My Story
I became obsessed with Design Thinking almost instantly. Finally, I found a brainstorming process that puts a structure to the way I already go about solving problems. I became enamored with the seemingly endless results that Design Thinking was able to create just by looking at things a little differently.
I was able to use my abilities in Munich, Germany for Spring Break 2014. After much classroom practice at my home University in Colorado, eleven other students and I were finally graduating to the big leagues. Partnering with Craftsy, we took our new found skills overseas.
Craftsy is an online video provider that teaches crafting skills for around $30-$60 per lesson. They have a very niche market in the United States that caters to the "extreme crafter", yet they have found that 10% of their revenue comes from non-english speaking countries. Of these countries, Germany was at the top. With this information in hand, my team and I went forward to determine whether or not Craftsy should enter the German market, and, if so, how?
The first step to any Design Thinking Process is to research empathetically. My team and I went all around Germany--into craft stores, speaking with Germans about their crafting habits, going to crafting classes and doing anything that we could find that had to do with crafting in Germany. With this research, we were able to generate the following insights.
These insights allowed us to create a proposal and prototype; Handwerk. Handwerk is a new brand of Craftsy that is marketed directly towards the German market. German content would be created, higher quality crafting would be the content, shorter videso would be introduced and community would become a key focal point in the website design.
After completing this mini trip in Design Thinking, I couldn't help but notice how applicable this thought process could be to virtually any business. If my team was able to come up with such a detailed and plausible prototype within one week, just think of all the possibilities if we had two weeks! And what if we had three weeks? A year? I can't contain my excitement about this process and I want to share this hidden gem with anyone who will listen.
Below, I have attached our presentation we created for Craftsy.
I was able to use my abilities in Munich, Germany for Spring Break 2014. After much classroom practice at my home University in Colorado, eleven other students and I were finally graduating to the big leagues. Partnering with Craftsy, we took our new found skills overseas.
Craftsy is an online video provider that teaches crafting skills for around $30-$60 per lesson. They have a very niche market in the United States that caters to the "extreme crafter", yet they have found that 10% of their revenue comes from non-english speaking countries. Of these countries, Germany was at the top. With this information in hand, my team and I went forward to determine whether or not Craftsy should enter the German market, and, if so, how?
The first step to any Design Thinking Process is to research empathetically. My team and I went all around Germany--into craft stores, speaking with Germans about their crafting habits, going to crafting classes and doing anything that we could find that had to do with crafting in Germany. With this research, we were able to generate the following insights.
- People use crafting as a way to reconnect with themselves
- Community is important when crafting
- German users prefer shorter, to the point instructions
These insights allowed us to create a proposal and prototype; Handwerk. Handwerk is a new brand of Craftsy that is marketed directly towards the German market. German content would be created, higher quality crafting would be the content, shorter videso would be introduced and community would become a key focal point in the website design.
After completing this mini trip in Design Thinking, I couldn't help but notice how applicable this thought process could be to virtually any business. If my team was able to come up with such a detailed and plausible prototype within one week, just think of all the possibilities if we had two weeks! And what if we had three weeks? A year? I can't contain my excitement about this process and I want to share this hidden gem with anyone who will listen.
Below, I have attached our presentation we created for Craftsy.