Design thinking, at its core, is an innovative, solutions-focused, creative approach used in industry. Think of the companies lauded as being at the cutting edge in today’s industrial landscape, iPhone, Tesla, Airbnb, and you are in the right territory. Design Thinking follows a framework: empathising with users; defining challenges; ideating solutions; prototyping & testing new ideas and always, reflecting and refining in the process. @Disegno.life, we use career coaching tools and techniques within a design thinking framework to guide you in crafting and creating the career and life you want.
Imagine treating your emerging career and life chapters as design challenges, as opposed to problems to be solved or periods of time to be endured. Instead of perhaps feeling overwhelmed or stuck, by becoming a designer in your life, you’d engage in a process enabling you to: empathise with your stories and emotions; define your challenges; open up possibilities; brainstorm solutions; prototype career and life changes; test them out and from there, start to craft your path forward, working towards your updated career or life design. And in your journey, you’d always be reflecting and refining as you go, allowing for design alterations to emerge and be incorporated.
Thinking like a designer encourages us to move away from the closed “I can’t” to the possibility-laden “How might I?”
And so to that question… How might you take a design approach to your career and life transitions? What would that process look and feel like?
Gathering Stories: Our design journey as human beings with emotions, our own individual thoughts, dreams and desires, always starts with a profound exploration into the stories that shape our lives. When we engage more deeply with our stories, it is then that we understand how to move forward in a way that is aligned with who we really are, as opposed to responding to the external pressure of how we feel we ought to be.
Starting with deeper connected insights into your own story – your formative experiences, the education paths and career choices you have made, and an exploration of the ups and downs of your life – lays the foundation enabling you to design your own journey forward.
Define: Defining and articulating what it is that you are designing around is a key step in the process. Is it a career change or a life challenge, or perhaps both, you are designing around? Defining what it is you want to work on holds you in the process, ultimately taking you to a place of exploring and creating a clear action plan to take you forward.
Ideate: Dreaming big and creating a clearly articulated vision of where you want your career and life to take you is a fundamental step forward in taking you towards an action plan. We need to know our direction of travel in order to plot out the journey. Once you have drilled down into the details of your anticipated direction, then you can flesh out the possible routes forward that you might take. From there you need to choose where to place your energy and decide on which option to pursue.
Prototype: Dreams and ideas are just that unless we actually do something to bring them to life. Designers always move to action by bringing their ideas into reality, and prototyping as they go. In career and life design, we do the same. What is the smallest example of your new career design that you can bring to life? New business idea – can you make it real, even in the smallest way, by running a demo with a group of friends?
Want to redesign your career… What prototyping conversations can you have? Who is out there with the type of career that you would like to create? Can you connect with them? How did they bring their career into being? What patterns can you see? What insights can you glean? Taking action means you are starting to sneak up on your future, sometimes without even realising it!
Collaborate: always expand your community and keep building your tribe. Remember most people love to be helpful if we seek out their support. And of course, in the spirit of community, always be willing to reciprocate with support where you can.
Reflect and refine: At every stage in the process, take a moment and create a process to reflect and refine, perhaps working with the question…What does the story tell me now?
When we observe for patterns and insights, then we see our way forward with our next steps. Journal, record your observations on voice notes or use post-its to gather your reflections – whatever works. But keep reflecting, keep thinking and keep asking yourself… What do I observe? What do I see? What information and insights does it give me?
Success Stories
Victoria – an aspiring entrepreneur, designed forward towards bringing her business idea to life, prototyping and experimenting as she went. Today, she’s the proud owner of a plant-based business.
Paula – designed her way back towards professional life after a parenting pause. Paula started by reflecting on her own story, reconnecting with all that she had achieved in her previous career and life. With a renewed sense of confidence, she was able to step forward with confidence in building her career design plan – ideating, exploring options, making connections, and opening up possibilities. It wasn’t always a smooth journey, there were a few bumps on the way, but she found her way back to a role that she loves, working for an international NGO.
We know that you have all the right answers for you… sometimes all that’s needed is a guiding process to enable them to emerge.
Thinking as a designer holds you in a framework and from there, opens up the path to possibility, enabling you to craft, mould and shape the next chapter in your career and life.
Want to take a creative approach and start the journey of authoring your next chapter?
I’m always delighted to connect with you and chat about how we could work together. DM me if you would like to start your unique design journey…