No matter where you are in the development process of your organization, idea, start-up and/or non-profits, identifying new opportunities to engage with your community/client can be a challenge. This workshop will provide a hands-on approach to the practice and how to apply the principals of ‘design thinking’ to uncover the influencers and values of your community/client.

So what is ‘design thinking? It is a way to instill customer-centricity and empathy, a means to solve complex problems, a methodology to foster exploration and experimentation and sometimes a design/marketing buzz word! Bottom line: design thinking is a problem solving mindset that is not exclusive to designers but is a technique that can be used by anyone to approaches every day challenges.

What is so important about identifying those influencers? Well… influencers are external factors (including individuals/groups) and ideals that effect individual behaviors. Whether it’s understanding who your community seeks advice from or listens to on the radio, understanding influencers give you the insight into why people behave as they do, who they interact with regularly and allows for new opportunities of future engagement. Finding the influences are a really helpful way to engage (education and/or market a new product/campaign) a community in a new and non-traditional method, helps to build new partnerships and can really help to see increase in impact/sales. 

Within the workshop you will learn:
1. 'How to' do empathic research: Empathic research is similar to 'ethnographic research' - which is to gain a deep understanding of how people live their lives

2. 'How to' develop your own community/client influencer map. How and where to look for these external factors, help understand who your audience is and where they can be reached.

3. 'How to' turn the influencers into opportunities. Look at case studies of other organization/companies finding new and impact way engage their communities /clients. 

This workshop is not a quiet taking-notes kind of class, everyone will be participating and going through the techniques. You will walk away with a cheat-sheet on how to bring these techniques into their regular work life.