Design Thinking 

The contemporary business landscape is characterized by rapid changes in both: industry-specific environments as well as user behaviors. This naturally demands a thrust for innovation and systematic change. At Elephant, we specialize in converting ideas from their nascent stages to pragmatic, everyday solutions using the potent application of design thinking frameworks. And the good news? As any design thinking consultant would reinforce: We love sharing what we’ve learnt because we know that true growth only occurs through mutual collaboration.  

Key issue areas tackled by the Design Thinking consultant

Our expertise is broadly categorized into two offerings: Workshops and Need-Specific Consultancy Services. 

Workshops can benefit organizations where there are challenges hindering innovation, which, in turn affect the quality of products and services developed. 

Need-Specific Consultancy Services take the form of specialized co working on the issue area established and recognized by the organization as well as our team. 

Ultimately, our offerings are actionable in the following manner:

Design Thinking: Buzzword or a potent tool?

We understand that Design Thinking is often bandied about as a buzzword by a variety of professionals, media publications and organizations across industries. But the best design thinking consultants will tell you otherwise. A design thinking company may often also provide the perception that this is a silver bullet that remedies all kinds of problems seamlessly, which often leads to the disastrous application of something that hasn’t been fully understood. 

While design thinking can have a variety of definitions, we can find common ground in the fact that it involves processes, tools and techniques to create human-centric solutions, products and ultimately, experiences. 

This naturally involves empathetic thinking. Placing yourself in the user’s shoes, understanding their major/minor drives and discomforts using a potent application of research and creativity are all par for the course. So, what are the issues that often arise when it comes to adopting a design thinking mindset?  

Overcoming Challenges 

Transformative Mindset: Primarily, we’ve discovered that it’s hard for organizations to inculcate this mindset because design thinking may seem overtly subjective, inherently personal. In a world dominated by legacy, siloed and hierarchy mindsets, there’s a lot of unlearning that needs to take place so that the power of design thinking may be fully realized. As design thinking consultants, we work tirelessly with organizations to transform into innovative mindset and redefine processes. 

Leadership: If design thinking is not backed by leadership that fully understands, appreciates and can implement its methods: then it naturally does not percolate through existing organizational culture. To ensure that employees are familiarized with the nuances of Design Thinking, strong leadership intend is necessary. 

Strength of Failure: New mindsets call for a leap of faith. But more importantly, they also call for failure. Any design thinking consultant intuitively knows the importance of making their clients (throughout the organizational structure) comfortable with the idea of failure – to prepare them, in fact, for it, especially within the context of design thinking and its applications.  

Combining Expertise: It’s not always easy to accept one’s own limitations, especially within performance-driven organizations that encourage a competitive attitude to drive growth and results. However, design thinking calls for divergence and the combination of different disciplines to arrive at cohesive solutions – which also calls for unlearning and getting out of a comparative mindset and traditional silos. 

Speed: The urge to apply the design thinking framework and carry forward the first solution the results from it is altogether too well-known. This is natural, given that adherence to timelines and the value of speedy delivery can never be understated in today’s competitive landscape. However, it is only with practice that the framework begins to reveal its efficacy – a fact which is sometimes lost.     

At Elephant, we focus on remedying these predominant problems and more when it comes to getting organizations and institutions comfortable with the entirety of the design thinking toolkit. We do this via our tried and tested processes, vetted by the best design thinking consultants, which we are constantly perfecting according to the ever-changing landscape. 

Method amidst the subjective chaos

To drive true innovation using design thinking methods, we utilize an accelerated process that involves: 

User Insights for Success

Create the next level of offerings for rapidly changing user needs & aspirations.

Transforming brands into holistic experiences

Apart from providing smoother routes for product development, or inculcating a human-centric mindset, design thinking tools can also transform brands from within. When we work in our capacity as a design thinking company, we interact with the brand from purely a product perspective, we focus on creating multiple touchpoints to craft truly integrated, new-age brands that revolve around the uniqueness of experience. 

This transformation is the foundation for our need-specific offerings, where solutions are developed at various touchpoints. These are broad categorised into: