Applying Business Innovation with Design Thinking
In order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt.
In order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt.
The digital consumer landscape is evolving at a rapid pace and no matter the type of industry or organisation size, in order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt to this ever-changing digital landscape.
The digital consumer landscape is evolving at a rapid pace and no matter the type of industry or organisation size, in order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt to this ever-changing digital landscape.
The digital consumer landscape is evolving at a rapid pace and no matter the type of industry or organisation size, in order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt to this ever-changing digital landscape.
Don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as it sounds! One of the most widely used methodologies that harness the core skills to encourage agility is 'Design Thinking', a creative and highly collaborative process used to visualise ideas, identify challenges, craft solutions and ultimately drive growth. And... it’s actually a very fun exercise once you get going!
Traditionally this type of collaborative process would be held in the form of brainstorming around a whiteboard or A1 paper in a conference room with your team. MURAL has taken that to another level, facilitating real-time collaboration within a digital workspace, worldwide! As avid users of MURAL ourselves, we champion the use of design-thinking in our everyday work, from digital workshops to consulting and problem-solving with destinations across the globe. We also use MURAL extensively in our newly launched Digital Transformation Series, and it is a pivotal tool in facilitating the creative ideation needed for transformation, and getting the whole team together to share and collect ideas, wherever they may be.
We caught up with the MURAL team at their offices in San Francisco to find out more about this incredible platform and how they continue to pioneer Remote Design Thinking.
Design thinking is a visually creative and customer-centric process which allows companies to identify processes within their own organisation, customers attitudes and business challenges to then effectively craft and apply solutions based on the findings. The process oversees end to end campaign planning, starting from the initial understanding and ideation, through all the different touch-points and stages to implementation.
Visually mapping out this process is also known as 'Journey Mapping', looking at an individual as a customer of a service and essentially mapping out the full experience and then aligning your organisation to it. For businesses, this involves mapping out the complete customer journey from the dreaming to sharing, to critically evaluate and understand every stage, challenge and opportunity from start to finish.
Founded in 2014, MURAL is a customer-centric, digital workspace that facilitates the process of Design Thinking through virtual collaboration for distributed teams. Customisable canvas allow teams to ideate, plan and apply findings while enabling companies to effectively scale creativity across multiple locations whether that’s regional, national or global, in an 100% remote way.
For businesses and organisations, MURAL is the ideal platform to bring different distributed teams together, as well as creatively collaborating with the all-important partners and stakeholders. On Mural, a varied set of perspectives and input means more ideas and the best possible outcome.
Despite the name, design thinking is not just for designers and the platform is constantly evolving into a much more cross-collaborative tool. MURAL are huge advocates of embracing remote working and creativity, encouraging businesses to invest their teams to understand internal processes and innovate their products and services from within, understanding customer needs, problems, challenges and creating solutions. MURAL enables teams to develop these skills in a comfortable environment (wherever they choose to be) and the nature of the digital workspace empowers people to actively share their ideas (whereas a more conventional setting could potentially hold back open creativity.)
Aaron Richman from MURAL explains the 3 key elements involved in design thinking:
MURAL is constantly evolving and developing its platform based on user research and feedback, streamlining the process further and making it as user-friendly and efficient as possible. One of the key developments based on customer feedback is the MURAL Scan App. The app allows you to scan physical post-it notes and instantly transcribes all the information directly onto a MURAL board, effectively bridging the gap between digital and analogue to save time and most importantly, not miss out on any of the great ideas and sketches generated in the session.
Along with MURAL, we believe that design thinking is going to become an essential process for organisations to stay competitive in today’s market. For businesses, incorporating the design thinking process into decision making can provide deeper and more valuable insights to understand the key deciding factors that influence customers to purchase your product or service. The shared creative process is instrumental in spotting emerging consumer trends, turning insights into successful innovations and matching these key findings to the customer journey.
Check out the 'Take Action' section of the Business Launchpad, where we regularly feature downloadable templates where your team can actively collaborate on a vast range of topics. Each template is carefully designed based on a particular topic, to include key considerations, discussion points, challenges, and plenty of space to ideate.
