rather than sold products.
It is great to see that academia in Switzerland is picking up an interdisciplinary approach to innovation and customer centered design. And it’s also great to see that Swiss companies like Swisscom or Lonza are living what they are stating in their visions: Truly creating value to their customers by designing from the outside in.