Reworked TV
In Brief
- The Multiple Benefits of Design Thinking: Andrew Lindsay emphasizes design thinking's flexibility and value in solving various business problems. He argues that recent criticisms often present design thinking in a one-dimensional manner, missing its multifaceted applications and benefits.
- Iterative Process and Data-Driven Decisions: The iterative nature of design thinking involves continuous testing, feedback, and refinement. The process is driven by data and insights rather than opinions, leading to more informed and effective solutions.
- Strategic Problem Solving: Andrew presents design thinking as a thorough and strategic framework that helps organizations navigate complex problems and integrate new technologies, such as AI, into their operations and products.
Reworked editor in chief Siobhan Fagan welcomes Andrew Lindsay, global head of enterprise design at Kraft Heinz, to Three Dots. Andrew has been working in design roles in the enterprise for over 15 years now and strongly believes in the rigor, the methodology and the results the design thinking process brings to internal and external technology efforts.
They discuss where he thinks the criticism came from, how design thinking works and why design thinking marks a move away from engineering-centric solutions to end user-centric solutions. Tune in for more.
Table of Contents
- In Defense of Design Thinking
- The People Who Make Up a Design Thinking Team
- How the Design Thinking Process Works
- When Is the Design Thinking Process Done?
- Why We Need Design Thinking Now More Than Ever
Siobhan Fagan: Welcome to today's episode of Three Dots, Reworked's TV show. Today I am excited to welcome Andrew Lindsay. Andrew is the global head of enterprise design at Kraft Heinz, and he's got a bone to pick with certain articles that came out in the last few years. Andrew, welcome.
Andrew Lindsay: Thank you very much, very great to be here.
In Defense of Design Thinking
Siobhan: So I set that up, it was a little provocative, but when you and I talked earlier, you said that you really wanted to come out strong in defense of design thinking. There have been a number of different articles that came out. One from the Business Review, a big one from MIT Tech Review, basically saying design thinking is bogus. You said you wanted to set the record straight, so we're using today for you to do that. Can you start by maybe sharing your definition of design thinking?
Andrew: Sure, I appreciate the opportunity. I'm a lifelong designer of many different stripes, and I have been part of the corporate world, applying design and design thinking, for 15 or so years. I've seen it go through a number of different phases and different understandings at various levels, from corporate sponsors down to the functional teams who are tasked with bringing it to life. One of the reasons I've become frustrated with the general discourse around it is because it's not one thing. In the articles you mentioned, it's usually presented in a very one-dimensional manner. Practitioners have commoditized it a little bit, but in actuality, it can shape and form in a variety of ways to solve a vast range of problems and issues that a business or client faces. So, making blanket statements that it's no longer valuable or doesn't have a place in the corporate world anymore is defeatist and short-sighted.
Siobhan: Yeah, I admit that when you raised this topic, I skimmed the MIT Tech Review article when it came out. But then I went back and read it. It seemed like a very specific application of design thinking they were critiquing. It was about consultants, specifically IDEO, swooping in, going through this design thinking practice — Post-it notes came up many times throughout the article — and then the same team swooping out without actually implementing solutions. In your role, you're obviously inside an organization applying this. Can you talk a bit about the differences between an in-house team applying design thinking versus a consultancy swooping in and saving the day?
Andrew: A hundred percent, yes. I want to make sure we're respectfully acknowledging the amazing work and publications from MIT and Business Insider. This is not about starting a war, but more about collective thought sharing.
There is a significant difference in how an outside company engages with a larger enterprise in a short-term project versus an in-house team responsible for bringing those solutions to fruition. Good, well-seasoned firms like IDEO will start by identifying problems, working through ideation phases, and applying those solutions within the business so that they finish with a clearly defined set of requirements and roadmaps.
What has tarnished the concept of design thinking a little is that it's not just design thinking where we see this shortcoming. In many consultant-based engagements, consultants come in, say what needs to be done to improve, and then internal teams are left figuring out how to bring it to life. A true partnership goes from beginning to execution and deployment. In-house teams have skin in the game throughout every stage of the lifecycle, ensuring continuous progression. The swooping in and solving, then ducking out, is problematic beyond just the design thinking scope.
The People Who Make Up a Design Thinking Team
Siobhan: To ground this a little, in your years of practice — you've been doing this for 15 years within organizations — what sort of team do you have around you when executing these projects?
