MHRD Innovation Cell organized a webinar as a live You Tube session on 6th May, 2020. The Leadership Talk was delivered by Ms. Prajakta Kulkarni, Founder, Director, Nodes Pvt. Ltd., Pune, and Mr. Sanket Inamdar, Co-founder, CEO, Nodes Pvt. Ltd, Pune. They delivered the talk on the topic “How to identify Right Problem and Solution Using the Double Diamond Approach in Design”. Faculty members and Students of Manav Rachna University attended the session. The session was very interesting as the speakers explained a niche Design Thinking approach called Double Diamond in innovative product design.

The speakers started the session with a brief introduction about the product of their company which is the Nodes Platform- a teacher centric tool that helps teachers deliver a new course on an unfamiliar topic without having subject matter expertise or time to plan and prepare, It is enabled by a set of co-curated lesson plans prepared by experts. Learning platform has also the capability of project documentation and skill measurement of students. With appropriate examples, the speakers explained Design Thinking approach, importance of problem finding, the steps and tools in Double Diamond process in design thinking and also how to strategize product innovation and business offerings using design thinking.

The speakers emphasized on the three most important elements of Design Thinking namely viability (ability to work and survive), desirability (ability to feel good) and feasibility (ability to be conveniently done). The four parts of Double Diamond are discover (empathize and understand), define, (get problem insight and ideate), develop (conceptualization of selected idea, prototype creation, testing) and deliver (prototype implementation, validation, improvement).

Mr. Sanket Inamdar finally took up a case study example to make the audience understand about the importance of problem finding. It was a specific type of sports shoe which Nike launched in the market wherein the sole was always coming off when the athlete was wearing it with socks. However, instead of just modifying the sole with better sticking ability, they did more research and investigation on feedback received from the users and realized that the socks were enabling the sole to bulge out. So, they changed the shoe design for wearing it without socks by using Nike Flyknit technology.

The speakers made the whole session very interesting and easy to understand by picking up right examples and so the attendee students and faculty members were benefitted by gaining a good understanding of Double Diamond Process in Design Thinking.