6 Best Design Thinking Exercises To Elevate L&D Programs

In a rapidly changing and competitive market, companies often rush to develop new products or services without first checking if there’s a genuine need or audience for them. The truly innovative and successful companies turn this process upside down. They prioritize understanding what needs their new product or website design will address for customers before diving in.

This approach, which focuses on the user’s perspective, is known as design thinking. Design thinking exercises play a vital role in encouraging creative problem-solving, teamwork, and innovation. They involve participants in a structured and iterative process, allowing them to delve into complex challenges, gain insights, and develop effective solutions.

So what is design thinking, and how does it benefit organizations focusing on L&D initiatives for corporate training? Let’s explore this blog to learn the 6 best design thinking exercises to elevate your L&D programs drastically.

What is Design Thinking in L&D?

Design thinking is a skill that’s developed over time through various experiences. At its core, design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps you tackle complex challenges by putting people at the center of the process. It’s especially effective for issues that aren’t clearly defined or have uncertain goals.

The essence of design methodology lies in its human-centric approach, encouraging you to brainstorm and creatively solve problems. It’s both a mindset and a structured process that leads to bold, innovative ideas and solutions for business challenges. By incorporating design thinking exercises into any stage of your project, you can gain deeper insights into the people behind your next product, method, service, or process. 

These exercises are engaging and interactive, making problem-solving a hands-on experience that everyone can enjoy.

Design thinking and innovation aren’t just for teams focused on external customers; it’s also a valuable approach for learning and development (L&D) teams. By leveraging the principles of design thinking, L&D professionals can create effective training programs tailored for their users, or employees.

What Are The 5 Stages Of Design Thinking?

The design thinking methodology is organized into five key phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. By following these steps, you can center the learner in the development process, thus creating effective training programs that genuinely help your employees meet their learning objectives.

1. Empathize

The best way to clarify the empathy phase is to define what it isn’t. It’s not about simply sharing emotions or conducting a typical needs analysis. It is essential to gain a deep understanding of your audience in order to address the problems effectively. So analyze the challenges your employees have been experiencing by getting into the depths of it.

Without input from learners, training solutions can end up feeling repetitive, often because the same team generates similar ideas over and over. So you can take a step further by holding a focus group with learners to dive deeper into their real experiences and gather insights that can shape a more effective approach. 

This would help you discover facts such as:

• critical details or challenges that may not be obvious to stakeholders
• relevant, realistic scenarios and examples
• and a genuine “what’s in it for me” that makes learning truly learner-centered

2. Define

Another important stage of design thinking methods is to define the root cause of the issue. So, take the insights gathered during the empathize phase and turn them into a clear, actionable problem to address. 

Begin by asking questions such as:

• What do your learners need?
• Which group of learners is experiencing this challenge?
• Why is addressing this problem crucial?
• How to resolve the issue with the help of L&D teams?

3. Ideate

Ideation isn’t just about randomly throwing out ideas; it’s more like fitting pieces into a puzzle. The goal is to stay focused on the defined needs and outcomes. So once you define the problem, start exploring solutions. 

In design thinking, brainstorming is best done semi-structured with a team. The aim here isn’t to land on a single answer but to develop a range of ideas that could work.

Remember, even the “bad” ideas have value—they often spark better ones! This phase is about creativity and variety, building a collection of possible approaches to consider.

4. Prototype

Rapid prototyping is all about creating something quickly, letting users try it out, and gathering feedback early and often. It serves as a way to evaluate whether a solution delivers a positive or negative experience. 

Chances are, your L&D team is already doing some form of prototyping for programs, but design thinking provides a clear, shared process and language to guide it.

Prototyping also helps answer important questions early on, such as:

• Does this meet the learners' needs?
• What challenges do users face?
• Are the learning outcomes clear?

5. Test

Finally, it's time to test your solution to gain a clear understanding of what works and what doesn’t. Remember, design thinking is all about iteration. During this testing phase, encourage learners to compare and contrast two different solutions. This will help them articulate their preferences and experiences.

Gathering their feedback is crucial—it provides valuable insights that can guide improvements to your prototype. By listening to learners and making adjustments based on their input, you can refine your solution and enhance the overall learning experience.

6 Best Design Thinking Exercises To Transform Your L&D

We have shared effective design thinking exercises that will help your team develop empathy and a user-centric perspective during the research phase. It will help you and your team to enhance the design thinking process and ensure that solutions are aligned with user needs.

Here are 6 most effective design thinking exercises for you to transform your L&D initiatives:

1. Empathy Mapping

Create visual representations of user perspectives by capturing their thoughts, feelings, actions, and aspirations. This design thinking exercise is essential to help your team gain a deeper understanding of users' experiences. 

Similar to action mapping, empathy mapping is a key first step in most design thinking initiatives, as it allows team members to grasp their target users' needs, desires, and motivations.

