This thesis was written in collaboration with Fjord connected to its growth aspiration for organizational change projects.

WHY?

Organizations usually underestimate the influence of their people on the desired outcome of organizational change. Therefore, the experience of the employees is often neglected during a design-driven transformation. After all, for an organization to become design-driven, a design culture must be adopted by all people in the organization to take root. An expert consulted highlights a central problem in design culture transformations:

„Organizations usually miss a solid As-Is analysis and do not perform well in the design-driven transformation roadmap or even screw up.“

Karel Vredenburg; Director of Global Design Leadership, Culture, and External Engagement IBM

HOW?

Nine expert interviews were conducted informing the reframed problem and the needs to be addressed by a design intervention. As a result, eleven research themes and respective opportunity areas are presented based on the interview findings and substantiated by literature. After prioritizing three research themes, five prototypes were tested and evaluated with experts. A selection of two prototypes combined led to the final design intervention that was iteratively co-created with designers at Fjord.

WHAT?

The human-centered action plan Co-Create Your Design Culture presents a living roadmap for a transformation journey focusing on the people‘s experiences. Design mindsets and methods support summoning and activating people for scaling and sustaining a design culture in a design-driven transformation. The people in the organization are addressed along with suggested activities depending on their behaviors in organizational change. At each phase transition in the roadmap, the initially performed As-Is analysis is repeated to track progress.

FOR WHOM?

Co-created with Fjord, the action plan serves the actual needs of designers in internal and external organizational change projects. „This action plan provides value as a comprehensive toolkit for (design) consultants and change agents in tackling a design-driven transformation from an employee experience perspective.“ Thomas Petrig Service Design Lead Fjord Switzerland

TOP 3 LEARNINGS

• Performing a design project from research to synthesis and designing a relevant intervention addressing the problems and needs identified – trust and question your process to improve the outcome continuously.
• The conduct of semi-structured qualitative expert interviews and the synthesis process deriving at research themes – being patient, empathize with the interviewee, and capture nearly everything.
• Designing, facilitating, and evaluating workshops to co-create with the target audience and test prototypes with experts – things always turn out differently than planned.

Fjord