In a HPI Academy Design Thinking workshop with a well known German automobile company we redesigned the load in experience in utility cars. In order to help the innovation teams to deep dive into their users´ needs we prepared an empathy exercise in one of their warehouses. The warehouse was filled with a huge variety of equipment that different user groups to load into their utility cars in their daily work. The teams had the task to guess the user groups and to come up with a plan how to quickly load and unload the stuff in a busy street with hardly any space to maneuver.
This exercise helped the teams to prepare the user research and to come up with a user journey in order to detect critical touchpoints and problems they wanted to solve in the ideation phase.
In the ideation phase we made again use of the situation that we could run the innovation project directly in a workshop where the cars are built. So we facilitated the ideation phase directly in the storage space of an empty car. The teams where standing in the car, posting their ideas on the walls and were inspired by the space. Besides they could check right away and prototype if their ideas could work.
