Our methods

Our methods combine the best of analytical and creative thinking. We apply design thinking techniques to service design initiatives, as well as to traditional organisational problems, such as strategy development and organisational design. We inject user-centred design thinking methods into everything we do to find solutions that are always focused on an improved future.

We work from a deep understanding of the current state, but quickly drive towards the creation of the desired future state, approaching this holistically. We build up and iterate concepts collaboratively. We visualise these early and fast so they can be examined, evaluated and developed into initiatives that provide extraordinary user experiences and organisational success.

By embracing divergent ideas early, we are able to move through options quickly, examine potential pit falls, and identify risk management issues. To do this we use low-cost prototypes that are highly effective while being cost-effective.

Our methods for strategy design, service design, organisation design and innovation have five activity types in common—framing, exploring, innovating, evaluating and defining.

Framing

This is about clarifying the problem and the intent of what we want to achieve. It involves surfacing assumptions and constraints, conversations and idea structuring to arrive at precise intent statements so all stakeholders and participants have a shared understanding of what the initiative is meant to achieve. We use information design to produce visual and succinct representations of the problem at hand.

Exploring

This is about understanding the context and the current state. It includes gathering and making sense of intelligence from multiple sources, gathering people’s insights through immersive research, modelling these insights into usable descriptive frameworks and mapping the current landscape.

Innovating

This is about creating possibilities and options. It includes generating models and criteria for possible futures, whether at a strategy, service or organisational capability level. It involves concepts for the interventions required to achieve the desired future state.

Evaluating

This is about defining evaluation criteria based on the potential for success. We search for the ideas that are likely to achieve the desired user experience, and we develop and shape those ideas so that they are viable (business) and possible (technical).

Defining

This is about proposing the way forward. This final phase commits to action by identifying what has to be done, who has to do it and when it has to be done by.