Presentation on Design Thinking teaching pedgagogy

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For use in General Assembly Enterprise workshops

MY FACILITATION PHILOSOPHY
• People learn best when they are doing, not just talking
• Coaching works best in the moment, when the
facilitator can observe the problem, offer a
recommendation, and the participant can try it in real
time
• And specifically for design thinking - iteration is your
most powerful tool

A BRIEF OVERVIEW OF MY
BACKGROUND

LEARNING DIGITAL MARKETING
• My design thinking journey started at a software
company called Datacap
• I worked in marketing and learned, on the job, how to
develop qualified leads for our salesforce. Back in
2008, we were at the forefront of automation, nurture
campaigns and lead scoring.

TEACHING DIGITAL MARKETING
• A year later, a friend connected to General Assembly
asked if I wanted to teach a digital marketing class
there
• I called it Digital Marketing for Everyone, and with
student feedback and constant iteration, it became a
popular workshop I taught all around the world

DIGITAL MARKETING FOR EVERYONE
• I turned what I taught and learned into a five star
rated book, available on Amazon.
http://amzn.to/UXT2aL

DIGITAL MARKETING TO LEAN STARTUP
• An email from a student kept nagging at me. She
asked:
What if I’m marketing my product the way you
recommend but no one is interested?
• Shortly thereafter, another student asked if I could give
a workshop on lean startup. I hadn’t heard about it, so
I read the book, and the proverbial light bulb went off
— we can use digital marketing tools like split testing
subject lines and click-through rates on paid ads to
check if a user/customer wants what you’re offering!

LEAN STARTUP ACCELERATOR
• Jim Wheeler, the director for the Center for
Entrepreneurship at the University of Oklahoma sat in
on a lean startup workshop I gave and asked if I would
develop a 10-week startup accelerator for his
students, based on the principles of doing more/talking
less and constant iteration based on customer/coach
feedback.
The story of how that went is also available in my book.
http://bit.ly/LeanAcceleratorAmazon

LEAN FOR CORPORATE CLIENTS
• General Assembly had also started offering corporate
training around this time.
• I began working with our clients on a rapid
prototyping workshop called Start Making.
• Clients who take Start Making normally want to test
ideas for new products and services faster and to
validate user demand before making significant
investments in a project.

FEEDBACK FROM A CORPORATE CLIENT
We would not have done that [gotten
early customer feedback] if we hadn’t
gone through GA… we would have
followed our traditional path and
taken 6 months.
https://generalassembly.wistia.com/medias/vsx0ei97mc

LEAN TO DESIGN THINKING
• Most recently I’ve been delivering design thinking
workshops with Capital One. That’s where I’ve learned
more of the terminology, mindsets and tools that make
up the design thinking philosophy

CASE STUDY DESIGN
• Please design a thorough case study that tells the story
(or stories) of your experience as a design thinking
facilitator. Share your point of view regarding design
thinking facilitation as well as understanding how you
prepare, run, and follow-up on collaborative sessions.
• Share real-world examples from sessions you've led in
the past. Include agendas, photographs, activity
examples, or anything else that you feel accurately tells
us the story of your maturity as a design thinking
facilitator.

STICKING POINTS… AND
HOW I APPROACHED SOLVING
THEM

CASE STUDY DESIGN
I want to tell this story by showing how I solved
teaching/facilitating problems as they arose in my work.
We’ll look at three:
1. Interviewing and Fishbowling
2. Assumption Generation
3. Workshop-to-Workplace transition

BRIEF OVERVIEW OF THE
PROCESS I TEACH

This cycle is the
foundation for how I
approach rapid
prototyping.
EARLY IDEA
RAPID PROTOTYPING CYCLE

Everything starts with an early idea, preferably
generated from user research.
Framing the question means choosing the
hypothesis to test.
Designing and creating an experiment is the
experience you’ll create for a user to get feedback
to validate your hypothesis.
After running the experiment, you would evaluate
the results and start the cycle over again,
equipped with new information.
EARL
RAPID PROTOTYPING CYCLE

TALKING TO HUMANS
(INTERVIEWING)
START MAKING 20

INTERVIEWING AND FISHBOWLING
• The first sticking point I want to share is around
interviewing a customer or user. The next few slides
show how I normally introduce the skill of asking
open-ended questions and the photo shows the general
physical configuration of a workshop.
• The first slide leads to a general conversation about
why interviewing users is a good place to start
developing an idea. The second slide lets me introduce
the skill. And the third slide gives the instructions for
the exercise (my standard format).

