Design Thinking for Innovation – Assignment

Challenge:    I am a final year MBA student with Human Resource Management as the  specialization. The course: “Design Thinking for Innovation”, intrigued me if I  could apply Design principles for HR programs to make them more impactful  simply because both of them are ‘human-centric’. But HR is a vast field and  there are different modules of varying complexity and nature. Thus, I picked  up Learning and Development and tried to apply design principles. Specially.  in the IT sector, a lot of budgets are allocated for L&D because it is a  capability-building program that impacts the bottom line of the organization.  Nevertheless, these programs are ineffective because the organizations follow  a ‘One-size fits all’ model. The workplace is diverse with different age groups  such as baby boomers, Gen X, and Millennials who have different styles of  learning. The Millennials would prefer flexible online learning modules. Baby  boomers could prefer the traditional approach. But I did not want my  preconceived notions to affect my study.    Selection:    I was fortunate to do an L&D Internship in a start-up two weeks ago. And I  was assigned the responsibility of designing a particular training module in  limited time. So, I thought of using the design tool, Storytelling as the  launchpad for the take-off of the training. If you were to ask me, why I chose  this particular training module, then the answer is that storytelling is simple  yet highly effective. Stories are captivating and compatible with different types  of learners. The visual learners imagine the story and picture it in their head  while the audio-learners would enjoy the story-telling itself. Also, all of us are  accustomed to stories from childhood and it’s also all around us. Also, a  complicated topic can be easily explained through a story, and let me tell you  how it worked.    Application:    My training topic was ‘Cybersecurity’ and my audience did not belong to the  technical domain. Hence, I had to save all my technical terminologies from  overwhelming my audience. So, I started narrating a case study as a story to  make them more comfortable with the topic. And when I had finished, most  of the audience had a fair idea about the basics of the topic. Slowly, I  introduced the technical terms related to it and completed my training session  successfully.

Insights:    Even though I have used the design tool, storytelling, in particular, the  fundamental principle was to empathize with the learner to understand their  strengths and limitations. After a week, the impact of the training sessions  was evaluated to measure retention and most of the learners were able to  recall the story. So, I learned for a fact that stories are made to stick when  conveyed properly.    Approach:    Using storytelling in the design of training programs has definitely been useful  for the learner in my case. But I did realize that a variety of design principles  and tools such as visualization, mind mapping, and learning launch can be  used in combination in the design and development of innovative L&D  programs, not just in IT but in other sectors and academia as well.

