Design Thinking Lab: Developing Innovative Solutions

Design Thinking Lab: Developing Innovative Solutions

Article provided by Digital Tourism Think Tank.

On 31st March and 1st April, the members of the Tourban project met in Barcelona to participate in the Design Thinking Lab. This was a two half-day programme, facilitated by the Digital Tourism Think Tank, during which those present had the opportunity to learn and understand what Design Thinking is and then apply it to their real and personal challenges. 

During the first day, the Digital Tourism Think Tank facilitated an interactive keynote for the SMEs which aimed at providing a general understanding of what Design Thinking is and why this iterative and creative process is a brilliant way to generate human-centred solutions for our users. We also covered the principles and the keys of Design Thinking, which are:

  1. Keep a focus on user outcomes
  2. Restless reinvention
  3. Diverse Empowered Teams.
  4. Hills.
  5. Playbacks.
  6. Sponsor users

The participants were also able to participate in quick and thought-provoking activities that allowed them to get out of their comfort zone and think outside of the box. Lastly, as this was the first time the Tourban Community was meeting in person, there was an opportunity to network and get to know each other better. 

During the second day, the whole morning was dedicated to putting into practice all the knowledge acquired during the keynote the day before. The participants were divided into 10 groups based on the challenges they submitted in relation to sustainability, digitalisation, and communication, among others, and were asked to focus on one of them. With that in mind, the morning developed in a fast-paced manner during which we moved through the five stages of Design Thinking: empathising with the users, defining the challenges and the users’ needs, ideating a solution and challenging assumptions, prototyping a chosen solution and presenting the prototype and its implementation in the real world.

Although this was challenging, the results were incredible! All the groups were able to develop a solution by the end of the morning, and all the templates provided were full of ideas and creativity. Remember to implement this process in your everyday operations and involve entire teams in it to achieve real and impactful results.