GIM Design Thinking

From making people wanting things, to making things that people want

Topic
Today, platforms like kickstarter show that consumers find solutions for their needs in shorter time than established manufacturers. It is hence essential that providers always keep an eye on customers' needs and respond to them flexibly. Design Thinking focuses exactly on this aspect and offers you a lean and integrative process that paves the way from your consumers’ needs to innovative and profitable solutions.

GIM‘s Design Thinking plays out on two levels:

1. Design Thinking as a dynamic and operative research cycle along the concept and product development (in the sense of GIM SPICE©).
2. Design Thinking as a particular research attitude or even a research ethos. The method is based on the rule: “Creativity when possible, research when needed”.

Areas of application

In practice, this means we break target-oriented thought patterns for you in order to explore new solution options, and to check their feasibility. GIM Design Thinking is the tool of choice if your target group needs solutions that they themselves cannot articulate. The concept is open and flexible, and thus enables us to answer strategic questions in any industry, for example:

• Mobility (product)
  What is the ideal means of transportation for the generation Z in urban areas?
• Care (service)
  How can elderly people manage their nursing and medical care digitally and autonomously in future?
• Retail (brand)
  What do online retailers have to offer?

GIM offers you so-called “embedded design thinking”. We combine creative ideation processes with systematic methods of classic market research to your benefit. This enables us to develop unusual solutions without losing our grip on reality. You, as our client, are involved throughout the entire process and given immediate feedback on which ideas to pursue or drop. 

Toolbox 
GIM’s Design Thinking projects are adaptive solutions. Corresponding to your specific needs, we select adequate tools for each project phase from our broad portfolio of qualitative and quantitative methods. We firmly believe it is more efficient to “respond to change than to strictly follow a plan”.

Some examples

• At a loss?
  In that case, ethnographic observations to identify consumer needs is the right tool for you!
• No ideas?
  Our co-creation workshops including consumers is just what you were looking for! “The consumer will open your eyes …”
• No image in your head?
  Visualise your ideas with Speed Sketching by Lighthouse.
• A or B, or maybe C?
  Rapid testing to quickly identify the most promising solution or potentials for optimisation.
• But I don’t have time …
  Our all-in-one format ‚ the ‘GIM Idea Market' is the ideal tool if there is a hurry.

Our methodological expertise is always a guarantee for systematic in-depth research that never loses focus of your main goal: your solution. In permanent exchange with you, we provide information on how to quickly and flexibly put new focuses and adjust your strategies to changes.