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Over the past decade design thinking has grown in popularity as a catalyst for innovation. Historically, the design function has always operated on the business perimeter, answering to product management, engineering or marketing. But with today’s intense pressure on businesses to ward off digital disruption, design thinking has taken on a central role in freeing the corporate imagination.

Until very recently design thinking was not even taught in business schools. The curriculum has been overwhelmingly devoted to scientific management principles which stresses measurement and process (like Six Sigma, TQM, etc). Design thinking, by contrast, looks at problems from an outside-in perspective: how people experience the world. Applying abductive reasoning, it tries to reframe the problem by factoring in the often emotional and irrational choices made by customers. To think like a designer demands curiosity – insight - free thinking – empathy - and a collaborative spirit: attributes more often found amongst polymaths than technocrats.

Design thinking leads to Big Ideas about innovative products, services and business models. But to improve the usability of a product or service, a different design methodology - human-centered design – is applied. Both have their role in meeting the needs of customers. But what’s missing is a more holistic view of the customer relationship – one that takes a broader view of the end-to-end experience. Which is why experience thinking, a new evolving field, fills a critical gap in the innovation process.

Experience Thinking looks at what’s important to customers – searches for unmet needs – pinpoints the desired outcomes – and homes in on the ideas that can turn a humdrum experience into one that customers will rave about. It can be thought of as the “corpus callosum” connecting creativity and innovation in order to crack the code on difficult-to-solve problems or come up with truly unique experiences.

“When you take a holistic look at how people react and would interact within a set of events at specific points in time, you are implementing Experience Thinking”, writes Tedde van Gelderen in his book Experience Thinking. As the founder and President of the Toronto-based design consultancy Akendi, van Gelderen has worked with a broad range of companies over the past decade, helping them create what he calls “intentional experiences”. His framework divides the design process into four interconnected quadrants: Brand, Content, Product and Service, each with its own goals, techniques and outcomes. Together they form the tapestry of a connected end-to-end experience.

Prior to founding Akendi, the Dutch-born van Gelderen worked mostly in the area of user experience design where he applied his post-graduate degree in cognitive psychology, either as a design manager or consultant. Today the company he founded has offices in both Canada and the U.K. and is considered a pioneer in the realm of experience design.

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