Dark Horse Innovation SF

What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a methodology for solving problems using empathy, reasoning, and imagination. It’s been hugely successful in the business world - most visibly through consultancies like IDEO, but also in countless other organizations that have adopted design thinking to better understand user needs, innovate past the competition, and create high levels of demand. It’s also incredibly useful as an approach to generating empathy and solving everyday problems, too.

Design Thinking will enable you to approach complex problems and collaborate across disciplines, creating real solutions for real people.

Design Thinking is accessible to anyone - with or without a background in design. Whether you’re an entrepreneur looking to find the next big market need, a startup team seeking to improve your collaboration, or simply curious about the practice, design thinking will benefit you. The only prerequisite qualities of a successful design thinker are: the ability to listen, an openness to challenging one’s own assumptions, and a willingness to work with others.

Design Thinking is design by humans, for humans. In applying design thinking methods, you’ll experience: curiosity, empathy, childlike wonderment, satisfaction (with some healthy frustration along the way), joy, and connection with other people - your teammates and the people you’re designing for.
About the Design Thinking Immersion Workshop
One of the first challenges in Design Thinking: stop talking − start doing! We’re making Design Thinking accessible to everyone through an immersive, daylong workshop.

Led by two experienced coaches who will introduce methods and guide the day’s activities, the workshop will focus on a hands-on learning process. You’ll be placed into small teams and asked to identify and solve real problems.

Together, you’ll improve your skills in:
Needfinding: applying tools and strategies to better understand your customer’s needs - whether or not they’re even aware of them.
Rapid prototyping: the ability to craft better solutions by prototyping early, making valuable mistakes, and iterating.
Interdisciplinary teamwork: using shared frameworks, language, and exercises that enable you to push past preconceptions and incorporate multiple backgrounds, skillsets, and perspectives to truly push the envelope together.

Here’s an example schedule:

Arrival
Light breakfast (creative brains need fuel!)
Design Thinking - an overview
Introductions
Get to know your fellow Design Thinkers - and what they bring to the table!
Get briefed on today’s challenge
Split into your project teams for the day
Develop Empathy
Learn tools and methods for developing empathy
Apply these tools in the field - research with your team out in San Francisco
Define the Problem
Learn how to articulate the insights you gained during the Empathy phase into a clear and concise set of user needs - framing the problem you will solve
(Break for Lunch)
Ideate
Learn how to structure effective, productive, and fun brainstorming sessions to generate solutions and hone in on the right one(s)
Prototype
Use our library of materials to craft prototypes with your team
Test and Iterate
Get back out into the field to see your prototypes in action
Reflect
Share stories, insights and learnings from the Immersion

Your coaches

Christin’s bio:
Christin is a UX researcher and strategist with a background in Psychology, and five years of international experience in the field of User Experience.

She has a scientific and evidence-based approach to human-centered design, loves design sprints and iteration, and always advocates for simplicity. Her most powerful tools are 'why?' and 'show me!'. Equipped with those, she has conducted user and product research for think tanks and companies in Europe, North America and the Middle East.

Together with thirty amazing friends whom she met studying at the d.school, she co-founded Dark Horse, an award-winning innovation consultancy based in Berlin (Germany) and San Francisco (US).

Recent clients of Dark Horse include SAP, Telekom, and Audi, in areas including connected vehicles, mobile device development, consumer goods, and digital communication.

Christin studied Psychology and Design Thinking in Madrid (Spain), Potsdam (Germany), Stanford (USA) and Cambridge (UK). And she usually doesn't speak in the third person about herself.

Specialties:
• User Experience Design
• User Research
• Design Thinking
• Product Testing
• Organizational Change
• Organizational Development

James’ bio:
James Fish is a UX researcher and sociologist with four years of international experience in user experience, research, and product design.

James’ background as a Harvard-educated sociologist lends him expertise in qualitative and quantitative research methods. After stints consulting in both the US and Turkey, he learned design thinking methodologies during a year at the HPI d.school, Germany’s partner program to the Stanford d.school. Clients included C&A and Sennheiser.

Since then, he has honed his skills in the field - most recently during three years as a design researcher on the Product team at Proteus Digital Health, an innovative company spanning wearables, healthcare, software, and digital medicines.

On weekends, James applies his design skills to create experiences for people. In addition to organizing interactive (and occasionally bizarre) events, he can often be found DJing house and techno at many of San Francisco’s underground electronic venues. He also likes dancing. A lot.

Specialties:
• User Research and Market Research
• User Experience Design
• Design Thinking
• Product Testing (Concept and Usability)