TALKING TO HUMANS 22
VS.
Brainstorming
Talking to your users or
customers

TALKING TO HUMANS
Questions that elicit a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer provide less info.
Open-ended questions help avoid your own personal bias.
Let’s translate these questions to be open-ended…
‣ Is green your favorite color?
‣ Do you like ponies?
‣ Would you like the product more if it did your laundry, too?
TIP 1: ASK OPEN-ENDED QUESTIONS
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TALKING TO HUMANS
TALKING TO HUMANS: PART 1
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1. Say hello to your customer (someone who
currently drives and/or owns a car)
2. Learn more about their life as a driver (or
a passenger) by asking open-ended
questions

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• The challenge in this format was that most teams
didn’t ask open-ended questions. Instead, they would
fall back to questions like “Would you like this feature
to be included” or “Do you prefer doing X or Y”.
• I would go from table to table helping each team
understand what an open-ended question was and
giving examples, rather than focusing on the specific
content of the questions they were asking and helping
them find opportunities for further questioning.

• My solution to this challenge was to first have the
entire class question one user (that user is in the
“fishbowl”) before splitting into teams.
• By having participants pose questions that everyone
could hear, I could provide immediate feedback about
the quality of the question.
• If a participant asked a close-ended question, I would
request they change it into an open-ended one and to
re-ask it. We could all see how the quality of the
response changed based on the type of question.
• When we moved into small group interviews after this
exercise, everyone was able to effectively use the skill.

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START MAKING
fFROM IDEA TO TEST
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ASSUMPTION GENERATION
• The second sticking point I want to share is around
finding assumptions. As workshop participants move
from interviewing users and generating early ideas to
testing those ideas, they need to figure out which
assumptions they want to test.
• The challenge was that people were unable to list the
assumptions behind an idea just by thinking about it.
Instead, I would often assist each of the groups
individually to find a testable assumption. This was an
inefficient way of moving the class forward.

ASSUMPTION GENERATION
1. To solve this problem, I introduced a skill called
Assumption Generation. The exercise prompts are in
the following slides.
2. When I first tested to see if this skill would help
groups, I split-test the prompts to see if any would be
the best. I now use the punch/counterpunch prompt
almost all the time, since it has consistently generated
the best results.

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THE FIRST MAKING
BRIDGING YOUR EARLY IDEA
AND YOUR FIRST RESEARCH
QUESTION
EARLY IDEA
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THE FIRST MAKING
1. Within your group, generate a
list of assumptions upon which
your idea is based

2. Rank those assumptions in
terms of the potential they have
to invalidate your idea

BRIDGING YOUR EARLY IDEA
AND YOUR FIRST RESEARCH
QUESTION
EARLY IDEA
36

THE FIRST MAKING
1. Draw a line down the middle of your flipchart paper to create two
columns. Label the first column Thrill and the second column Kill. In
the next five minutes, you will think of reasons why this is a thrilling
idea AND reasons why the idea should be killed.
2. For the first TWO Minutes, brainstorm all the reasons this is an
awesome idea and deserves to be given all the resources needed to
make it a success.
3. Then, for TWO MORE minutes, brainstorm all the reasons this is a
terrible idea that will never work and shouldn’t have time wasted on it.
THRILL/KILL
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THE FIRST MAKING
1. Choose a scribe and draw a vertical line down the center of the sheet to
create two columns.
2. Label the left column “Punch” and the right column “Counterpunch.”
3. In the “Punch” column, list every objection imaginable to your early
idea. Under “Counterpunch,” develop your response to each objection.
4. Come up with a Counterpunch for every Punch right away!
PUNCH / COUNTERPUNCH
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THE FIRST MAKING
PICK THE ASSUMPTION THAT
DIVIDED THE GROUP THE MOST
EARLY IDEA
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EXPERIENTIAL PROTOTYPING
After assumption generation, the teams move into
rapid prototyping. This photo is an example of the
end result!

