User-centric Design Thinking feat. Emerging Technologies
In my last blogpost, I explained why it is so hard for you to implement emerging technologies in your company and how user-centric Design Thinking can help you to do that. As I said, you can benefit by combining emerging technologies with user-centric design thinking and collaborations between small and big companies in numerous ways. Here’s how.
Integrating tech experts
First client meetings — chances to emphasize and connect with your customer, chances to point your project in the right direction. For managers, this is often difficult, especially when the project deals with emerging technologies. What do we do about it?
We include tech experts in those first meetings. This gives all of us a chance to realistically assess the viability and feasibility of a project.
Trust me when I say that tech experts know exactly what they are talking about — they set the baseline of the project plans with their knowledge. If you want better plans and more efficient projects, include open-minded tech experts in the first meetings.
Creating a larger solution space
One of the obstacles of emerging technologies is that their application areas are not set in stone. That’s why companies often don’t know which technology to use for what.
At this point, a multidisciplinary design thinking team helps. Why? Because they create a larger solutions space. The problem looks different from every point of view and so the solutions for the problems look different.
In other words: an engineer’s ideas are different from the ones of a marketing manager. An AR specialist sees different ideas or chances compared to an embedded engineer or a machine learning expert.
This is good for the design process because it provides a larger range of possible solutions. A lot of different solutions can be considered and if the chosen one does not work out, there are always more in the backlog. We at Motius provide the needed diverse expertise to build the best teams which then build the best products.
Building products for the future
The best products are built for the future. If you start building a product for the present, chances are high that it is outdated once it’s ready for the market.
What do you need in order to build the products of the future? Right, tech experts who can access and apply future technologies. They are the key to future success.
With a static/fixed company structure (that means, with a fixed set of employees) it is very hard to specialize in every emerging technology. We at Motius, however, benefit from our fluid structure which keeps us close to the newest technologies of any given tech cycle.
Tech experts are the key to future success.
This way, we have access to technology experts of any given area. Further, we build our own tech hubs to transfer that tech knowledge to our core team and benefit from it in future projects.
Connecting ideation and product development
Last but not least, let’s talk about the innovation process. Oftentimes, companies (have to) separate ideation and product building because they do not have the right resources. But this break between ideation and product is where you lose user-centricity.
Ideas get transferred to techies who were not involved in the preceding process. They neither had a chance to assess viability or feasibility, nor to emphasize with the customer. So, you basically have no user-centricity and don’t know if the technology you chose is the right one.
Luckily, you can avoid this scenario. How? Through the combination of user-centric design and emerging technologies. At Motius we have heavily interconnected these two topics.
Our design thinking and design sprints projects always include experts in emerging technologies. On the other side, our techies work user-centric. This way, we have created a unique combination of emerging technologies and user-centric design, that helps us and our partner to be ahead of the competition.
To further enhance the innovation process, we at Motius have our own workshop and close relationships to places like the MakerSpace in Munich which gives us access to pretty much every kind of tool we need. This way, we avoid the break between ideation and product.
New paths for innovation
Let’s not beat about the bush: it’s crucial to combine user-centric design thinking with emerging technologies. And based on our experience, this combination will become more and more important. Emerging technologies will open new paths for products and services and the user will decide, which path he wants to go. All we have to do, is to connect those — we are prepared, are you as well?
