Design Thinking and Creativity for

Innovation
21UCT101

Design Thinking and Creativity for Innovation DISCOVER . LEARN . EMPOWER

 Empathize

CO Title Level
Number

CO1 To extend the basics of design thinking and creativity for Understand 
innovation.

CO2 To relate the concept of design thinking in job & business Apply
scenario.  
CO3 To devise methods to solve business problems with the help Analyze
of design thinking.
CO4 To appraise design thinking process for disruptive innovation. Evaluate

CO5 To prepare design thinking plans for products, services and Create
business model genre.

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Learning Q/A patterns
• Asking WHW
By asking the three questions — What? How? Why? — we can move from concrete
observations that are free from assumptions to more abstract motivations driving
the actions we have observed. During our observations, for instance, we might find
separately recording the “Whats”, “Hows” and “Whys” of a person’s single
observation helpful.
In “What”, we record the details (not assumptions) of what has happened. In
“How”, we analyze how the person is doing what he/she is doing (is he/she exerting
a lot of effort? Is that individual smiling or frowning?). Finally, in “Why”, we make
educated guesses regarding the person’s motivations and emotions. These
motivations we can then test with users.

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Role Play
• Depending on the expected nature of the exchange or intended data to be
gathered, a few participants are given the script in advance and a few are asked
to either play themselves or specific roles based on instructions. The different
scripts that the participants play out can be designed, as different scenarios
where the participants are immersed in those scenarios to understand how each
one would react in specific situations. 
• After each role-play exercise, the participants including the researchers reflect on
the interaction and play out the other scenarios or re-play the same scenario with
changes to gauge whether changes can alter the experiences of the participants.
A variation of this exercise involves re-playing the same scenario with different
participants or, changing the character profiles of the participants to understand
how different users would act in the same situation.

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Role Play and Scenarios
• A role-play as such is not so easy to design but when trying to create a product or
service, can prove to be a helpful method in figuring out user requirements,
expectations, competencies, acceptance as well as instill a feeling of ownership
within the users. The users can also feel more involved in the design process
making this a user-centered approach.
• A scenario can either be split up in smaller manageable scenarios or played out as
one longer scenario but role-play can be exhausting and usually stay restricted to
an hour in duration. For a longer duration, the participants as well as the
observers must change so limit biases from creeping into the research data. Some
scenarios can be played out with props or prototypes to make them more real for
the participants. In some cases, the participants can role-play a hypothetical
service experience assuming that the service really exists and then building a
potential journey through some of its functionalities.
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Advantages of Role-play
1. Thought diversity and richer insights
One can get a large number of diverse ideas from different participants. Additionally, role-play is a
far superior method to generate design ideas as it lets the participants act and react naturally as
they work otherwise in a service interaction or a simulation exercise.
2. Quick idea generation
With more individuals involved in the activity, many ideas can be generated quickly.
3. Creative problem solving
Stimulates creative problem solving within the group. With a few variations, designers can also
understand how the same users may react in different scenarios or different user experiences
within the same scenario.
4. No fear of judgment
Participants usually participant in role-play without fear of any judgement as the activity of role-play
is a fun activity.
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 REFERENCES
• https://positivepsychology.com/empathy
• Design: Creation of Artifacts in Society by Prof. Karl Ulrich, U. Penn
• Change by Design by Tim Brown.

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THANK YOU

Faculty In charge: Ms. Shikha Agnihotri (E8887)

Contact No: 7042346928