Let’s do this

I have never written a blog, but I always considered starting one. Similarly, I have never started a business before, but entrepreneurs and business owners surround me. Both my mum and my brother have worked on their own business almost all of their careers. My maternal grandfather was an avid entrepreneur and zero risk-averse and changed career paths several times before it was a trend. I guess that starting a business was the same as the blog had always been in the back of my mind as something I might probably someday do, but I had not yet discovered what it would be about.

I’ve been passionate about international relations, sustainable development, gender & feminism, and safe & friendly public spaces for some years now. I worked in project management and project implementation for some years in Barcelona, New Delhi, and Medellin. And four years ago, I discovered design thinking and human-centered design. I have combined both sets of passions to become a service designer to help solve wicked problems sustainably - with the end user’s present and future needs at the center of the design, while also having key stakeholders happy and enthusiastic about the service program.

The idea for Design Sapient is two-fold. On the one hand, we will help organizations develop a fuller understanding of their end-user, including their day-to-day life and their current and future needs, to design and implement programs and services that truly impact their lives and futures. On the other hand, we will help organizations know their workers and develop processes that fit their needs to become more efficient. It could be named the double user approach.

And how will we achieve this? Because we know that the more heterogeneous a group of people trying to solve a wicked problem, the better the outcome will be. It’s essential to boost conversations and nurture ideas with very different points of view but with one standard methodology to achieve a goal. Even if Design Sapient is originally only two people (Komlan and myself), we are lucky enough to have met many interesting people through our careers, travels, and experiences. Some of them have similar backgrounds to us when it comes to degrees, careers, or both. And others have completely different life stories. And we plan on leveraging all this talent of like-minded individuals according to the project needs. 

Another key player in this process will be company employees. This again has two benefits. First of all, we will have the company's vision at all times, with inside insights and knowledge in the discussions. This person will then become familiar with the human-centered design processes, thus transferring knowledge directly to the organization. When the time comes to implement the resulting idea, this person will already know the project inside and out and make sure the ideas are transferred into action. Ensuring, then, a true implementation.

Now we need to get started. Let’s do this!