The Challenge

As we progress through this digital revolution, the energy sector becomes more competitive. For most major oil and gas companies this has been driven by technology, social and digital innovation. To remain as a leader in the energy industry, our client has realised the need for creating accelerated programs to allow them to be innovators in this area.

As part of this ambition, they were aiming to enable collaborative, smarter and safer working through the digital products they created. In a programme called ‘Optimized Production’, Chaucer was asked to run a design thinking workshop to help them progress from problem to prototype in 5 days.

Due to our long-standing relationship with the client, the team tasked with this role already had a keen understanding of their:.

1. The market: who the users were, where they sat in the organisation
2. The challenge: what the end users were going through, their happy moments, pains points, ambitions
3. The technology and competition: what competitors are currently doing in this area
4. The business case: the value that they could bring to the client through our solution

The Solution

Using a design thinking approach, Chaucer executed a phased model of discovery, design and development which lead to an understanding of the relationship between the business needs, the user wants and the technological limitations. Chaucer led the workshop with strategists, engineers and designers in the room.

Discovery:

1. Chaucer engaged with senior leadership to understand the requirement from the business
2. Gained clarity on the market and who we were building for
3. Chaucer performed user interviews with a global sample that was representative of region and discipline
4. Highlight the gap between business needs and user wants
5. After gathering these insights, the problem statement was defined to allow the design phase to be focused clearly on the end user wants

Design:

1. Chaucer led an ideation session of combining individual and group thinking
2. Diverse thinking and idea generation allowed themes to be identified, grouped and prioritized
3. Chaucer led the development of a low fidelity prototype – sketches, storyboards

Develop:

1. Chaucer established a business case based on end user requirements to gain approval and progress from prototype to a “minimum viable product”
2. Storytelling coaching helped the product team to have conversations with the end users to take them through the journey and to get feedback
3. Identified the key users to test the product

The Results

The business set up an agile team to help continue to develop the product. They supported the phased approach and agreed to the value agreed proposed by the team.

The product team was aligned with the vision of the product and its value levers. They also had a data-driven, validated solution framework on which to develop and build.

They had a low fidelity prototype that they were able to test back with their users, and therefore through continuous engagement were able to identify and mobilise their change network.