Design Thinking Action Plan

This assignment details a comprehensive action plan for acquiring and applying design thinking skills within the context of product development. It encompasses various stages, including research on design thinking methodologies, exploring real-world case studies, gaining practical experience through a project in a startup environment, and ultimately developing a business plan for a personal venture based on design thinking principles.

Reflective report on Design Thinking
Blog
For presenting the reflective writing, a blog was created explaining the purpose of
reflective writing. This blog has four pages including the home page giving the brief of
different sections divided into different pages that include learning, self-analysis,
reflection, evaluation, personal development and action plan for improvement. The home
page content is presented below:
Learning: This section would include the brief of what I have learnt in the class on
design thinking and entrepreneurship. It would not include the module details but the
brief on lessons learned from my curriculum. The topics explored here try to explain the
connection between entrepreneurship and design thinking. It would also include the
models that could be used by start-up organizations for bringing innovation in the
organization. This includes exploration of innovation cycle, business models,
frameworks, tools, etc. And topics like notion of creativity, role of creativity in
entrepreneurship and innovation, role of designing in business, use of creativity in
organizations, approaches to study creativity, organisational influences on learning
creativity, and strategies that can be used for enhancing innovation through the use of
design thinking.
Self Analysis: This section includes my own analysis of the strengths and weaknesses
considering my ability to become an entrepreneur and use design thinking for personal
development and innovation. For self-analysis, some questions would be answered
which would help me understand my goals, how I learn, and how my learning process
could help in personal development. Another tool that is used for self analysis is SWOT
in which I have explored the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats I have
with respect to use of design thinking for innovation in start-up organizations (Bulman &
Schultz, 2013).
Reflection: In this section, first the key outcomes of learning from the course on design
thinking and entrepreneurship that include development of the skills required for
developing a new business concept, learn skills and techniques required for critical
thinking, and assessment of self for understanding my potential to use design thinking
for innovating in an entrepreneurial setting (Chiranjeevi, 2009).
Evaluation: This section would assess the self-analysis and reflective analysis to find
out if the methodologies and techniques used in these two methods of learning and
personal development have been effective for my personal development. The underlying
models and theories that helped develop a plan for the analysis would be explored for
justification
Personal Development: This section would explore how learning in the course has
helped me in personal development. This would be based on the insights obtained in the
self-analysis and reflection. The insights would help me understand how the skills and

concepts learned can help me in developing myself to better prepare for the business
world and use design thinking for innovation (Hilliard, 2006).
Action Plan: On this page, an action plan including milestone dates for key events and
activities would be developed. The objectives of this plan would be acquisition of
knowledge, attainment of skills and behaviours required for personal development. The
action plan would be prepared for learning and enhancement in the period of 6 months.
Introduction
This reflection report is prepared to reflect upon my studies on design thinking and
entrepreneurship. First, a self-analysis is done on me for understanding my strengths
and weaknesses as well as performance capabilities. For this, a series of steps defined
as per the self-assessment methodology are used. The report also uses a specific
reflection methodology using which the reflective process is carried out in specific
number of steps.
Self-Analysis
Self-analysis would be conducted using a standard self-assessment methodology
involving following steps:
Defining purpose: The purpose of this analysis is to understand if I have the capability
to use design thinking for innovation and as an entrepreneur in practice.
Developing performance criteria: The criteria that would be used for assessing my
learning skills would be my understanding of the concepts, my strengths with respect to
the acquisition of skills needed and weaknesses that I need to overcome (Lucas, 2012).
The assessment would involve answering a few questions like:
What are my goals?
My goals for learning design thinking for innovation in entrepreneurship are:
 Understand how design thinking works and learn to apply the same for innovation
 Explore how design thinking could be useful for managing innovation in start-up
activities
 Explore the skills I have to understand if I am ready to use design thinking for
innovation
 Develop skills required for application of design thinking for innovation
 Understand how design thinking is used by organizations to develop new
products

 Learn the design thinking skills for product development (McGregor & Cartwright,
2011)
What resources can be used for achieving goals?
I would need the following resources for learning and gaining skills to apply design
thinking for innovation:
 Lessons taught in the class for learning the concepts
 Projects to work on application of design thinking for innovation
 Case studies and readings on use of design thinking so that I can learn how
these are being practiced by companies
 Books on design thinking and on cases of companies using design thinking for
new product development
 Video lectures teaching design thinking accessible online
 Practice assignments for product development using design thinking approaches
(Schön, 1983)
How can I show my progress?
I can apply my design thinking to develop prototype of products which would reflect upon
my progress in learning design thinking. I can also use the process for resolving existing
business issues that I read about and if I can resolve any case then it will show that I
have a good progress in terms of learning design thinking and gaining creative skills
required for innovation. I would use the blog that I am creating to publish the design
ideas that I would come up with as another mark of progress in the field.
How can my learning from curriculum would help?
The lessons I learned in my curriculum helped me to understand the fundamentals of
design thinking such as creativity, problem solving, applied thinking, design thinking
principles, business challenges such as growth, predictability, maintaining relevance,
competition, standardization, creative culture, strategy and organization and design
thinking approaches such as storytelling, , strategic foresight, sense making, maintaining
relevance, value redefinition, experience design, humanization, rapid prototyping, and
business model design.
What are my weaknesses?
I found myself weak in developing skills to empathise with users for understanding them
and developing a real product or service prototype based on identification of solutions.
What are my strengths?
I discovered that I am good in defining problems, brainstorming for solutions and
evaluating the innovation for its effectiveness which I can use for learning and using

