Design Thinking

Through collaborative exchanges and various other opportunities members of our Innovation Working Group have been able to learn from the innovation efforts of other state DOTs. In mid-February, Idaho Transportation Department invited the Innovation Working Group and leaders to attend a three-day peer exchange. Utah has been borrowing some of the ideas we learned from our friendly neighbors in Idaho. We are looking for more opportunities to collaborate with other states and hopefully replicate their successes and add them to our own.

The main activity was to experience the Design Thinking problem-solving process created by Stanford's Design school (d.school). The d.school actively shares and encourages people to use their videos and methodology to teach Human-Centered Design principles.This means focusing on your end user from the start and getting appropriate feedback throughout the iterative innovation process.

First, you have to understand and empathize with the end user, identify the what, how, and why, and interview to understand needs & emotions. Once you have that information, it is critical to clearly define the problem, unpack the data you gathered, find common themes and the story, and sift out the insights and needs. After this you can ideate and sketch out ideas and get some feedback. This involves iteration in the idea-generation stage multiple times before you build and prototype your solution. After the rough model or prototype is ready have the user test the solution. Find out what works and what could be improved, and capture the questions they have and any new ideas.

We were able to go through a couple of design thinking events and really grew to appreciate the end customer’s input throughout the design process. If you have a problem where you’d like some help producing or improving a product, process, or program, a design thinking event can add great value to your efforts. Contact one of your Innovation Working Group members, email us at ideas@utah.gov, or contact Ryan rbailey@utah.gov or Patrick patrickcowley@utah.gov for more information.