DESIGN THINKING FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THREE TOOLS OF DESIGN THINKING

1


The tool:
Secondary research

How I used it:
I've been assigned to design my B-school's placement brochure which will be sent
to various companies to give them a glimpse of our school such as our associations,
awards, curriculum, student profiles, etc. I used the secondary research tool to
examine the brochures of other b-schools that are considered to be as above or
equal to our b-schools status. I created a list of b-schools within the specific
geographic area and about 17 or so were shortlisted. I visited each of these schools
websites to download their placement brochures. About 11 brochures could be
found as others either didnt have one or hadnt placed them on their websites. All
the brochures were carefully analyzed to find out the key elements of a placement
brochure.

What I learned:
The contents of each of the brochures were more or less the same with an
introduction about the school as in its history, bio of the founders and
messages from various key people of the school. Next was the curriculum
that was taught and the profiles of the faculty members with their
qualifications and experience.
Almost all of the brochures included a very detailed student profile section
which took almost half the total number of pages in the brochure. This
contained a short bio about each students along with graphs, etc. to give a
glimpse of the entire class as in pie charts based on gender, work experience,
specializations, etc.
Most brochure contained background graphics on each page which were
somehow related to business graduates such as a graduation, corporate
office buildings, high rises, photos of the entire class dressed in formal
attire, etc.
All the brochures included their schools photographs giving a glimpse of the
kind of infrastructure and facilities that the school has such as campus
building, libraries, student hostels, labs, recreational facilities, etc.


DESIGN THINKING FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THREE TOOLS OF DESIGN THINKING
2


The tool:
Customer co-creation

How I used it:
The brochure is aimed at HR managers of our prospective firms in order to
persuade them to visit our campus for placement drives, which makes them our
target customers. I contacted several HR managers from the schools alumni
records and placement records of previous years. HR managers were unwilling to
meet for this purpose at first but out of the dozen or so I contacted four agreed to
see me. Next I visited four HR mangers in companies from various sectors and
discussed with them what they look for in a typical b-school brochure. This enabled
me to get a glimpse of what works in case of the brochure, how different elements
affect the choices of whether or not to visit a certain campus for placements. I
spent about an hour or so with each of the manager on different days and extracted
their ideas, needs and expectations from our discussions on the same day.

What I learned:
HR managers skip the first few pages of the brochures automatically as they
always contain information about the schools history, etc. although that is
essential but it not relevant to the process. As the managers receive several
brochures they really need to be economical with their time.
Managers always look for to the point specific bullet points rather than big
text heavy paragraphs. It was also uncovered that brochures should be crisp
and important information should be included in the first pages rather than
the last ones.
Managers also liked when the brochure had details about students and their
backgrounds with photographs but if the number of students were too many
they only wanted a list with a few essential details.
Another thing that was revealed was that managers preferred soft copies of
the brochure rather than hard copies as those were easier to maintain and
tougher to misplace.



DESIGN THINKING FOR BUSINESS INNOVATION

PRACTICAL APPLICATION OF THREE TOOLS OF DESIGN THINKING
3


The tool:
Brainstorming

How I used it:
I got together all the people whose opinion and suggestions could have been used
to improve the brochure and engaged them in an hour long discussion session. The
participants included fellow classmates, faculty members, photography personnel
and also a couple of people with design experience (Corel, Photoshop, etc.). The
brainstorming session had the objective of including all the significant suggestions
and ideas in the making of the brochure. The group was kept diverse so as get all
the relevant suggestions and identify and avoid possible pitfalls as well. Along with
the insights from the HR managers and the elements identified from the various
brochures the brainstorming session proved to be a success and helped form a
strong outline of the brochure.

What I learned:
Using only a few pages for the initial elements of the brochures as the HR
managers were bound to skip, the group decided to keep the history, etc. of
the school to just a couple of pages.
Students suggested as the batch size was only 44 it was appropriate to
include students profiles with a short bio, career objective, a personal motto
and a photograph of each students. The design people suggested we do four
students on one page, making it 11 pages of student profiles.
Photographs showed existing photos that they had and the design people
selected the most appropriate ones. One background for each page was
decided to be kept the same and a couple of photos on each page relevant for
the pages content.
Faculty members also suggested to include the ongoing research activates at
the school which was not included by any of the other schools in their
brochures. This would the brochure an advantage over others and create a
doubt in an HR managers mind that if the other schools are not including
their research activities then they might not undertake any at all.