On June 26, the Chicago Connectory hosted Moonshot by Pactera, a digital product studio. Their goal is to help clients create products that their customers love, using their proven FUEL methodology. FUEL uses design thinking and lean innovation to expedite the innovation process.

Mike Kim, digitalization practice lead at Moonshot, kicked off the first session of their four-part workshop centered on the idea of the Design Sprint. The Design Sprint is a four-day process for answering big questions. It allows the co-creation of prototypes and validation with real people. This process of innovation is a human-centric, risk-averse, and collaborative way for cross-functional teams to create purposeful products and experiences. 

This first session focused on day one of the process – decide. On this day, participants define and decide on a challenge, they then produce a plethora of solutions to address that challenge. The “decide” phase gives participants the opportunity to answer the question – “How Might We?”

“How Might We” statements are optimistic invitations to explore more. “How” invites exploration, “might” encourages optimism, and “we” is collaborative. Mike invited a member of the audience to present their problem and asked the audience to write some HMW statements for their problem. He took the audience’s sticky-notes and gave feedback, explaining that the HMW statements should be open and that participants shouldn’t limit themselves to any certain aspect of a solution.

Thank you to Mike and the team from Moonshot for hosting their workshop at the Chicago Connectory! We look forward to hosting them next month for part two of their Design Sprints workshop.