Design Thinking is an approach that has been applied by organisations all over the world. In fact, 75% of organisations self-report that they are engaged in design thinking. 

Companies may be applying the approach but are any of them actually seeing results? 

Success stories are generally the easiest way to demonstrate the value of an approach. Here are six companies that have successfully applied design thinking. 

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1. Nordstrom

Nordstrom is known to be one of the most customer-centric companies in the world. This was evident when they were creating their new in-store sunglass app. Rather than take the standard approach used by many large organisations before them (pick a solution and spend lots of money), Nordstrom applied Design Thinking. A small team from Nordstrom spent a full week in their flagship store and leveraged real customers to help build the app. 

They started off by building a paper version of the app in-store and received immediate feedback from customers passing through. Based on the feedback, they iterated and then showed that new prototype to customers, and so on. At the end of the week, they had produced a fully functioning app that customers actually wanted. 

Here are some of the insights they gathered:

• Customers wanted a way to compare photos of themselves with different sunglasses on (in real-time)
• Customers wanted to have the option to zoom in on pictures
• Customers wanted to tag each image and also link them to the sunglass model number

All these insights were key in driving the development of the product. 

2. Bank of America

Bank of America was looking for a way to increase the use of their savings accounts by customers. They applied the design thinking methodology and started engaging with customers and uncovered that people liked the act of saving more than the actual amount they save. For example, customers would get the same good feeling if they deposited $50 a month compared to $600 at the end of the year. 

From this insight Bank of America developed the round-up concept, a product that allows customers to save with every transaction that they make. Customers, as a result, are able to get that same good feeling after every transaction. The results were staggering with Bank of America gaining over 10 million new customers and $1.8 billion in savings for them.