design thinking. Besides these, I have certain skills that can be productive for developing
me for entrepreneurship such as:
 I am capable of gong through ups and downs in life and still
have strength to cope without losing patience or hope.
 Once have a goal set in my mind, I can be very focused on
what I want to achieve. For my current growth path, I am very
particular that I want to learn about product development and
use design thinking to come up with new product ideas.
 I am good with people and can understand them well which
can be useful while I learn to practice empathy for
understanding consumers
 I also good with defining problems that I am facing clearly
which would again be very useful in exploring the challenges
that I can come up with the solutions for by applying design
thinking (Verplanken, 2003)
What are the opportunities to learn and use these strengths for personal
development?
I can use the concepts and principles learned about the design thinking in the real
scenarios for the development of innovation when I join a start-up company or start my
own. For better learning and practice, I can join a start-up firm as it has more openness
to innovate and thus, I would be able to use design thinking to practice it for bringing
innovation in the company. This way, I will not just get the practice but would also get
opportunities to learn how these companies make use creativity for bringing innovation
in their products and services.
What are the threats that I am likely to face in the process of development?
Threats I can face that would hinder my personal development with respect to the
development of the capacity to innovate using design thinking include:
 If I do not get an opportunity to work for a company that is innovative but a
company that uses traditional methods for development and are not open to
using creativity, my learning would be hindered and thus, I would lose my
capability to use creativity and bring innovation
 Another threat that I may face is my incapability to learn to use creative
techniques of design thinking for bringing innovation
Determine performance attributes: I explored the subject and my own learning to
identify the current weaknesses and strengths that I have with respect to development of
the design thinking capability. I explored myself around my capabilities to give the best in

every stage of the design thinking process including empathy, problem definition,
brainstorming for ideas, prototype development and innovation evaluation.
Determine and collect criteria evidences: I need to learn and develop my skills of
understanding the stakeholder needs and developing prototypes of products or services
involving design thinking. Based on the understanding of self and the lessons learned,
this self-assessment report was prepared (U.S. Department of Education, 2014).
Reflection
To be able to reflect upon my learning about design thinking for innovation and
entrepreneurship, a reflection methodology can be used which identified steps that goes
into a reflection. The steps include recognition of a need, exploration of past experience,
documenting of the lessons learned, organization of lessons into specific themes,
identification of key lessons and their generalization, determination of any need for other
processes and evaluation of the quality of reflection.
Need: The need of this reflection is to explore if I have sufficiently understood the
concepts of design thinking to be able to contribute in a real scenario of design
development or do I need to gain some more knowledge and experience
Experience: Design thinking has become popular in organizations that try to use it for
innovate products, services, and processes. In practice, what I have observed is that
designing thinking is more than actual thinking to politics of involvement caused by
influences and more than the question on how design thinking helped innovate
companies, I could see design managers talking more about things like who owns
design, how much of design thinking to do and who has to be sold the design to.
Lessons Learned: Design thinking is a term with controversies as I could see a variety
of different views of the creative process of design thinking. I identified some common
themes in all the explorations of design thinking such as:
 Not necessarily for creative’s: The design thinking can be used even by those
who are not originally creative in their endeavours for innovation in business.
 Stakeholder perspectives consideration: Another theme suggested that
design thinking needs one to explore ideas considering the perspectives of the
final users or stakeholders in case of development of a product or a service such
that the probability of failure is reduced.
 Problem Solving: Design thinking is a problem solving approach that is human
centred such that user problems are explored.
 Explore possibilities: It is about exploring possibilities such that they are
presented to the stakeholders to identify what would work best. It is an iterative
process which keeps on improving the prototype after suggested improvements
after testing.
As I understood that design thinking goes through a series of steps including empathy
for customers, definition of problems, exploration of ideas, prototype development, and
evaluation of innovation through feedback, I discovered that empathy was the most

