Jenni participated in our certification program, to try and solve problems her organization was facing. We sat down with Jenni to ask what she liked most about her experience and the insight she and her team arrived at, after completing her Design Thinking certification. Here is what she had to say; 

Q: When did you first hear about design thinking?

A: I first heard about design thinking when I was working at National Defense Canada. We used design thinking to guide our process improvements for our 2020 blueprints. 

My colleague suggested we use Spring 2 Innovation Design Thinking methods because she knew design thinking made sure you were looking at your end-user. She knew that we needed to make sure those who are using our product and service would know how to use it and that it was user-friendly.  

Q: What was the challenge design thinking helped you solve? 

A: There was a demand for our services within our own innovation zone, and as a small team, we knew we wouldn’t be able to meet the needs. So, we decided it would be a good idea to bring in our key clients, to Spring 2 Innovation’s training, and we did the program together.

The key problem our clients were looking at was HR planning. Past plans in this department consisted only of reports, and it wasn’t going to work anymore – we needed to help them find a new approach. 

Q: What was your overall experience like, with Spring 2 Innovation and Design Thinking?

A: Through working with Spring 2 Innovation, we realized that we were experiencing a small portion of what was possible, it really sparked our interest to learn more and more. 

I really liked how making something that can be a very creative and exploratory method, was made very practical for the challenges we were facing. 

Q: How did Design Thinking align with your organization’s vision for the future?

A: In government, there is an underlying need to constantly transform and the digital transformation requirements are so challenging. Design thinking allowed us to go through a process to determine our problem and come up with a hypothesis on how we were going to solve it. And, it wasn’t fluffy, it was actually getting down to the crux of the problem. 

Jenni Bennet-Gilmour works at Canadian Border Services.