Download our worksheet on Design Thinking with Mural below.
The digital consumer landscape is evolving at a rapid pace and no matter the type of industry or organisation size, in order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt to this ever-changing digital landscape.
The digital consumer landscape is evolving at a rapid pace and no matter the type of industry or organisation size, in order to stay competitive in the future businesses need to be equipped with the tools and the skills that allow them to readily adapt to this ever-changing digital landscape.
Don’t worry, it’s not as daunting as it sounds! One of the most widely used methodologies that harness the core skills to encourage agility is 'Design Thinking', a creative and highly collaborative process used to visualise ideas, identify challenges, craft solutions and ultimately drive growth. And... it’s actually a very fun exercise once you get going!
Traditionally this type of collaborative process would be held in the form of brainstorming around a whiteboard or A1 paper in a conference room with your team. MURAL has taken that to another level, facilitating real-time collaboration within a digital workspace, worldwide! As avid users of MURAL ourselves, we champion the use of design-thinking in our everyday work, from digital workshops to consulting and problem-solving with destinations across the globe. We also use MURAL extensively in our newly launched Digital Transformation Series, and it is a pivotal tool in facilitating the creative ideation needed for transformation, and getting the whole team together to share and collect ideas, wherever they may be.
We caught up with the MURAL team at their offices in San Francisco to find out more about this incredible platform and how they continue to pioneer Remote Design Thinking.
Design thinking is a visually creative and customer-centric process which allows companies to identify processes within their own organisation, customers attitudes and business challenges to then effectively craft and apply solutions based on the findings. The process oversees end to end campaign planning, starting from the initial understanding and ideation, through all the different touch-points and stages to implementation.
Visually mapping out this process is also known as 'Journey Mapping', looking at an individual as a customer of a service and essentially mapping out the full experience and then aligning your organisation to it. For businesses, this involves mapping out the complete customer journey from the dreaming to sharing, to critically evaluate and understand every stage, challenge and opportunity from start to finish.
Founded in 2014, MURAL is a customer-centric, digital workspace that facilitates the process of Design Thinking through virtual collaboration for distributed teams. Customisable canvas allow teams to ideate, plan and apply findings while enabling companies to effectively scale creativity across multiple locations whether that’s regional, national or global, in an 100% remote way.
For businesses and organisations, MURAL is the ideal platform to bring different distributed teams together, as well as creatively collaborating with the all-important partners and stakeholders. On Mural, a varied set of perspectives and input means more ideas and the best possible outcome.
Despite the name, design thinking is not just for designers and the platform is constantly evolving into a much more cross-collaborative tool. MURAL are huge advocates of embracing remote working and creativity, encouraging businesses to invest their teams to understand internal processes and innovate their products and services from within, understanding customer needs, problems, challenges and creating solutions. MURAL enables teams to develop these skills in a comfortable environment (wherever they choose to be) and the nature of the digital workspace empowers people to actively share their ideas (whereas a more conventional setting could potentially hold back open creativity.)
Aaron Richman from MURAL explains the 3 key elements involved in design thinking:
MURAL is constantly evolving and developing its platform based on user research and feedback, streamlining the process further and making it as user-friendly and efficient as possible. One of the key developments based on customer feedback is the MURAL Scan App. The app allows you to scan physical post-it notes and instantly transcribes all the information directly onto a MURAL board, effectively bridging the gap between digital and analogue to save time and most importantly, not miss out on any of the great ideas and sketches generated in the session.
Along with MURAL, we believe that design thinking is going to become an essential process for organisations to stay competitive in today’s market. For businesses, incorporating the design thinking process into decision making can provide deeper and more valuable insights to understand the key deciding factors that influence customers to purchase your product or service. The shared creative process is instrumental in spotting emerging consumer trends, turning insights into successful innovations and matching these key findings to the customer journey.
Check out the 'Take Action' section of the Business Launchpad, where we regularly feature downloadable templates where your team can actively collaborate on a vast range of topics. Each template is carefully designed based on a particular topic, to include key considerations, discussion points, challenges, and plenty of space to ideate.
Download our worksheet on Design Thinking with Mural below.
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