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WORKSHOP-TO-WORKPLACE TRANSITION
1. The third sticking point I want to share is about taking
the skills and mindsets practiced in a workshop back
to everyday business. Participants were reporting that
when they got back to their desks they didn’t know
what to do first.
2. The rapid prototyping class is built around running
fast experiments. So my solution to this problem was
to have participants create an experiment in class that
they can start to implement when they get back to
their office.

WORKSHOP-TO-WORKPLACE TRANSITION
1. The following slides show the prompts for a Startup
Weekend-styled voting and presenting exercise I did
with a client.
2. One of my favorite parts of this exercise is that the
final presentations are given to the workshop
participants’ senior leader! That individual has the
authority to approve the experiment in class, so work
can begin immediately on implementation when class
is over.

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But no senior leadership!

MODULARITY
1. Sometimes a senior leader cannot be present to hear
the pitches for the experiments. That’s why I build all
my workshops in a modular fashion, so parts can
easily be changed out as needed.
2. This gives each workshop a very customized and
personalized feel, without the expense and time of
creating each one entirely from scratch.
3. The next slide shows how a typical day is broken
down into separate modules.

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MODULARITY
1. The following slides show how the senior leader
pitches are replaced by team pitches.
2. The main purpose of this exercise is to practice
building a good experiment and to get feedback from
your colleagues.

MAKING IT REAL
ON YOUR OWN:
‣ Come up with the idea you want to test based on
your work at .….
‣ Frame your hypothesis as a question and design
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Share your experiment and collect feedback.
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
‣ Come up with a pitch.
AT YOUR TABLES:
‣ Pitch your experiments.
‣ Choose the best pitch to share out.
54
EARLY IDEA

MAKING IT REAL
ON YOUR OWN:
your work at .….
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
AT YOUR TABLES:
55
EARLY IDEA
5
MIN

MAKING IT REAL 56
EARLY IDEA
10
MIN
ON YOUR OWN:
your work at .….
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
AT YOUR TABLES:

MAKING IT REAL 57
EARLY IDEA
10
MIN
ON YOUR OWN:
your work at .….
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
AT YOUR TABLES:

MAKING IT REAL 58
EARLY IDEA
5
MIN
ON YOUR OWN:
your work at .….
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
AT YOUR TABLES:

MAKING IT REAL 59
EARLY IDEA
10
MIN
ON YOUR OWN:
your work at .….
your experiment.
WITH YOUR PARTNER:
‣ Iterate.
ON YOUR OWN:
AT YOUR TABLES:

MAKING IT REAL
LARGE GROUP SHAKEOUT
Make the pitch:
‣ What’s your idea?
‣ How would you test it?
‣ What’s a pass/fail?
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EARLY IDEA

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LEARNING FROM MY STUDENTS
• I want to deliver the best possible experience for my
students and colleagues. To that end, I thrive on taking
feedback and improving my curriculum through
consistent iterations.
• General Assembly collects formal feedback at the end
of every day of a workshop. We ask for a Net Promoter
Score as well as other numerical answers to questions
about student satisfaction.
• I also get feedback directly from participants in the
form of “I wishes” and “I likes” on post-it notes
(example of the next slide).

IN CLOSING
• Thanks for allowing me to share my design thinking
philosophy and practice with you.
• As both a teacher and student of design thinking, my
purpose is to learn as much as I can from my students
and my peers to deliver the best possible workshop and
facilitation experience.
• I can be reached at ericmorrow@gmail.com and on
linkedin: linkedin.com/in/ericmorrow

Presentation on Design Thinking teaching pedgagogy

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