LSP and Design Thinking

May 19, 2020

Business Applications

Heidi Brant and Lee Kim

Participants from various countries were introduced and given instructions for this special Coffee Chat format. Different groups shared their discussions on design thinking and the use of Lego Serious Play as a tool for empathy and communication. The importance of collaboration, community building, and sharing experiences was emphasized, and upcoming events and challenges were announced. Dan and Heidi share about their group's discussion on design thinking. Lee shares about his group's discussion on embracing the unknown in problem solving. Participants presented about how their group discussed design thinking as a complex process that allows for different perspectives and paths, with empathy being a key element, and the use of prototypes to test solutions before implementation, discuss the importance of empathy in design thinking and how LSP can be used as a tool to surface empathy. They also share an example of using LSP in a pediatric palliative care unit to understand what safety means to different stakeholders and promote listening and understanding between them, discuss the Reimagined End of Life Project, which aimed to encourage communities to reimagine the end of life experience and challenged designers to come up with new approaches. They ran an LSP workshop to prototype new ideas, resulting in a project called Yorn where people could leave notes for others to fulfill their bucket list after they pass. Lee summarizes the different interpretations of the prompt and the questions raised about using Design Thinking and LSP in future projects.