Designing Feedback + Design Research and Workshops with Nahal Tavangar — DT101 E118
Release Date: 08/15/2023
Leadership & Strategy + Fighter Pilots + Design Education with Jason "TOGA" Trew — DT101 E145
Design Thinking 101
When I first connected with Jason Trew (callsign: TOGA), I knew this conversation would challenge some assumptions about where design thinking belongs. Jason is an Air Force fighter pilot and strategy leader turned professor. What emerged from our conversation wasn't just another story about design thinking adoption, but a deeper exploration of what he sees happening when we distinguish between capital-D Design Thinking and lowercase-d design thinking, and why that distinction matters for everyone trying to create meaningful change. Jason's journey from F-15 pilot to design educator reveals...
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Operational Excellence in Design + Leadership + Design Ops with Jon Fukuda — DT101 E144
Design Thinking 101
Jon said that when he first discovered the design operations community at the 2019 Design Ops Summit in Brooklyn, it felt like coming home. Here was this entire tribe of people who cared about the same things he’d been passionate about for years—creating systems that help designers do their best work. In this episode, I'm talking with Jon Fukuda, co-founder of Limina.co, about how design operations has evolved from an unnamed set of practices into a vital discipline that drives organizational excellence. As organizations continue to face economic pressures, the conversation around design...
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Building Sustainable Design Research Systems with Sam Zucker — DT101 E143
Design Thinking 101
The tension between doing good research and delivering on tight timelines is something I've experienced throughout my career in design and innovation. This conversation with Sam Zucker unpacks powerful approaches to making research more sustainable and equitable while building systems that support continuous learning and engagement. What particularly struck me was Sam's practical framework for embedding research into organizational workflows. Her approach transforms research from a periodic, resource-intensive effort into an ongoing capability that shapes decision-making and product...
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Architecture + Decision Design + Learning Spaces + Strategy with Adam Griff — DT101 E142
Design Thinking 101
In this episode, I explore how architectural thinking enhances strategic decision-making with Adam Griff. Our conversation reveals how his architectural background shapes his approach to helping higher education institutions navigate complex decisions and create flexible space solutions. We dig into the challenges of designing spaces that can adapt to unknown futures and discuss how universities can better integrate with their communities. I particularly love how Adam frames flexibility in building design as creating platforms for future adaptations rather than just multi-purpose spaces....
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Joy, Transformation, and Design as Creative Liberation with Sahibzada Mayed — DT101 E141
Design Thinking 101
Sahibzada Mayed is a creative alchemist who uses design and storytelling to cultivate joy and imagination as tools of liberation. Mayed serves as the Co-Lead for Strategy and Research at Pause and Effect, a liberation-focused imagination and design collective based on Coast Salish territories of the Musqueam, Squamish, Tsleil-Waututh Nations. Beyond that, Mayed leads a small-scale startup, Naranji, that focuses on gender justice and decolonization in fashion. Today, we talk about decolonizing design and creative liberation. Listen to learn about: >> The impact of colonialism and power...
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Healthcare Design: Evidence-based, Business Fluent, and Change Prepared with Matt Van Der Tuyn — DT101 E140
Design Thinking 101
Matthew Van Der Tuyn is a designer and healthcare innovation strategist. Matt is the Senior Director of Design and Strategy at the Center for Health Care Transformation and Innovation at Penn Medicine. The mission at the Center is to serve as a catalyst and accelerator for initiatives that dramatically improve health outcomes, patient and provider experiences, and decrease the cost of care. Matt has had the unique opportunity to help build the Center’s design, discipline, and elevate design thinking as a key tool in Penn Medicine's organizational toolbox. Matt's design process balances...
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Behavioral Science in Human-centered Design with Christina Hanschke — DT101 E139
Design Thinking 101
Christina Hanschke's career journey has spanned many diverse roles. She's been a music therapist, nanny, and UX researcher, and she’s currently a Design Lead at Final Mile, where she applies a multidisciplinary approach to address pressing societal changes, drawing from behavioral science, human-centered design, and systems thinking. As an adjunct faculty at DePaul University, Christina extends her passion for leveraging behavioral science in human-centered design to the next generation of innovators fostering a diverse culture of curiosity and continual learning. Christina and I talk about...
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Organizational Design + Strategy + Change with Stephanie Gioia — DT101 E138
Design Thinking 101
Stephanie Gioia is a founder at Future Work Design with a focus on strategic planning and organizational innovation. She also serves as the director of the Either/Org project and teaches human-centered design for organizational innovation at the University of Oregon's Executive MBA program. She’s taught at Stanford’s d.school, University of Michigan, and Pacific Northwest College of Art. She is the founder of deckaholic.com, the world's largest library of card decks for problem solving and creativity. We talk about organizational design and strategy, and helping organizations navigate...
