I work for a multinational company in IT sector which is primarily focussed on offshore

development and also has a strategic services arm to enable customers to expand their

business globally. I am a part of the latter group therefore, my day to day activities

consist of producing market intelligence reports comprising of geography assessment,

competitor benchmarking, preparing GTM strategy and taking partial ownership of

execution too whenever needed.

I would like to take this case of a project where I used a design thinking approach

(ofcourse I was not aware of this concept back then).

Challenge:

Our client wanted to enter into financial sector in market X for which they had developed

certain hypothesis. They wanted our help to validate the hypothesis.

The practice in our firm for such projects had always been relying on data gathered

through research. However, the challenges in this project were the novelty of the solution

and to define whether the problem which we had sought to solve through it actually did

exist amongst the users or not. There was no precedent to base our assumptions on.

Approach:

We knew that we had to take a very different approach to data collection. We had to use

a primary research technique which would enable us to understand the problem from a

human centered perspective. The useful insights which we were looking for could only

be achieved if we assimilated ourselves into the users journey by understanding their

problems. It had to be a mix of observation, questioning which resulted into useful

insights.

Application:

The design thinking tool that we adopted was mind- mapping which resulted into

personas. We had to first divide the customers into end-users and service providers who

would use it to provide service to then end-users. We interviewed the end-users and

asked the service providers who handle the system to provide inputs as what kind of

features they would like to see in the system.

Insight:

The insights that we acquired were quite remarkable which we could not have gotten

had we chosen to rely on insufficient secondary data or, age-old research techniques such

as questionnaires only. We were able to understand that each persona had a different

need for the same solution which made us devise features accordingly and create

targeted marketing campaigns.


I work for a multinational company in IT sector which is primarily focussed on offshore development and also has a strategic services arm to enable customers to expand their business globally . I am a part of the latter group therefore , my day to day activities consist of producing market intelligence reports comprising of geography assessment , competitor benchmarking , preparing GTM strategy and taking partial ownership of execution too whenever needed . I would like to take this case of a project where I used a design thinking approach ( ofcourse I was not aware of this concept back then ) . Challenge : Our client wanted to enter into financial sector in market X for which they had developed certain hypothesis . They wanted our help to validate the hypothesis . The practice in our firm for such projects had always been relying on data gathered through research . However , the challenges in this project were the novelty of the solution and to define whether the problem which we had sought to solve through it actually did exist amongst the users or not . There was no precedent to base our assumptions on . Approach : We knew that we had to take a very different approach to data collection . We had to use a primary research technique which would enable us to understand the problem from a human centered perspective . The useful insights which we were looking for could only be achieved if we assimilated ourselves into the users journey by understanding their problems . It had to be a mix of observation , questioning which resulted into useful insights . Application : The design thinking tool that we adopted was mind- mapping which resulted into personas . We had to first divide the customers into end - users and service providers who would use it to provide service to then end - users . We interviewed the end - users and asked the service providers who handle the system to provide inputs as what kind of features they would like to see in the system . Insight : The insights that we acquired were quite remarkable which we could not have gotten had we chosen to rely on insufficient secondary data or , age - old research techniques such as questionnaires only . We were able to understand that each persona had a different need for the same solution which made us devise features accordingly and create targeted marketing campaigns .