Better Meetings with Design Thinking
Design thinking is more than a product development tool—it’s a proven method for improving communication, problem-solving, and teamwork. Used by global leaders like Apple, Google, and Airbnb, and central to Rocketfuel’s own process, this 5-step human-centric approach can turn any meeting into a productive, creative session.
Broken down into five strategic and practical processes, design thinking’s human-centric approach can benefit a wide range of industries and contexts, starting with how it facilitates good communication and constructive teamwork.
Design thinking has become a popular crossover business tool in the last few years encouraging innovative and disruptive solutions, and has been credited for the success of many global companies, including Apple, Google and Airbnb.
The system is being taught at leading universities around the world and increasingly employed as an out-of-the-box mindset in business. Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design defined design thinking as a 5-step process: Empathise, Design, Ideate, Prototype, Test. We break down how this structure can be interpreted to positively impact your meetings.
1. Start with empathy
Most meetings take a turn for the worse when people stop listening to each other and competition replaces collaboration. It’s essential to start every meeting by making it clear that the goal is to first seek to understand one another, and then move on to solving the problem.
Put it into practice: Throughout the first half of the meeting, give every person the chance to provide input while the others listen actively, making notes rather than interrupting, and then the focus can shift to generating solutions.
2. Curate your environment
Is your meeting room dark and cold, or bright and inviting? Does it have fresh air? Are refreshments and snacks easily available for meetings lasting over half an hour? Studies have shown multiple benefits from curating the environment in which meetings take place. Design thinking involves considering people first before generating a solution.
Put it into practice: Think about the people who spend the most time in the meeting room and create an environment that makes them feel comfortable, helps them focus and encourages productivity. Even a small change like ensuring chairs that are supportive and comfortable can have a long-term impact on the success of your meetings.
3. Define your purpose
Before generating solutions, it’s important to consolidate what needs to be solved, which decisions need to be made as well as the potential challenges and pain points.
Put it into practice: Begin with the end in mind and have someone lead the discussion, focus the team and manage the time, so that each person gets a chance to speak and raise all possible considerations.
4. Ideate with sticky notes
At Rocketfuel, we record all our ideas on sticky notes so that each person gets their say and we can capture everyone’s genius. We put them up on the wall, categorise ideas and discuss. It helps us get everyone’s input, understand the team’s preferences, and direct how to proceed.
Put it into practice: Get everybody to record all of their ideas on stickies and stick them up, categorised if required, so that everyone can see them. If there is any contention, a voting process can take place once all the ideas are up with team members marking the stickies to cast their votes. The meeting lead can then arrange the sticky notes in a pyramid with the popular ideas at the top.
5. Conceptualise and visualise
With the focus provided by the ideation and voting process, the top ideas need to be fleshed out further and imagined in different forms. Here at Rocketfuel HQ, we frequently use the Crazy 8’s exercise – a design sprint performed in eight minutes.
Put it into practice: Everyone gets given an idea to explore further on a sheet of A3 paper that’s been divided into 8 blocks. The goal is to unpack and sketch eight ideas in eight minutes. In each block, the team member can illustrate an iteration of their assigned idea, with words, pictures or a combination of the two. Afterwards, each person gets a minute to present their concepts and the team then discusses how to proceed.
Want to bring the power of design thinking to your product development or team workshops?
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