My Role: Lead UX Designer and Design Thinking Coach
Client: Boeing Directors and Managers in Workplace Solutions
Users: Boeing Employees in Workplace Solutions
Client’s Goals: Improve morale, efficiency, and resource optimization while fostering a culture of innovation and user-centricity through design thinking.
Challenges: Tight timeline, lack of prior design thinking knowledge among managers.
Key Takeaways: Leadership buy-in, involving employees in solutioning and usability testing led to transformative outcomes.
Conducted employee interviews to understand their needs, wants, complaints, and pain points, informing problem definition for innovative solutions.
Hosted practical workshops with managers to debrief research findings, define problems, and introduce design thinking methodologies.
Utilized mapping, dot voting, and business needs to prioritize solutions, forming small teams to work on implementation.
Collaborated with managers in small groups to create prototypes for testing potential solutions.
Validated assumptions and refined solutions by testing prototypes with employee users, teaching managers about usability testing.
Implemented solutions, working closely with development teams to gather feedback and establish metrics for continuous improvement.
Deploying the solutions, and celebrating a job well done!
Established feedback processes to monitor and enhance the user experience continuously.
The absence of design thinking implementation among Boeing managers and employees in their product development processes, is hindering the exploration of innovative solutions and preventing the realization of its benefits.
Promotion: After discussing design thinking’s value with the Portfolio Director, I was promoted to Lead UX Designer.
Employee Listening Sessions: We organized roundtable discussions to understand employee sentiments and concerns, shaping our decision-making process.
After research, we organized a four-day design thinking workshop for the Workplace Solutions leadership team. Using insights from employee listening sessions, I guided them through applying design thinking in their work, fostering understanding and empowerment.
Pre-Workshop Assessment: Before the workshop, I shared findings from Employee Listening Sessions, analyzed using thematic analysis:
Workshop Introduction: On the first day, I introduced design thinking fundamentals, including the double diamond process and user-centricity, using data from employee listening sessions.
Empathy Exercise: We conducted an interactive empathy mapping exercise on a virtual whiteboard, combining data insights with participants’ understanding of their managed employees, fostering deeper empathy and emphasizing the user perspective.
Empathy Map and Pain Points: We refined the empathy map and identified user pain points and workarounds. We generated ideas collectively and fostered empathy.
How Might We (HMW) Questions: We formulated HMW questions to express user problems, honing problem-solving skills and fostering collaboration for innovative solutions.
These structured activities promoted creative thinking, collaboration, and effective idea selection, leading to a pool of innovative solutions for further exploration.
Solution Development: Small groups worked on solutions guided by design thinking principles, led by the UX guide.
Collaboration Cadence: Established regular small team meetings to maintain progress and iterate on ideas during the prototyping stage, refining based on user feedback and insights.
Post-Workshop Meeting: After the workshop, I led an initial meeting to focus on the problem we aimed to solve.
Solution Visualization: We broke down and visualized solutions using user flows and storyboards, clarifying our design direction and how it would work in practice.
Solution Prioritization: We assessed various solutions for feasibility and impact. One top priority was a website for submitting “Stop Award” entries, enabling employees to share positive impacts on the portfolio.
Design Development: As both UI designer and UX guide, I led the creation of wireframes and a high-fidelity clickable prototype, iterating based on feedback to finalize the design for presentation to end users.
Solution Prototyping: Some solutions involved process changes, others digital solutions.
Usability Testing Presentation: I educated Workspace Solutions managers on the importance of usability testing in solution development, emphasizing meaningful measurement, unbiased user data, and avoiding bias interference.
User Selection and Data Security: We strategized user selection and collaborated with the Global Privacy Office to ensure data security and Boeing policy compliance.
Usability Testing Sessions: We asked dialog-provoking questions to challenge assumptions, gather honest feedback, and improve designs for better user alignment. Emphasized asking “why” to uncover deeper insights, fostering open dialogue and refining solutions based on user needs and feedback.
Collaboration: Worked closely with a developer using Storybook for UI component documentation, ensuring design and development alignment and maintaining consistency.
Custom UI Components: Introduced tailored UI components alongside existing guidelines, leveraging the Boeing Material Design System for a user-centered and cohesive interface.
Process Changes: Involved level employees in the hiring process.
Announcements: During an all-hands meeting, we introduced the “Stop Awards” website and the new employee involvement process in hiring.
Website Overview: I briefly explained the website’s functionality, emphasizing features that recognize positive employee contributions.
Inclusive Hiring: We communicated the new process, promoting collaboration and inclusivity.
Meeting Impact: These updates fostered transparency, encouraged participation, and united the organization.
Continuous Feedback: After the launch, we actively collected feedback from end users through quarterly employee listening sessions, embedded survey links in our solutions, and monitored responses.
Continuous Improvement: These mechanisms allowed continuous product enhancement and iteration based on user expectations.