The year 2015 has been an aweshemm year for some and trying year for another. As for me, it has been a mix of both. Towards the end, my team and I at DT LEADERSHIP, finally concluded (today!) that it was an aweshemm year indeed. 🙂
Three things that attracted our interest has always been design thinking, leadership and top talent development. We engaged few hundreds people this year in the three domains above. It feels aweshemm and enlightening! Thanks so much.
I wish to highlight three highlights that captured my personal attention. The designs may be great, good or oopss; but they did catch my attention.
1. Miss Universe 2015 & Steve Harvey
Unexpectedly, I believed, Mr Harvey (the host and winner announcer), wrongly announced the winner. You could see the full video here – Miss Universe 2015 Announcement. He did the right thing, albeit the mistake, admitted that he wrongly announced it and quickly announced the right winner (Miss Philippines the right winner). The mistake later attributed (besides Harvey mistake) was the announcement card was poorly designed therefore confusing (see below). It was chaotic for a while but sorted, well done!

2. OXO Measuring Cup
I recently watched GEL Conference 2015 held at New York City – video Alex Lee @ GEL Conference. President of OXO kitchenwares, Mr Alex Lee, talked about OXO’s measuring cup. It was really nice (see below). It solved our human-problem to keep looking whether the liquid reach the right level yet or not. Usually we will stoop to keep checking, with OXO new measuring cup, you don’t have to do that! Brilliant design! Interestingly during their initial research, none of the users mentioned the action of “keep looking up and down” was a problem. However, OXO design team has keen eyes for users behaviours, so they spot it. Now this measuring cup selling by millions around the world.

3. Pop Corn Royale @TGV Cinema
I brought my family recently to TGV Cinema to watch a movie – “The Good Dinosaur”. We havent been out for a get together for some time. We decided to enjoy our time a little bit more. The kids loved the Pop Corn Royale Caramel (see below). However, when we arrived we found out that the Caramel has been replaced by a new flava – the Cool Mint. I hesitated to buy (while queueing) because pop corn and mint – hmmmm…My turn came and I asked “Is the Cool Mint nice?” “What happen to the Caramel?”. I was amazed by the response I received from the guy who was at the counter – “You should try, let me take some of it.” He smiled and offered us to try without any hesitation. We tried and we loved it!
It looks to me, the service design as simple as “offer trial or offer sampling on the fly” helps customer to feel safe and build trust. I could tell that this guy is aweshemm because while his supervisor wasn’t that appreciative of what he tried to do – “make me feel safe to try the new flava.” The experience was fantastic, I recommended the Cool Mint for you as well! 😉 Well done TGV!

There you go, as we wrapped 2015 those are the things that captured my attention. So what’s next for 2016? Because our interest are in design thinking, leadership and top talent, we asked ourselves four questions for us to dig deeper in the coming 2016. Here are the questions:
- How might we retain our top talent in cross countries and global projects that rely in virtual teams set up?
- How might we create a safe environment for senior operational leaders help the top talents grow exponentially in their career?
- How might we rapidly develop new products and services that customers love in our verticals?
- How might we improve our service design (people, process, tech and planet) to increase our bottomline / profits?
That’s all for now. We look forward to see you in 2016!

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