Design Thinking Process – LRNT 524 – Assignment 1A 

Stuart Reed and Adam Romano

What did the Design Challenge reveal?

Through gaining empathy and digging deeper in our design challenge, a scenario which would benefit from a new learning environment emerged in one of our working situations.  A context where an aging workforce impart key job related skills verbally to novice staff provided an opportunity for the implementation of an innovative online based training program.  

Deeper questioning revealed that senior staff desire to share their skills and leave the company in good hands, but felt they had no effective way to share important skills due to schedule and location challenges.  Junior staff embodied a passion to learn and advance in the company, but felt disadvantaged by a lack of direction on how to apply the skills they were hired for, as well as how to bridge the gap of essential skills they are lacking.

Insights anticipated a large spread of technological literacies among staff, which could provide challenges with engagement as well as when encouraging intellectual risk, as staff may be required to participate in the development of learning materials.  Suggestions during ideation in the design challenge included utilizing mobile devices to film experienced staff performing tasks, creating quick reference guides to aid in bridging technological gaps, as well as limiting length of videos in awareness of cognitive overload.  

Solution Building

A new Video Learning Library (VLL) concept was proposed.  The platform would be a component within the organization’s broader learning environment.  The VLL would utilize a streaming video service to house short training videos that would demonstrate how to complete specific tasks.  The videos would be user generated, and recorded by staff using company provided cell phones.  This follows an empathetic co-design process that pulls from the expertise within the organization (Mattelmäki, Vaajakallio, & Koskinen, 2014). This allows the more experienced staff to share their knowledge and allows the company to retain corporate memory that would otherwise be lost as an aging workforce begins to retire.  It feeds a passion expressed by senior staff to teach and mentor new employees, providing them with more confidence that the company will be in good hands when they step away.

Junior employees will have the opportunity to search, watch, comment on, and use the demonstration videos on-demand.  Key workplace skills gained could help minimize the time it takes to complete tasks in the field, and having access to on demand streaming videos will help them gain confidence in the workplace.  This platform will also help to support a rapid prototyping learning environment, allowing “ongoing review, evaluation and revision in collaboration with teachers and even students” (Thomas, 2010, p. 192).  

Limitations

Technology Literacy

The employees with the most interest in sharing their knowledge may not have the skills needed to record videos.  To mitigate this, contributors would be provided with instructions on how to use company provided phones to record videos, and a central resource in the office would provide editing services to finalize the videos.

 

Participation by Junior Staff

To encourage junior staff to share their own videos, even with limited experience at the company, incentive programs would be rolled out to reward contributions to the VLL.

 

Incorrect Demos

Some employees may be performing tasks incorrectly.  To prevent the videos from being shared with incorrect information they will be curated and reviewed by both experienced staff, as well as central resource to check for validity.

 

Feedback Loop

In order to encourage feedback, comments will be allowed and moderated on the streaming video service.  This will help the contributors improve over time, creating a collaborative environment.

 

References

Mattelmäki, T., Vaajakallio, K., & Koskinen, I. (2014). What Happened to Empathic Design?. Design Issues, 30(1), 67-77. doi:10.1162/DESI_a_00249

Thomas, P. Y. (2010). Towards developing a web-based blended learning environment at the University of Botswana (Doctoral dissertation).

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