Improving Customer Experiences Through Design Thinking

Design thinking has also become a widely used model for a lot of businesses. There’s a lot of creative types too. Do you use design thinking? Why do you think it’s become so popular?

Yeah, I mean, I think with design thinking, so much of it is rooted in do you have that understanding, do you have empathy? Are you really thinking about the person on the other end? And I think if you go even before design thinking was a thing, really the best marketers would think about that person on the other end and really think about their situation and say, well, what’s in it for me as that person on the other end?
And that’s the thing I push my team to remember, it’s not about us, it’s about the member, it’s about the customer. And so I do think part of it is just having that deep understanding and then I think part of it is also about being open to trying things and experimenting and then iterating.
And just bringing in these shorter cycles and these sprints. And so as a company, we generally try to operate that way with how do we actually put some of these shorter sprints in place, how do we root them in really going through that process of the understanding and building innovating on it, testing things and bringing it back to the cycle.
And I think it’s just from a marketing perspective, it shows up in different ways in different teams too. So, I think from a revenue marketing team or a team that’s responsible for all of our digital properties, they’re just constantly looking at the testing and the iteration and really getting that detailed. Just the data based on user journeys and actually watching the data on the site happen and then making those changes.
Whereas I think with the creative team, it’s more about that upfront, really digging in on that qualitative as well to understand what is that insight, what are those points that we’re addressing? Putting it in market and iterating sort of in a different way, right? Where it’s less about turning some dials and it’s more about like, okay, how do we actually re-envision this along the way?