TIMTHIANTHAI
SAP Co-Innovation Workshops
As part of our unique design process at SAP Design & Co-Innovation Center, we conducted Co-Innovation workshops, also known as Design Thinking workshops, with our customers from various business industries across the globe, including sports, oil and gas, finance, and retail—just to name a few. For each workshop, we would assign teams of participants from diverse roles within their company. These roles varied from company executives, to managers, to ITs, to end users. There are three types of workshops we facilitate:
1. Experience Workshop
Design Challenge Example: Redesign the café experience to promote better networking.
This first type of workshop includes a brief introduction to Design Thinking and the steps in the methodology. The focus is on the methodology with the goal of giving each participant enough exposure to enable them to apply the steps to their own business. The workshop output usually includes workshop review and documentation.
2. Design Workshop
Design Challenge Example: Redesign the process and tool for hiring maintenance contractors.
This type of workshop is about solving current business issues or finding new business opportunities for the customer. The design challenge for this workshop is specific to the customer’s needs. The goal is to come up with designs rather than focus on methodology. The workshop output usually includes low-fidelity wireframes/design mockups and storyboards, that designers like me will take to further develop.
3. Vision Workshop
Design Challenge Example: Create the 2017 vision for Direct Store Delivery.
The third type of workshop focuses on envisioning the customer’s company in 3-5 years and planning a roadmap to their goal. The design challenge here is broader than the Design Workshop, but maintains focus on the customer’s business. The workshop output usually includes storyboards, roadmap, and business model canvas.
We would collaborate and review Design Thinking steps with the customers like building user personas and journey maps. After the workshop, we would polish these workshop artifacts and digitize them.
My Role
Workshop Facilitation
When Design & Co-Innovation Center first formed, I only assisted the facilitator and coached a group of participants in the workshop. For the past few years, as I gained experience and confidence, I've become a workshop facilitator for multiple customer engagements. I would communicate with the customers prior to the workshops to understand their needs, create the agenda for the workshops accordingly, and guide participants through different Design Thinking activities (persona, journey map, ideation, storyboard, wireframe, etc.) during the workshop.
Design
For many customer engagements, my job did not finish at the end of the workshop. I would take the collaborative design artifacts from the workshops such as low-fidelity personas, journey maps, wireframes/design mockups, and storyboards, and develop them further. I would then present the polished version of the output to the customers again to get their feedback and decide on the next steps.
I can create storyboards of different styles and levels of fidelity depending on the project type and its timeline.
Challenges & Takeaways
Problem Identification
In most cases, we went into the workshop not knowing what the type of output would be. We would spend hours, and sometimes days, investigating the problem space and discussing the issues from different angles before we moved onto the solution space and ideation. Even though I was not comfortable with this approach at first, as my mind could not stop thinking about design solutions early on, I found it to be the best way to broaden my creativity and find the right solution for a complex problem.
Misalignment
The worst-case scenario in facilitating co-innovation workshops is that we realize we do not have the right people there. For example, if we figured out during the workshop that the company’s main problem involved entry-level employees’ issues, but the workshop participants were all C-level executives, then we would never be able to truly solve the problem. When this happened, we would either adjust the design challenge to better match the needs of our participants or put a stop to the workshop altogether. Even though the latter solution seems drastic, it would sometimes be the best solution to save the customer time, effort, and money. After all, we would not want to spend time finding the right solution for the wrong problem, or vice versa.
Personality Management
Preparing and presenting the workshop content is only half of what is required to deliver a successful workshop. The other half is managing different types of participants to make the workshop experience pleasant for everyone. Over the years, my team has learned to adapt to different types of personalities in the workshops. I’ve even documented our learnings in this fun blog.
The customers were always happy when they saw that their hard work and contribution during the workshop had turned into coherent designs.
Results
SAP Co-Innovation Workshops have yielded numerous outcomes. Some ideas from workshops have turned into Proof of Concepts (POCs) and real products or services in the market today, some are still a work in progress, and some just stopped at the end of the workshop. It’s hard to pinpoint or find a formula to know how far an idea will go, as it often involves other factors such as company’s innovation culture. Regardless of the outcome, facilitating co-innovation workshops has helped me gain deeper knowledge on different business industries and strengthen my skills as a well-rounded designer.
Even though I cannot share the workshop outputs due to confidentiality, some of the customers I have worked with include:
