Future Employee Experience in Luxury retail
Design sprints, capability & team building | 150+ people reached | Amsterdam, Paris, Miami & New York
The employee experience carries as much importance as the customer experience in modern businesses. Understanding this, Carter approached DesignThinkers Academy to embark on adapting their environment to employees’ functional and emotional needs. Our Employee Journey project at Cartier involved relevant stakeholders from the different departments of the global organization. This was essential in order to allow the co-creation of shared solutions and their active engagement. As a result, in a learning-by-doing manner, participants were guided through a Design process that enabled them to visualize future scenarios of the employee experience at Cartier. Read on to learn more about applying Design Thinking in luxury retail.
CARTIER DRIVEN INNOVATION
The project involved relevant stakeholders from the different departments of the Cartier organization. Moreover, this was crucial in order to allow co-creation and active engagement to ultimately create shared solutions. In addition, even if the project was content-focused, the participants could gain first-hand experience with the Design Thinking tools, methodology and unique approach.
The project was executed on a global level, involving teams in the Paris, New York and Amsterdam offices. An important aspect was how to involve relevant stakeholders from the different departments of the Cartier organization in order to allow the co-creation of shared solutions and their active engagement. Working with a human-centered perspective resulted in more extensive changes than imagined at the start: besides from redesigning the physical working space, we embedded employees’ emotions and attitude into the new design.
METHODOLOGY
In a learning-by-doing manner, participants were guided through a Design process that enabled them to co-create Persona profiles and their Customer Journey. Moreover, this enabled them to visualize Future Scenarios of service. Ultimately, DesignThinkers Academy and Cartier worked together on a project closely related to the Employee Experience, more specifically, the working environment. Lastly, Cartier Benelux is based in a prestigious building in the center of Amsterdam, for security and structural reasons.
Design Thinking in banking to boost innovation
Design sprints, Capability building & Qualitative research | 500+ people reached | Switzerland
Change and innovation usually face a certain amount of resistance in traditionally conservative industries. A set of capabilities is required to ensure the successful implementation of new ideas, which is crucial to growth and development. In this 1-year project, we worked on introducing improved ways of working (such as Design Thinking) within Pictet. Together, we facilitated new skills such as research design, ideation, prototyping, and effective collaboration at one of the largest banks in Switzerland. Read on to learn more about applying Design Thinking in banking and investment.
PICTET DRIVEN INNOVATION
How might we help Pictet to build Design Thinking capabilities?
Headquartered in Geneva, Pictet is a Swiss-based bank with a focus on private banking. As one of the largest Swiss banks, it primarily offers services in wealth management, asset management, and asset servicing, to private clients and institutions. The Pictet Group employs around 4,600 people, including 900 investment managers.
Before approaching DesignThinkers Academy, Pictet had already taken the first steps in creating a Learning and Development Program for their employees. To further build on this, we provided an all-around Design Thinking Capability Training internally with the strategic goal of integrating new and improved ways of working into the organization.
In addition to building new capabilities, we also assisted their Product Innovation teams with a number of Design Sprints to collaboratively develop new and innovative products and services. We also helped Pictet to hone in on the idea of developing a Community of Expertise internally.
METHODOLOGY
To ensure full immersion in Design Thinking, we guided Pictet through a curriculum that closely follows the Double Diamond methodology of divergent/convergent thinking. Simultaneously, we organized masterclasses that dived deeper into hard skills and soft skills, such as conducting interviews for qualitative research, effective ideation, empathy, communication, and negotiation skills. Furthermore, to boost innovation, we ran a 3.5-day Design Sprint to optimize the connection between the teams with their clients. This serves to provide insights into future product innovation in the most accurate light possible. Finally, we coached Pictet’s senior consultants on adopting and facilitating the Design Thinking mindset in their organization.
At the end of this project, Pictet’s teams were more confident in creating and rolling out innovative ideas that fit the needs of their customers. They were also more comfortable using the Double Diamond / Design Thinking mindset in their daily work.
Accelerating Innovation for Financial Services
Accelerators, capability & team building | 1000+ people reached | The Netherlands, Spain, Germany & Romania
ING is preparing for the future regardless of the speed of change. Therefore, with facilitation by DesignThinkers, we accelerated an innovation process that embeds the users’ perspective in product & service development. As a result, we successfully combined Lean, Agile & Scrum with Design Thinking. In this manner, we empowered ING to bring relevant solutions to the market faster.
ING DRIVEN INNOVATION
How can we support ING in the adaptation of a human-centered perspective to improve services in the financial industry?
DesignThinkers Academy collaborated with ING to co-create an internal innovation process embedding the users’ perspective in new service development. Consequently, DesignThinkers Academy trained a team of ING employees that will foster a more human-centered perspective within the organization.
