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Ep 149 Career: You're underpriced because you're under confident. sdgates
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Ep 139 Career: The Hard Truth About Creativity’s Role in Business Today (and Yesterday) sdgates
Ep 35 Design Thinking P3 – Implementation phase and how build it into your culture
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Show notes
What’s going on, crazy people? Welcome to Episode 35 of The Crazy One Podcast. As always, I’m your host, Stephen Gates, and this is the show where we talk about creativity, leadership, design, and all sorts of things that matter to creative people.
Today, we’re wrapping up our three-part series on design thinking. In Episodes 33 and 34, we covered the first two phases of this methodology—inspiration and ideation. If you haven’t listened to those yet, please go back and start with Episode 33. This episode won’t give you all the necessary detail on its own—think of it as the Cliff’s Notes version. Trust me, listening to them in order will help you get the full value.
Quick Recap
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Inspiration: The foundation of the process. It starts with a clearly defined problem to solve, not a solution to vet. We also covered three types of research: immersion, interviews, and observations. From those, we synthesize insights—the “why” behind the “what.”
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Ideation: Where we craft powerful How Might We statements. These act as the bridge between insight and brainstorm. We also discussed seven rules for running a better brainstorm—critical if you want to generate real, innovative ideas.
Implementation: Bringing Ideas to Life
Implementation is where things go from the project stage into real people’s lives. It’s made up of four key parts:
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Prototyping
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Testing
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Refining
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Delivery
While inspiration and ideation are common across many processes, implementation is where design thinking truly differentiates itself. This is where ideas become tangible—and sometimes, uncomfortable.
1. Prototyping: Build to Think
A prototype isn’t a finished product. It’s just the first tangible step forward. The key is speed and learning.
Example:
When working on the Apple Watch, we didn’t have access to final hardware. So, we created a simple prototype using a sugar packet and a rubber band to simulate the watch’s size and proximity. We iterated—folding the packet based on feedback—until it felt right. That sugar packet became our first prototype.
Why Prototype?
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To fail fast and fix early
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To reduce emotional attachment to ideas
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To build trust with clients and stakeholders by showing progress, not just talking about it
4 Stages of Prototyping:
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Design Research: Build to think. Explore boundaries, find the edges of user tolerance.
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Rapid Prototyping: Test hypotheses quickly and roughly.
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Live Prototyping: Simulate a real product experience, often with sketches or physical mockups.
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Pilots: Full, testable versions to validate solutions at scale.
2. Testing & Refining: Break What You Build
Prototypes must be tested—not to validate perfection, but to identify weaknesses.
Purpose of Testing:
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Challenge assumptions
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Identify blind spots
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Iterate intelligently
Guidelines for Testing:
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Quick & Easy: Build and run in under an hour.
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Low Risk: Use safe audiences and low-cost setups (under $100).
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Evolutionary: Focus on learning and growth, not just affirmation.
Testing should happen throughout the process—not just at the end. For example, with Apple Watch, we learned the hard way that the screen turned off when the user rotated their wrist—something we’d never considered until real-world testing.
3. Delivery: Shipping the Work
Eventually, you must ship. But don’t wait forever. If you’re caught in a loop of refining forever, set a max timeline.
Best Practice:
Ship something at least every eight months. Less than that, and you may not go deep enough. More than that, and your team risks burnout and stagnation.
Bringing Design Thinking Into Your Culture
The biggest challenge? The word “design.” Many think this process is only for designers. It’s not.
Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving methodology.
It doesn’t require you to draw. It requires curiosity, empathy, and discipline.
Bringing It to Life: Key Questions
Inspiration:
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Do you fuel your team with regular inspiration?
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Is it part of your work rhythm, or are you just grinding?
Empathy:
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Do you spend enough time with real users?
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Are you actively storytelling back to the team about what you’ve learned?
Ideation:
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Can you separate idea generation from idea evaluation?
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Are you pushing quantity before diving into quality?
Prototyping & Experimentation:
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Are you prototyping early and often?
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Are you testing rough ideas, or only polished solutions?
Traits of High-Functioning Design Thinking Teams
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Users at the center.
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Build to think.
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Embrace diverse perspectives.
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Stay curious.
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Iterate quickly and often.
Building the Right Environment
To truly adopt design thinking, your physical space, tools, and cultural norms matter:
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Tools: Easy access to whiteboards, sticky notes, prototyping supplies.
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Space: Open, collaborative areas (not cubicles). Huddle rooms. Writable walls.
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Norms: Clearly stated beliefs. Expectations like “keep users at the center,” or “creativity is a team sport.”
At Citi, we stripped out all offices and built collaborative spaces with whiteboard paint. That single decision created a massive cultural shift.
Final Thoughts: Change the Way You Think
Design thinking isn’t just a process—it’s a mindset. If you only change behavior and not beliefs, you’ll fall back into the old way.
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Be okay with not knowing the answer.
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Embrace the discomfort of the unknown.
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Fight the urge to protect yourself instead of investing in the team.
True creativity comes when we stop being precious, and start being open. That’s when we move beyond safe, mediocre work—and start building meaningful, innovative change.
Resources & Connection
Show notes, articles, and all episodes: podcast.stephengates.com
If this series helped you, please leave a review on iTunes or your favorite podcast app—it makes a huge difference.
Join the community:
Search The Crazy One Podcast on Facebook, like the page, and jump into the conversation. Ask questions. Share your struggles. You’re not alone.
And as always, thank you. Time is the only true luxury—and I’m deeply grateful you chose to spend some of it with me.
Until next time, stay crazy.
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