LESSONS LEARNED

 

http://www.acm.org/dl

builds trust. Common goals ensure the teams must show productive output when they emerge from their multi-day event. Recognizing the need for progress, participants in design labs understand one another’s perspectives and constraints and are able to identify solutions that acknowledge these constraints.

Pivoting through lean design.

In The Lean Startup, Eric Ries argues that the runway for any new product or company is how many times it can successfully pivot itself—change direction— to deliver real customer value [ 8]. Design labs are the perfect tool for lean design: They permit fast, cheap, objective pivots.

In her article “In Defense of
Workshops,” Catherine Strotmeyer
highlights several case studies in
which companies such as Frito Lay,
GE, Timberland, and Trustmark
have leveraged design labs—inno-
vation workshops—to drive strate-
gic change [ 4]. Colleagues in other
companies and design firms tell
me regularly about new workshop
methods to solve different prob-
lems. Several organizations—and
most design firms—use design labs
they have branded for themselves,
including the following:
• IDEO: Deep Dive Workshops
• Frog: FrogThink workshop
format
• Sapient: Fusion Workshops
• Yahoo: YoDeLs
• Deutsche Telekom: Innovation
Workshops and StreetLabs
• Cisco: Discovery Workshops.

What Problems Can Rapid
Design Labs Solve?
Many companies and design firms
have leveraged innovation work-
shops and design labs to drive stra-
tegic change and alignment. They
find that workshops significantly
compress the time it takes to:
• Envision future trends and
identify solutions that will differ-
entiate companies in three to five
years;