LESSONS LEARNED

design solutions to maintain it. The reality, though, is that when designers try to introduce Big-D design ideas, other stakeholders often resist. The Big-D hero says she knows her idea would transform the organization and marketplace if only stakeholders would accept her idea. She says, “They just don’t understand,” and she’s right: They probably don’t. But it’s important to realize that few lone rangers can single-handedly take an idea to market.

Design labs provide the tools you need to drive innovation broadly, whether it occurs in a startup, a large organization, or a non-profit.

challenges, leverage intensive brainstorming and structured ideation exercises, engage in exercises to converge and validate ideas, and align organizations around these ideas. In design labs, designers, engineers, product managers, and often users engage in purposeful play, collaborative design, rapid prototyping, and user testing.

We will describe how design labs can achieve such grand results, how you can get your first workshop on the books, how to successfully facilitate workshops, and how to make them part of a standard process. Let’s start with examining the benefits of design labs:

Cross-functional synthesis. Design
labs solve pressing problems in a
matter of days that can take many
months—or even years—to solve
otherwise. These workshops apply
integrative thinking [ 6] at the orga-
nizational level. In essence, experts
in different disciplines (engineer-
ing, product management, and user
experience) all perceive the world
differently, including opportunities
and constraints. Moreover, every-
one thinks their opinion is the right
one. Without all key stakeholders,
though, one cannot build products
that are differentiated, market-
able, and technically feasible. We
need to leverage the best pos-
sible insights from each field [ 6, 7].
Design labs help synthesize differ-
ent insights from these disciplines.