One evening in late March, we had the pleasure of hosted our She# event at the Air New Zealand head office where we were introduced to Design Thinking.

The event was facilitated by representation from the Digital UX department, Product Owners, as well as current interns at Air New Zealand.
We were introduced to Design Thinking as “A problem solving approach, particularly applicable to fuzzy or wicked problems – making it well suited to design human experiences”.

This was shortly followed by the instruction that – Design Thinking is experiential. To learn it, you have to do it……..so, we did!

This design sprint workshop was a great introductory session for both students and professionals with no first time experience. It was highly creative and encouraging us all to think outside of the box and push through our inhibitions or preconceived ideas. It was also very interactive and encourage consultant discussion and evaluation with a partner (ie, the stranger sitting next to you!)
The key takeaway was looking at ways you could use Design Thinking in your everyday life.
The material provide by Stanford is open source and a great way to introduce the concept of design thinking to groups or teams that are looking to solve a problem – i’d highly recommend giving it a go!

Start with design — Stanford d.school