Here’s a quick guide to integrating empathy mapping into your design thinking workshop at the workplace:

1. Define Your Target User Group: Identify who you want to focus on.
2. Set Up a Visual Grid: Create a large grid with four sections labeled “Says,” “Thinks,” “Does,” and “Feels.”
3. Gather Insights: Collect any data available about your target users and discuss these insights with your team.
4. Fill in the Grid: Populate each quadrant with observations that reflect what users say, think, do, and feel.
5. Analyze the Map: Review the completed empathy map to spot patterns or gaps in your understanding, which can lead to further research and idea generation.

2. Impromptu Meeting

In this exercise, give your learners about 15-20 minutes to pair up and introduce themselves. They should discuss two questions: “What big challenge are you bringing to this gathering?” and “What do you hope to gain from or contribute to this group?” By the end, each person will connect with around four others and discover something new about their colleagues. 

Impromptu meeting works well whether attendees are familiar with each other or not, helping everyone gain fresh perspectives on the people they’ll be collaborating with throughout the meeting or day.

3. Ask The Why

The “Five Whys” technique is an effective design thinking exercise that helps teams dig deep to find the root cause of a problem. By repeatedly asking "why," participants can move past superficial explanations and uncover the underlying issues behind a challenge.

Start by clearly identifying the problem you want to tackle. Then, ask yourself why this problem exists and jot down the answer. 

Here are a few important questions to ask yourself:

• Why are learners struggling with the current training program?
• Why is the content too complex?
• Why is the training not aligned with their job roles?

4. SCAMPER Method

SCAMPER is a creative brainstorming technique that helps teams think outside the box when tackling a concept or problem. The acronym stands for Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse.

Here is an elaborated definition of how to apply this method as part of the exercise:

• Substitute: What elements could we replace to enhance this idea?
• Combine: How to merge this idea with another to create something even better?
• Adapt: What adjustments could we make to better meet users' needs?
• Modify: In what ways can we alter the idea to boost its effectiveness?
• Put to another use: Can this idea be applied in different contexts or situations?
• Eliminate: What parts of the idea could we remove or simplify to improve efficiency?

5. Roleplay

Roleplay is a powerful tool that helps team members gain insight into user needs and challenges by immersing themselves in different scenarios. By seeing the world through the end user’s perspective, L&D experts and instructional designers can truly connect with their experiences, leading to more user-centered solutions that address real needs. 

Roleplay is a creative way to bridge the gap between theory and practice, making the learning experience both engaging and impactful. So start by defining the problem and creating a scenario that involves a user interacting with your product or service. 

Assign specific roles to the team members, like the user or customer service representative, and have them act out the situation. After the roleplay, discuss the insights gained and brainstorm potential solutions to better address the user’s needs.

6. Sticky-Note Voting

Sticky-note voting is an easy and effective way to gather input and prioritize ideas in a group setting. Participants jot down their thoughts or suggestions on individual sticky notes and then cast their votes for the most valuable ones. This design thinking exercise encourages everyone to engage actively and ensures that team members feel heard in the decision-making process. 

By using sticky-note voting, your team can quickly identify the most popular ideas, foster collaboration, and concentrate their efforts on the concepts that will make the biggest impact.

In Conclusion

Design Thinking equips you with essential skills that are applicable in various aspects of life and work. You’ll become a more effective problem solver, collaborator, and creative thinker, ultimately enhancing your design abilities.

With these skills, you'll be capable of crafting innovative solutions to complex challenges, taking your design practice to the next level. Once you become comfortable with the process, you can guide others and establish yourself as a design leader, even in unfamiliar territory.

By following these six steps of design thinking exercises, you and your team can create learner-centered designs that provide agile and flexible learning experiences tailored to evolving needs. Calibr.AI enhances this process by offering a personalized learning platform that adapts to each learner's unique journey. 

With its focus on data-driven insights, Calibr.AI helps identify knowledge gaps and customize content, ensuring that learners receive the support they need at the right time. This powerful tool can transform your design thinking efforts into effective, impactful learning experiences.

FAQs

1. What is design thinking in L&D?

Design thinking in L&D is all about putting learners at the heart of the process. It’s a creative approach that helps us understand their needs and challenges so we can develop training that really resonates and makes a difference.

2. How do you implement design thinking exercises in training?

To bring design thinking into training, start by setting clear goals and focusing on your audience. Use fun and interactive exercises like empathy mapping and roleplay to spark conversation and collaboration, allowing everyone to contribute their insights to refine the training experience.

3. What are the benefits of using design thinking in corporate training?

Embracing design thinking in corporate training fosters innovation and teamwork while keeping learner needs front and center. This approach helps create engaging and relevant training programs that not only boost employee satisfaction but also enhance performance across the board.