AS PUBLISHED ON LEARNOGRAPHY BLOG - November 4, 2016

The Who

I recently joined Learnography as Design Manager. I have to say, I couldn’t be happier to be working with such an interesting and innovative team. My creative and digital media background has been a bit “outside the box” and very entrepreneurial in nature, which has given me a strong foundational background and dedicated interest in design thinking.

The What

So, what is “design thinking” and what does it mean for digital learning? When we think about how digital learning products are traditionally developed, design is there to “make things look good” and is usually looped well into the production process. With the rapid growth of technology, learner behaviour is continuously evolving – and so are learners’ needs. Design thinking allows organizations to innovate and disrupt traditional development processes that are no longer meeting these needs and develop digital products based on human-centered design. It is a circular and collaborative process that is typically mapped with 5 modes:

What I find fascinating about the growth of design thinking as a foundational approach to product design is that although this approach has been used widely by design firms, tech companies, and startups, it is becoming a global trend in business, social, and government sectors due to its efficiency and effectiveness. Harvard Business Review recently highlighted the practice of design thinking in big companies such as Samsung and PepsiCo. Both have put design thinking principles into their core activities to get a better understanding of their customers. For both companies, it’s not about hiring a “designer” to work on their products and services, it’s about changing the company’s overall system and culture to become based more in human-centered design.

The Why

Product design is no longer about simply making things look good. It’s about building and developing learner-centered products and solutions. Design Thinking is a method of meeting people’s needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable way. Today, with design thinking as a common philosophy, we are all designers.

Author - Lauralee Sheehan, Chief Creative Officer (CCO)

Blog Cover Photo - markus-spiske-626757-unsplash

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