important step and also a difficult one. It needs gathering of a lot of information and
development of confidence in own capabilities to be able to understand the needs of
customers.
Design thinking in layman terms needs asking of certain questions to move from the
stage of confusion about innovation or idea generation to the actual prototyping. These
include asking what we are studying, explore what if possibilities, identifying what would
work based on which a prototype can be made and tested for its capability to solve the
problems identified.
Design thinking can help find new solutions to traditional problems using the insights
obtained from the data analysis which is the first point of development. The power of
data analysis is used for understanding what
Power of data can help understand the end users or consumers for those a product or
service is being developed. With design thinking, newer challenges of the modern
business world can be solved. During my learning, I came across some of the
companies that used design thinking to solve their problems such as AirBnB. AirBnB
was facing major issues at the start-up stage as it was not able to make enough sales
and the founders were facing some financial crunches. When they used design thinking,
they collected data from the people who were travelling and were looking for lease
placed. The company discovered that the pictures posted on the website were taken by
the house owners who were not skilled in photography skills and thus, the photographs
did not appear very attractive when they were used for advertisements. However, after
this discovery, the company sent its own people to take some good photographs of
some homes that were used in the advertisements which got the company huge number
of visitors and the business that had slowed down got the momentum with this
innovative approach (Mootee, 2013).
P&G is another organization that I followed to explore how they used design thinking for
innovation. I found that P&G was known for using design thinking to solve its business
problems. The company had taken an initiative to promote design thinking among those
who were not the designers (Chiranjeevi, 2009). An example of the use of design
thinking by P&G team for product innovation was the makeover of its herbal essences
range. For gathering empathetic data to understand consumers of herbal products, the
company asked consumers to shop for the items that they considered herbal and they
were presented with the below the ground product ranges such as health food and
herbal tea. A new equity of P&G herbal range was created considering the colour, logo,
and shape based on the how these characteristics are perceived by consumers (Cohan,
2010).
I also learned how design thinking is perceived and practiced in corporate through
exploration of the views of the popular design experts from the University. Major findings
from this exploration were:
 Design thinking utilizes abductive logic to invent a future through intuitive thinking
which is more creative than analytical deductive or inductive reasoning

 Observation is one of the best tools of design thinkers that can help an observer
understand consumers more deeply and holistically.
 Imagination can be another great tool of innovators as they can see people
looking at or using products to understand how innovation would fit a real
scenario (Green, 2009)
Evaluation
To see if the reflection and self-analysis have been effective, they have to be evaluated
to determine if the processes have been effective (Smith, 2011). The self-analysis was
done using some questions that explored the process of learning and my own skills.
With this approach of self-assessment, I was able to discover my strengths and
weaknesses with respect to my capability to learn and apply design thinking and act as
an entrepreneur in a real scenario.
With my weaknesses known, I can create a learning path for myself so that I can learn
and develop myself professionally to become a better business person or a better
performer in the field of innovation. The assessment also helped me understand where
my strengths are in terms of design thinking which would be useful for me to learn
design thinking concepts fast. I now know that I do not need to learn everything from
scratch but I already have some skills needed for my development of design thinking
which I can use during application of thinking but I do have the need to learn and
practice more of empathy so that I can better understand the users through the
exploration. Reflection helped me identify design thinking methods like observation and
imagination that are essential to become creative so as to bring innovation. I am not a
person who has creative skills like imagination. I have never tried observation for
understanding consumers but now after knowing the importance of observation, I can
use it as a practice while observing the world which would help me do innovation in the
product development and other business processes that I am keen to work on (NHS,
2012).
Conclusion
In this reflective report, I explored my learning in the field of design thinking in innovation
and entrepreneurship which helped me identify what I have learnt over the course and
what skills I have or have gained through the curriculum that can help me shape my
career. It also helped me identify my strengths that I would use for my personal
development and my weaknesses that I plan to improve upon for my personal
development. For this, I have developed an improvement plan for 6 months which is
presented below in four parts that include identification of my strengths, priorities,
development needs and action steps. This plan is created assuming that it would begin
from the next week of this month on 11th Oct 2017.

Key Strengths Resilience, perseverance, goal setting, determination, and people skills
of understanding and building relationships
My Priorities I want to learn design thinking for product development and thus, I
would explore it for product development cases and would take up a job
in the same profile after having learnt about the same
Development Needs
Reason
Goal
Benefits
Obstacles
Overcoming obstacles
Resources needed
Availability of resources
Observation Skills Empathy to consumers Prototyping
It is the first step of
design thinking
It would help
understand needs
For developing
products
Learn design thinking Learn to empathise
with users to
understand their needs
Product prototype
development
Better design thinker Better understanding of
consumers
Application of design
thinking for actual
product development
Lack of time Lack of skills needed Lack of knowledge
Create a timetable Learn from experts Read and study more
Self-exploration Reading and lectures Reading & practice
I can do it myself Available in college and
on internet
Books are available
Software available for
application
Action Steps Approach Milestone Dates
1. Learn more about design thinking Exposure
Education
Experience
20th Oct 2017
2. Explore cases where design thinking has been
used for product development
Education 15th Nov 2017
3. Take up a project in product development
department in a start-up organization
Exposure
Experience
1st Dec 2017
4. Apply design principles for solving problems
and overcoming challenges at work
Exposure 31st Dec 2017
5. exploring challenges and opportunities for
learning and practicing design thinking and
coming up with ideas
Exposure
Education
15th Jan 2018
6. Discussing ideas with seniors and coming up
with plans for product development or
improvements
Exposure
Experience
20th Jan 2018
7. identify products I am interested to develop Education 1st Feb 2018
8. Create a prototype of the product Exposure
Experience
22nd Mar 2018
8. test the prototype I will have developed for my
own products
Experience
Exposure
1st Apr 2018
9. Develop a business plan for my own venture Education
Exposure
20th Apr 2018
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