Design Thinking Workshops
Identifying user-driven AI opportunities through structured collaboration
The Problem
How can an ed-tech company leverage AI to improve its bottom line?
With rapid advancements in AI, educational technology companies faced the challenge to rapidly integrate AI into their products. As part of a consulting team, we worked with a large ed-tech firm to facilitate a design thinking workshop to explore, validate, and prioritize AI use cases.
Process
1. Interviewed members across the organization to understand their current workflow's pain points and opportunities for growth.
• Stakeholders were excited about AI’s potential but lacked a shared understanding of use cases grounded in real user needs.
• Several teams expressed frustration with past top-down AI initiatives that didn’t reflect on-the-ground workflows or user pain points.
2. Prepared materials to use for the workshop using Mural and PowerPoint.
3. During the workshop, collaborated on Mural to create user personas, as-is flows, and empathy maps.
With over 50 different stakeholders in 6 different sessions, the visual and interactive nature of the tools helped foster engagement and ensure that all voices were heard to dive deeper into the user experience and identify pain points, motivations, and potential areas where AI could have the most significant impact.
4. Synthesized workshop findings into a presentation for the Executive Board.
Results
6 workshops with 50+ stakeholders
Completed to further align teams across product, engineering, and the business.
3 AI-driven opportunities
Identified through the workshops that received C-suite investment for development.
Revitalized Product Teams
One participant called it “the clearest and most energizing discussion we’ve had about AI all year.”
Lessons learned
• Collaborative workshops drive alignment and creativity: Engaging stakeholders in hands-on design thinking exercises, such as empathy mapping and persona development, fostered a deeper understanding of user needs and helped the group align on AI opportunities that deliver real value.
• Preparation is key: We sent pre-read materials to workshop attendees to prepare ideas ahead of time, a tactic known as private collection. The preparation led to more collaboration and ideas being shared as well as saving us time during the context-setting part of the workshop.