Andrew: We have what I like to refer to as the trifecta: engineering, product and design are our key partners. We also have business stakeholders or consumers involved, depending on the business and problems we're solving. From a design standpoint, that's big D design, involving researchers, design strategists, user experience designers, customer experience designers, service designers, and more. The design field has many disciplines, and as we build out teams and practices, we ensure it's fully represented to bring holistic, thoroughly considered end-to-end solutions.
Having engineering involved is critical to ensure these solutions can be built and deployed at scale. Product teams make sure we create within the context of the broader digital ecosystem the company is developing. This trifecta measures success as we move from one end of the spectrum to the other, involving stakeholders and customers to inform each phase of the product development lifecycle, from ideation to deployment and beyond.
Siobhan: I want to clarify here because when you say "your consumer," many people might think of external customers. Currently, you're at Kraft Heinz, but previously you had other roles. Are you talking about internal employees as your consumers?
Andrew: It depends. If we're talking about an internal enterprise team building solutions for the workforce, then yes, it's the internal employees. But if we're building more consumer-focused solutions, we ensure to include external customers in the conversation.
Siobhan: If we focus on internal employees as the customers, it makes me wonder who did this role before? Did it not exist, and did they just throw out solutions for employees to deal with?
Andrew: From my experience, in the absence of a design practice, decisions were driven by engineers, product teams and business stakeholders, often the highest-paid person's opinion. Having a design team provides a nonpartisan view, leading with data and insights for more informed decisions. This moves away from making decisions based on personal opinions or hallway conversations. The purpose and benefit of research and design thinking is to identify new opportunities for business optimization, starting with a thorough understanding of the problem.
Design thinking can take many forms, from workshops to Post-it notes to whiteboard sessions. The issue is that it became generic and commoditized, making it seem like everyone could do it, which diminishes its value. A well-structured research program informed by design thinking requires specialized skill sets, just like any other professional role.
How the Design Thinking Process Works
Siobhan: I’m thinking of a previous conversation with someone at Comcast who went through a long discovery process to redo their internal platform. Can you walk us through an example from any of your roles where a design thinking process led to a final product?
Andrew: Absolutely. Just before the pandemic, I started in a new role as the head of design and asked to oversee one of our flagship programs, which revolved around a comprehensive overhaul of the customer experience.
We were working with one of the big name vendors at the time who came in and did an amazing job at everything that we're talking about here. And this is one of the reasons why I remain a firm believer in the power of what we're talking about as design thinking today.
Because we started from the very beginning, with our internal teams, aligning across the board. C-level executives, functional, mid-level product owners, and then boots on the ground, like builders and analysts and such. It was the first time we all sat together in a room to talk about the one problem collectively. And everybody was kind of like, "I don't think we need this meeting, I've got a good idea of what this whole thing is."
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When we finished that session, which was an all day session on site, almost everybody in one form or another came, came around and said, "That was amazing. We've never actually done that before. I have a better understanding of why we haven't been able to do this in the past and the reasons for our failure ..." and so on. And just having that initial point of alignment allows us to mitigate the risk that comes with even just like a one or two degree difference in collective understanding.
Because if we have that small of a divide about how we're framing up this problem in the near-term, it maybe not so much of an issue, but longer term, that two degrees is actually going to turn into a pretty significant divergence in our march towards what had previously been a collective roadmap and plan.
After that initial alignment session, we get into unpacking what do we actually need to frame out this problem as a whole in the eyes of our customers. So going and taking that same model from an internal standpoint and getting the external perspective. When we have the external perspective, who in that instance were our paying customers, that was the definitive inflection point where we were able to say, all right, it doesn't matter what we think. It doesn't matter what our partner team, who has come in to help us with these thinks. What really matters is what our customers think. And here's what they're saying: statement A, statement B, testimonial one, testimonial two — and that's the data that drives the decisions, or at least the recommendations.
When we have clearly defined data that is supporting the recommendations we bring to the table, now we're going to go in and test these concepts. It's very difficult for anyone to push back based on their opinions because in the absence of that data, everyone's going to say, "No, I don't think we should do it like that. Here's what I would like to test or here's what I think is going to work the best." So by taking that data and going back with it to our customers, testing, iterating, circling through the continuous optimization process — which again, that's all part of the design thinking model — allows us to continuously refine down into the best common solution that's gonna address the problems that in that instance, we're presenting to a fairly broad cross section of customers.
