Texbrasil companies take part in design thinking workshop

The Center for Innovation and Sustainability of Texbrasil (Brazilian Fashion Industry Export Program developed by Abit and Apex-Brasil), in partnership with Fundacao Vanzolini, held a Design Thinking workshop today (10th) with Reinhold Steinbeck, a researcher from Stanford University, and Edgard Charles Stuber, a partner of ECS Inovacao Comercial, a strategic marketing and sales management consulting firm. The speaker from Stanford is the director of a program of the institution that seeks to create a bridge with educational centers especially from the southern hemisphere.Approximately 15 representatives of Brazilian companies taking part in the Program were assembled at Abit’s headquarters to understand how to use design thinking techniques to solve problems. The speakers detailed the five main steps that are included in this process, emphasizing, defining, idealizing, prototyping and testing, and developed exercises for those present to manage to apply them to solve a problem.Within this context, one of the main focal points of the discussion was the importance of empathy for achieving a better understanding of difficulties, including interviewing techniques to obtain information from the people involved. “Sometimes we believe we know what the problem is, but when we take a closer look at the idea we realize that we are in fact dealing with a different problem. Therefore we must stop to think before moving directly to a solution”, remarked Stuber.Finally, they taught brainstorming techniques aiming to help conceive the best solutions. “When we are trying to come up with ideas, we find ourselves stuck in the middle of the process and need to have procedures to get out of these situations, through other perspectives”, explained Steinbeck.