Keynote:

Better Services Through Business Design

When designing new services / products / experience, designers often start with the user needs or technical feasibilities. When designers ask “why are we doing this”, we often shy away from the business reasons. If we try to design with a holistic view of everything, shouldn’t we understand the business needs as well?
Taking a step away from the traditional design thinking, this session will dive into business design and stretch our design thinking muscle to business thinking. Business design brings in the commercial prospect to form a more complete approach to solving complex problems.
In this session, we will look at examples of hands-on case study of how to integrate commercial thinking into design projects. How to balance the different requirements and needs from all angles? What are the different toolkits that can be used for designers to start thinking about business more? And maybe most importantly, how can designers stop being scared of numbers.
As designers, we have been trained to look at the bigger picture and to understand the bigger eco-system. This journey has brought me to what I do these days: commercialization strategy and business transformation. We, as designers, have always dreamt up grant visions for whatever industry we encounter. We can also dream up ambitious business strategies! Designers are often scared of numbers, and business types are often scared of the word “design”. There is a nice balance between the two: How to use design thinking to drive business planning and how to drive design goals / values with business direction.
The session will share insights on how to bring business strategy and design together.