So when we get into the deployment phase after we've gone through user testing and the different iterations, we're still going through and listening and watching and seeing how that solution has actually hit the mark. And if it hasn't — which oftentimes after the first deployment, it's not going to be a 100% — we go back into that product development life cycle and continuously iterate again.
That listening, processing and aggregation of data and insights to inform the actions that we take, it's really all the design thinking process at the end of the day. And so if we're talking about design thinking as a point of frustration, maybe we say we're sick of the term design thinking, and I could fully get behind that. It's a commodity, it's a buzzword.
AI and GenAI is turning into the same thing, right? It was the first thing that people opened up meetings with. It was the last thing people mentioned when we were closing out meetings. And now it's like, "What does it actually mean? What is that actually going to do and deliver and bring to our business?" Awesome, those are the right questions to be asking. And if that's what we're talking about here in terms of the design thinking pushback, then I'm 100% aligned with that. If what we're talking about is design thinking without actual actionable next steps and recommendations. However, I think that that those two things are not faithfully representative of what design thinking actually is. I go back to again, design thinking being more of a hyper-effective business development framework, which is powered through teams that are generally situated under the design spectrum.
When Is the Design Thinking Process Done?
Siobhan: With the iterative process and continuous optimization, when do you know you're done? Is there a point where you say, "OK, we're done"?
Andrew: That's a million dollar question. And it depends on the business's needs and the goals and objectives established from the beginning. There’s a risk in continuously iterating ad infinitum. With clearly defined goals and objectives, we know what we're driving towards. Once we hit those goals and solve the problem, we need to ask "Is that the problem we wanted to solve?" If so, then we need to account for all the other problems the business is facing.
But if it's not solved, then sure, continue to iterate. But we need to make sure we're creating a robust portfolio of solutions rather than focusing indefinitely on one product. One of the things that we see is product teams get lost in the idea that, this is my product. I'm responsible for shepherding this product. And if I don't have this product anymore, then I don't have a place in this company anymore either — as opposed to saying I, as a product owner, I, as an engineer, I, as a designer am responsible for the strategic enhancements and maturation and development of this business throughout all the different layers and touch points across the spectrum. And so that might be focused on this one solution today, next year, and in successive years, it's going to be many different things.
Siobhan: One of the benefits you mentioned is taking a broader business-wide perspective, even when solving a specific problem. You're looking at it within a bigger framework of other tasks and solutions, correct?
Andrew: Absolutely. Having a role like a service designer is crucial for maintaining a clear line of sight into the broader ecosystem, whether digital or analog. This ensures a connective narrative throughout every meaningful point of engagement.
Siobhan: One final question before I hand it over to you. How do you know you're solving the right problem for the moment?
Andrew: That's a great question. The right problems to solve are informed by various data points, considering the potential value capture or impact on the business, whether it contributes to growth or efficiency. We also look at the greatest challenges the business faces currently and in the future. It’s a multi-layered set of considerations involving cross-functional teams to ensure a fully integrated ecosystem. It's not easy, and that's why design thinking is so valuable. It’s a thorough process requiring hard work and detailed analysis to reach actionable items.
We Need Design Thinking More Than Ever
Siobhan: I’m glad you raised the complexity and hard work involved, addressing the criticism that design thinking is just a checkbox exercise. Is there anything we didn’t cover that you’d like to share, or anything exciting in your current role?
Andrew: No, I think we covered great ground. The last thing I'll say is that design thinking is more important than ever. In the early 2000s, digital was primarily envisioned by engineers, leading to a very different world than today, where designers and engineers collaborate. This partnership has enhanced usability and form. Now, as we face AI and generative AI advancements, design thinking ensures we capitalize on new technologies, asking how they apply to daily life and improve experiences. This requires understanding user intentions and integrating technology seamlessly. It’s a comprehensive business and product development framework, beyond just a buzzword.
Siobhan: I love it. That's a great place to end. You’ve made a convincing argument for design thinking. Thank you for joining me today, Andrew. I look forward to chatting with you again soon.
Andrew: Cool, this has been awesome, Siobhan. Thank you so much, I really appreciate the time.
