Develop phase is the beginning of the second diamond in the double diamond from design council. This phase promotes to use divergent thinking and encourages the participants to de- velop different kinds of solutions, ideas and concepts for the clearly defined problem. This process practices a co-design, co-creating and collaborative working mode with different stakeholder involved in the project. The purpose of the develop phase was to open up mind and begin creating ideas, by using divergent techniques while aiming for quantity, not quality – at least in the beginning, as more ideas created will lead to later success (Stickdorn, Law- rence et al. 2018, 158). All kind of ideas are good at this stage as it helps researcher to move beyond the obvious to interesting, radical and innovative ideas, when this is done in group ideation session it’s a good way to develop shared ownership to ideas.
Before initiating the ideation workshop the outcomes from the define phase were discussed with the leaders of the management team from the case company. This discussion was im- portant for management team to understand current state of employees and review objec- tively outputs that were discovered from the employees’ survey, while the related subjective outputs were supported from the face-to-face interviews with employees. The outcome of
this discussion gave clear ideas from management for research work as a well-defined direc- tion to move ahead with next steps. Also, the discussion gave clarity to researcher of this the- sis to be able to address the realized issues from previous phase into the ideation session to gain concrete outcomes and solutions.
Co-creation ideation workshop
Co-creation or better said co-design is an engaging process with a diverse group of partici- pants in a multidisciplinary team and with a wider group of stakeholders who have been in- volved throughout the process, to collect valuable variety of viewpoints and experiences. Fa- cilitator plays a vital role in this kind of workshop; they need to get most out of the partici- pants and keep them moving forward together in a context where they all feel useful and en- gaged in the process of ideation. (Stickdorn, Lawrence et al. 2018, 391). Facilitation is a com- plex skill where one needs to simultaneously manage process, participant group and people individuals at different levels. At first level facilitator has to facilitate the process, by offer- ing necessary information, selecting appropriate activities and later consolidating outcomes as results to guide the work towards a fruitful conclusion. At second level facilitating the par- ticipant group by keeping them motivated, engaged and productive through the workshop while handling possible conflicts and tensions among the group and lastly facilitating the par- ticipant as individuals by helping them to be more empathetic, think analytically, be more creative and helping them to see things through different perspective (Stickdorn, Lawrence et al. 2018, 392).
Facilitator of the workshop used some warm-up and energizers to boost up the energy of par- ticipant and keep them engaged in the workshop activities. These energizers and warm-ups are ideal for creating a comfortable space between participants and make ideation more ef- fective, also help participant to be happy failing and wake them up in natural low point of the day (Stickdorn, Lawrence et al. 2018, 407). Creating a safe space is another key role of the facilitator in the workshop, as service design tools and methods are many times not easy to understand and are usually not comfortable for many participants as this kind of creative process needs participants to fail which is not the normal way of working for most of the par- ticipants. Hence the facilitator needs to give special attention to the safe space for both physical and mental environment which accepts and embraces failure. This safe space creates circumstance for participants to be innovative and productive (Stickdorn, Lawrence et al.
2018, 399).
Facilitator used different facilitation tools and techniques throughout the workshop to
achieve successful workshop outcomes with participants. In the pre-ideation phase researcher used ideas from journey map and insights from survey and interviews to create “How might we…?” questions to develop triggering questions to initiate ideation phase. Ideation phase
used brainstorming and brainwriting methods, these methods supported participant to gener- ate many ideas efficiently at the same time it engaged all participants equally. In brainstorm- ing session small group were formed to discuss the topic and understand the themes in detail by ideating on each other's thoughts within the group. While in brainwriting phase partici- pants wrote down their ideas in silence, with one idea on one post-it and each participant created many ideas on selected topics. These ideas were then pitched in front of all the par- ticipants giving short explanation of what the idea or concept is and how it aims to the topic in focus. Steps into the workshop were:
1. Introduction of themes and presenting the relevant findings from employee research done in discover and define phase, leading to create pre-ideation “how might we…?”
questions.
2. Group task to ideate solutions for cultural, technological and physical environment based on the identified GAP’s. The group ideated two different aspects of the prob- lem, first set of solutions were from the employee’s self-initiation to eliminate GAP and second set of solutions were employee’s expectations from organization to elimi- nate GAP.
3. Pitching the ideas to the group by explaining how the solutions will create ideal cul- tural, technological and physical environment for employees to gain superior em- ployee experience.
4. Everyone gave feedback on how they felt involved in creating ideas that would be af- fecting their ways of working. Also, it was acknowledged as these ideas were created by them as a group the solutions will be easy to adopt and practice.
There were two workshops organized, first group workshop was co-creation ideation session with group of six employees from ID&UX design team and second ideation workshop was done with the leader of TMO as a management representative from case company. Researcher of the thesis acted as facilitator for the workshops. The workshop went on for three hours, with lots of post-its, pens and a white board to ideate and sketch solutions. The first group idea- tion workshop’s purpose was to co-create many varieties of concepts, ideas and solution pro- posals to reduce or eradicate identified GAP’s from cultural, physical and technological envi- ronment of the case company from the perspective of employees. The purpose of second ide- ation workshop was to co-create ideas for key drivers found from develop phase leading to build superior employee experience model (SEEM). The GAP’s identified in this workshop were from the management perspective of how employee perceives employee experience, this were from the understanding gathered from first workshop and identified needs of employ- ees. The outcomes and results of both the workshops are documented as six sets of GAP cards and explained in detail in the next chapter.
In the next chapter, the results from the workshop and the entire research and development process are presented phase by phase following the Double Diamond representation for this research.