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Designing Your Career + UX for Small Business with Sarah Doody — DT101 E137
Design Thinking 101
Sarah Doody is a user research experience designer and researcher. She's also the founder of Career Strategy Lab, a UX career coaching program. In 2011, she co-created the curriculum and taught for General Assembly's first 11-week UX intensive program in New York City. She has extensive experience doing experience design, product strategy, and user research for companies including Fatherly, Sling, Citi Bike, We Work, Domino Magazine, Tictail, the Muse, Dow Jones and more. She speaks at conferences and teaches workshops worldwide. Today, we talk about designing your career and user experience...
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Design Ethics with George Aye — DT101 E136
Design Thinking 101
This is the inaugural DT101 Live!, with guest George Aye. George co-founded Greater Good Studio with the belief that design can help advance equity. Previously, he spent seven years at global innovation firm IDEO before being hired as the first human-centered designer at the Chicago Transit Authority. He speaks frequently across the US and internationally. George holds the position of Adjunct Full Professor at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Today, we are talking live about ethics in design in the design industry. Listen to learn about: >> What is ethical design?...
info_outlineNahal Tavangar is a self-professed generalist who has worked in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors across two continents. These roles and experiences have given her valuable insights into design thinking in various industries, work environments, business models, and workplace cultures. Today, we talk about research workshops, metaphors, and designing feedback.
Listen to learn about:
>> Designing feedback systems
>> The three categories of feedback methods
>> How Nahal uses LEGO Serious Play in her work
>> Ways of working with visualizations and metaphor in design work
Our Guest
Nahal is passionate about creating ways to improve existing systems and processes to fit human needs, for the people they serve or may serve. Even before she learned about human-centered design, she was expressing and cultivating this passion in her work.
After diving head-first into the Design Thinking community in Washington, D.C. and meeting her German boyfriend-now-husband, she decided to uproot her life in the U.S. in 2014 and move to Germany to pursue her M.A. in Integrated Design, with a focus on Service Design. Her thesis was on the topic of how we might capture more ‘holistic feedback’ in the design process.
Nahal is a self-professed ‘generalist’ and has worked in the public, private and non-profit sectors across two continents. These roles seem unrelated at a glance, but the experiences have given her valuable insights into design thinking in various industries, work environments, business models, and workplace cultures.
Show Highlights
[03:02] Nahal’s journey into design thinking is thanks to a friend’s suggestion.
[04:30] Getting involved with the Design Thinking DC community, and starting to apply design thinking to her work in PR.
[05:00] Using a “question of the day” to get people in her office to think creatively.
[06:23] Moving to Germany to get her master’s degree in service design.
[09:00] Nahal’s struggle to call herself a designer.
[10:23] Adapting terminology to fit the audience.
[11:26] Dawan offers a story about asking workshop participants to sketch.
[13:14] Nahal also likes getting people to work with visualizations instead of just talking.
[13:37] Nahal talks about creating a customer journey map in her work for a German energy company.
[19:09] Another initiative for the company involved diving into customer feedback channels
[20:31] Discovering a passion for learning from customer feedback in order to create a learning culture at an organization.
[21:46] The need to build connections between research and feedback systems.
[22:12] The problem with only using surveys as a feedback mechanism.
[22:53] The need for a better feedback system that ensures its insights are used by the organization.
[24:47] Dawan talks about the limitations of surveys.
[27:15] Nahal’s three categories of feedback methods.
[28:23] Nahal gives an example of creating a robust feedback system.
[29:33] Feedback systems need to be designed.
[30:33] Getting trained in LEGO Serious Play, and how Nahal uses it in her work.
[31:41] Nahal talks about the first time she used LEGO Serious Play in a workshop.
[33:18] Dawan mentions the power of asking questions.
[35:07] Using Image Cards to help people tap into metaphors.
[36:09] The power of metaphor.
[38:36] A Miro Moment.
[40:22] Dealing with imposter syndrome.
[41:38] Trust the process – and trust the people.
[44:14] Nahal has words of encouragement for those trying to bring design thinking tools into their day-to-day.
[46:36] Find ways to discover the needs of your customers.
Links
Nahal on Twitter
Nahal on LinkedIn
Nahal on Creative Mornings
Nahal’s MA Thesis: Designing Holistic Feedback: A Typology of Methods and Proposed Framework for Soliciting More Comprehensive, Qualitative User Input
Pega
Book Recommendations
How Customers Think: Essential Insights into the Mind of the Market, by Gerald Zaltman
Creative Confidence: Unleashing the Creative Potential Within Us All, by Tom Kelley and David Kelley
The Power of Moments: Why Certain Experiences Have Extraordinary Impact, by Chip Heath and Dan Heath
Trust the Process: An Artist's Guide to Letting Go, by Shaun McNiff
The Mom Test: How to talk to customers and learn if your business is a good idea when everyone is lying to you, by Rob Fitzpatrick
Good Services: How to Design Services that Work, by Louise Downe
Other Design Thinking 101 Episodes You Might Like
Design Thinking for the Public Sector + Building and Training Design Thinking Teams with Stephanie Wade — DT101 E14
Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey with Karen Hold — DT101 E71
Designing a Learning System for the Good Life // ALD 013 — DT101 E108