Furthermore, DTA also guided the ING Accelerator teams to develop, test and implement new services. As a result, DesignThinkers Academy designed all of the tool which were used for the individual workshops, guidelines, toolkits, Accelerator programs and flows.
METHODOLOGY
How to successfully combine Design Thinking, Lean, Agile & Scrum? With the PACE methodology, ING is prepared for the future, whatever the speed of changes may be. As a result, the combination of methods enables us to bring relevant solutions faster to the market. Watch the explanatory video for an elaboration of the process.
Customer Journey Mapping for Hospitality Services
Qualitative research, CJM development & Service scenarios | 500+ people reached | Taiwan & Japan
The main objective for DesignThinkers included training and coaching a team of marketing specialists and managers of MOS Burger. Providing facilitation for qualitative research in a co-creation setting and designing new innovative future customer journey scenarios. To underpin its focus on helping the Taiwanese service industry become more innovative.
MOS BURGER DRIVEN INNOVATION
Designing with Customer Journey Mapping for Hospitality Services Government of Taiwan. Commissioned by CDRI (Commerce Development Research Institute) – Research Think Tank of the Taiwanese Government, to underpin its focus on helping the Taiwanese service industry become more innovative. The main objective of the project included: training and coaching a team of Marketing Specialists and managers of a chain of restaurants. Providing guidance for doing Qualitative Research and designing and visualizing new innovative Customer Journey Scenarios.
METHODOLOGY
How can we improve the service delivery by using customer journey mapping as a redesigning tool? In the process of designing new and innovative services, the Customer Journey Mapping methodology builds a mirror and enables us to question
why organizations and customers do the things they do. The Customer Journey Map provides a new way for stakeholders to work together. Creating an immediate sense of ownership of the outcomes of the process.
Rebuild Global Employee Ecosystem for Beverage Industries
Accelerators, Process design & Remote coaching | 500+ people reached | EMEA, USA & Baltic states
Our collaboration with Coca-Cola was an interesting case of Design Thinking in HR. DesignThinkers facilitated the redesign of Coca-Cola HR & the employee ecosystem. How can we demonstrate a human touch in the digital world we work in? Resulting in improved service scenarios for hiring and on-boarding for new Coca-Cola employees worldwide. The main outcome is a set of prototypes & roadmaps on how to implement these pilots.
COCA-COLA DRIVEN INNOVATION
How can we support the HR Department of Coca-Cola in redesigning its employee services following a ‘Design Thinking’ approach?
Design Thinking Workshops for Coca-Cola Global HR were carried out in collaboration with the GBS department. We facilitated Design Councils consisting of Coca-Cola employees and Coca-Cola Human Resource professionals. This was a co-creation effort to explore the Coca-Cola Global Business Services eco-system and opportunity areas for improving services and design improved Service Scenarios especially for hiring and on boarding of new Coca-Cola employees. The main outcome is a set of Prototypes & Roadmaps on how to implement the Pilots.
METHODOLOGY
How can we demonstrate a human touch in the digital world we work in? The idea was to treat the Coca-Cola employees we worked with, as customers of our services. Along with this new mindset came new emphasis on the experience of these services. Putting ourselves in the shoes of our customers, we asked ourselves four key questions, focussing on getting a deeper understanding in customers’ desires, needs and pain points. In the end, we helped the GBS department to produce a Customer Journey Map that was applicable to their employee journey. In doing so, Coca-Cola’s HR professionals can envision the employee experience and breathe new life into how they view their global employee ecosystem.
Mastercard
Design Research, Customer Insights, Business Model Canvas |1000+ people reached | Egypt, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria
DesignThinkers Academy developed a human-centered management roadmap to diversify revenue streams in the MENA region. Along side to that, trainings and events were organized in order to foster innovative climates.
We helped Mastercard to embed the Design Thinking mindset on different levels of management and in everyday business. Applying creativity in crafting business models, diverse revenue alternatives with cross-functional teams were identified. A human-centered approach was adopted in formulating roadmaps for new service concepts. Moreover train-the-trainer workshops were organised for management teams to foster innovative climates and developing new business models.
Creating new solutions to improve lives across the world
Capability building | 500+ people reached | The Philippines and the Netherlands
Every year, Bloomberg Philanthropies, the charitable arm of Bloomberg Corporation, organizes the Global Mayor Challenge. In this competition, city authorities around the world must come up with a sustainable solution to improve a dire issue in their current jurisdiction. As Design Thinking consultants, we helped the governments of Rotterdam, the Netherlands, and Butuan, the Philippines with injecting human-centered thinking into their final products. Read on to learn more about applying Design Thinking in NGOs.
Through extensive collaboration and the teams’ incredible grit, we managed to cross the finish line together: Rotterdam and Butuan were honored as winners of the Global Mayor’s Challenge 2021. Each city received $1M each in funding to further develop their ideas into viable, sustainable solutions.
“It will help me address stakeholders and that I get their buy-in.”
