I have started an intensive elective in design thinking at Deakin University as elective for my law degree. Having had a number of years experience as a business analyst and a management consultant, I do have some background in a number of the processes that we will be covering, however as much of what I have learned was done so on the job it is nice to see how certain things I have been doing well for years came about, how they are named and what has gone into them. Conversely it is interesting to look at a number of the things that I may need to improve on. As well as covering quite a bit of design thinking theory the first exercise we did In class was “the wallet exercise” the purpose of this exercise was to listen and watch someone going through the content of their wallet and attempt to draw some conclusions about what kind of lifestyle they had. This was an introduction to ethnographic research and one of the first steps in some design thinking paradigms which is to “empathise” with your customers and clients. I found that this was an excellent exercise and it was clear that you could discover a lot about someone and how they lived their life by observing the contents of their wallet. I believe I will apply this technique more readily when speaking with clients and stakeholders to real try to understand their individual needs, goals and motivations before attempting to prescribe a solution.
A link to the Miro board we created is here