Design Thinking for Redesign, Not Invention

At McClatchy Innovation, we facilitate many design thinking sessions meant for open-ended results. Usually, the only restriction on the end product is that is must solve a user need.
This week, however, was a little different. We led a workshop with Activate Good, a local nonprofit, to help them redesign their website to better serve the volunteers and nonprofits they work with. Starting with a predetermined solution — a website — presented a new challenge for our team: How can we tailor our existing program for a redesign, rather than an invention? We shifted a few presentations around, shortened a few others, and ended with a very successful and exciting week.
Here are a few of our insights for conducting design thinking workshops for redesigns:
Build off your foundation
Activate Good knows their brand and mission better than anyone, so much of our session was centered around bringing those aspects into the new design. We knew they already did a lot of things right, they just needed a better way to present it. A redesign is a chance to evaluate what’s working and what’s not and build from there, so it’s important to be open about those aspects from the start.

Constraints are actually great for creativity
When the sky’s the limit, it can be difficult to hone in on a core solution. Oftentimes, it can lead to a surface level exploration or an umbrella solution with several components.
Narrowing the scope to a website allows for innovation within a specific space and, to me, that’s even more exciting.
Because Activate Good was already aware of problems with their existing site, we brainstormed solutions around: “How can we make our website the best it can be? How can we keep volunteers on our site instead of searching elsewhere? How can we make our website representative of our community?” Focusing on Activate Good’s website presence — rather than their entire program — allowed us to come up with some awesome ideas to showcase their amazing work and mission.
Don’t be too feature focused in the beginning
It’s easy for your mind to wander and skip a few steps if you know the end platform before the session begins. Everyone is familiar with web features — from drop-downs to sliders to user profiles — and it’s very easy to think of these elements individually rather than as a holistic solution.
During empathy, analogous and ideation, it’s important to restrain from thinking of feature-based solutions and open up the possibilities.
What if the solution is a feature that doesn’t exist? What is the most important action on each page? How can we guide a volunteer or nonprofit through our site rather than just presenting an array of tools? The best results come from uncovering problems and defining the journey first, and then seeing where specific features fit in.
Bring in the experts
One of the benefits of knowing the end platform is the ability to include experts in your session. Because Activate Good knew they wanted a website, their lead developer joined us for the prototyping exercise. Having an expert on your team helps determine feasibility of certain solutions and enhance the fidelity of the prototype.
We really enjoyed the opportunity to experiment with the design thinking process for redesigns and expand the reach of our program within the community. We generated lots of great ideas for Activate Good and look forward to seeing what they build!
We’ll be following up with more learnings on working with partners and applying design-thinking to projects with multiple user groups.
Originally published at mcclatchyinnovation.com on July 28, 2017.
