Extending design thinking to the wider organization

Global digital transformation company Fujitsu has long recognized the role of strategic design in the successful delivery of outstanding technology projects and user experiences. And that commitment was stepped up in mid-2020 when it entered into an ambitious new partnership with the Experience Design Academy of POLI.design, the commercial arm of the renowned Politecnico di Milano’s Experience Design Academy, with the aim of instilling design expertise into all levels of Fujitsu — not just its engineers and developers but its customer care, accounts and other teams.

By establishing a strategic design training curriculum with POLI.design, the company will extend the impact of its FUJITSU Human Centric Experience Design (HXD), the digital transformation-focused co-creation methodology much lauded by customers who have participated in either physical or, more recently, virtual workshop sessions. The POLI.design tie-up also involves undertaking joint research into how FUJITSU HXD can be applied even more effectively in both business and social settings. 

Venanzio Arquilla, associate professor at Politecnico di Milano and leader of POLI.design, believes that combining the two organizations’ considerable — and complementary — expertise will deliver enhanced value to a wide range of customers and partners, by helping to ensure the best design principles are applied across all activities and, in particular, when it comes to delivering complex digital transformation projects.

“We have seen already that the FUJITSU HXD methodology is not only being used by designers but right across organizations,” he says. “That’s the most interesting challenge: how to transfer design methodology in a comprehensible and coherent way to all people within an organization. If you really want to be successful today, you need to do that wider design education.”

Arquilla is also convinced by the FUJITSU HXD methodology. It brings together diverse perspectives — from customers, Fujitsu experts and the company’s ecosystem of technology partners in industry and academia — to focus on customers’ challenges and rapidly work towards real, deployable outcomes, rather than a traditional method of trying to fit products or pre-conceived solutions to set requirements.

FUJITSU HXD has enormous potential, says Arquilla, not least of all because it is highly human-centric. As such, it enables the parties involved to understand and address users’ needs at an early stage and so deliver game-changing transformation. “We want to develop this kind of collaborative workshop approach in an even more strategic way,” he says. “So not only listening to the user but enabling them to be proactive in proposing a direction that may be unexpected — thus moving from what might be an incremental change to a radical innovation.”

This is the most effective way, in today’s increasingly complex digital landscape, of ensuring innovation teams go beyond a focus on technology and deliver genuine value for all stakeholders, he believes. “And this kind of strategic collaboration can ensure Fujitsu becomes a partner not only for technology but also in how that technology is used in the best ways to meet human needs.”

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