Studio Fall 2021
How might we unlock the power of innovation within DFW Airport employees?
In the fall of 2021, Dallas-Fort Worth International Airport (DFW Airport) challenged students to tackle the problem of “How might we unlock the power of innovation within DFW Airport employees?” Each team pursued research areas that included corporate innovation practices within the aviation industry, organizational behavior systems, and theoretical frameworks surrounding timeless human needs. Teams had to consider how their prototypes would function not only for headquarters-based employees, but also for remote, location-based DFW Airport team members.
Context
- 10-15 percent of the company was retiring, making it an opportune time for organizational transformation.
- All DFW Airport employees had recently completed a virtual training module called “Innovation Mindsets.” The training defined innovation as “something new + something useful.”
- Approximately 60 percent of DFW Airport’s 2,000 employees work outside the main office buildings, often during untraditional hours.
TEAM ONE: Ground Control to Major Team
Prototype: Brain Dates
Deborah Clanton | Ramisa Faruque | Jessica Godwin | Ryan Lozano
Brain Dates: Knowledge-sharing sessions during which DFW Airport employees were matched in small groups across varying roles and teams to connect and collaborate.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Ground Control to Major Team wanted to build something that would bring DFW Airport employees from different departments and teams together at a designated time in an environment to learn more about each other. This idea is rooted in determining whether this type of causal connection could affect the way employees work. The design team wanted to test whether conversations in a safe space would promote collaboration and increase engaged culture, which was identified as one of the primary keys to unlocking the power of innovation within employees.
PROTOTYPE
To test their idea, Ground Control ran a Brain Dates prototype at DFW Airport Headquarters. They utilized the Learning Center at Headquarters — a neutral space usually used for employee training — as the testing environment. Each participant was given a “menu” that included various conversation starters. This menu functioned as a tool for them to leverage as needed, but was not necessarily a rigid conversation guide.
Once participants were checked in, facilitators introduced themselves and the objective of the prototype in partnership with the Innovation Team. Facilitators proceeded to go over community norms and instructions for the Brain Date. Norms included:
- Be positive and encouraging
- Show mutual respect
- Take turns talking
- There are NO wrong answers
- Have fun!
KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES IDENTIFIED
- Intentional Connections – In order for Brain Dates to be most effective in addressing the cross-functional pillar, the design team recommended that participants should be grouped across departments, tenure, and roles. In allowing groups to come together across the different business units and leadership levels in DFW Airport, the Brain Dates concept aimed to foster even more connections across all of the airport community.
- Relatable Conversations – The Brain Dates prototype was all about fostering connections and conversations in casual ways. The design team utilized a “menu’’ as the framework for the initial test, providing the participants with a decision-making tool that was not only familiar to them but also allowed them to have something tangible to draw inspiration from and connect over.
- Informal Environments – The airport has an incredibly unique environment, and the design team recommended that future Brain Dates be hosted in various locations across different DFW Airport buildings. Being mindful of these locations will allow participants to gain more exposure to both the physical and intellectual DFW Airport community.
TEAM TWO: Team ACE
Prototype: Innovation Gamestorming
Alain Mota | Caroline Harms | Emily Lee
Innovation Gamestorming: A brainstorming activity platform that can be accessed anywhere using a computer, phone or any other electronic device that has access to the internet.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
Based on their research around habit building and systems that promote behavior such as behavior enablers, artifacts, and nudges, Team ACE found that an area of opportunity centers on having repeated behaviors that create a system that is obvious, easy, satisfying, and attractive. Part of the team’s thesis was that innovation is not a one-size-fits-all solution, and in order to activate it, you need to really understand how each airport employee is engaging in order for information to be delivered in a way that is specific to their needs. Innovation Gamestorming is a digital, gamified experience. The first part of the activity was a survey, through which participants were asked about activities with innovation mindset content. The purpose of the initial survey was to gather information about the participants preferences on the number of mindset activities per week they would like to take part in each week, when they would like these activities to occur, how they would like to receive nudges, and a reflection of the value that proposed merits could bring to them. After the team heard how the audience wanted to be engaged, innovation prompts and activities were deployed to the participants on a cadence informed by their choices in the initial survey.
PROTOTYPE
The interactive activities in Innovation Gamestorming were defined as fun and engaging prompts grounded on the Innovation Mindset training components (questioning, exploring, experimenting) and consisted of no more than three reflections that were text-based. The participants had a turn to practice questioning with the prompt, “what problem would I try to fix if I knew it was okay to fail.” After the first questioning exercise, the participant sees a message of encouragement for completing the activity and information about when their next activity would occur.
KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES IDENTIFIED
- Cue – The design team cued employees to initiate an innovation mindset behavior by using airport-related content that employees could relate to and apply their expertise so that the questioning, exploring and experimenting mindset exercises they would be doing could be applied to any projects they were on.
- Craving – Craving is the motivational force behind every habit which is a desire to change your internal state. In order for users to want to spend time and participate in these activities, it was important to make the activities something that they wanted to return to.
- Response – The response is the actual habit you perform. The team integrated this principle into their design by focusing on making the activities accessible and easy which provided an unexpected depth of responses. They made the activities easy by keeping each activity short and possible to complete in under five minutes. They made the activities accessible by allowing DFW employees to choose the device they wanted to participate with.
- Rewards – Rewards are the end goal of every habit. The design team heard from employees that rewards motivated them. DFW employees wanted to receive merits—or rewards—noting the achievement they made in integrating innovative mindset habits into their day-to-day work. Team ACE was not able to provide physical rewards in this version of Innovation Gamestorming, but were sure to include verbal encouragement before and after each activity was completed.
TEAM Three: Free to Move About
Prototype: Innovation Ambassadors
Hope Anderson | Kaci McCartan | JT Ringer
Innovation Ambassadors: A program that allows DFW Airport employees to tell stories about innovation, activate their trainings, connect across business units, and Innovation therefore, amplify innovation culture at DFW Airport.
PROJECT OVERVIEW
By the end of 2021, 100 percent of DFW Airport employees had taken the online Innovation Mindsets training module that was spearheaded by the DFW Airport Innovation Team. These trainings had given employees a common innovation vocabulary, as well as an opportunity to practice the innovation process, providing employees the skills needed to shift DFW Airport to an innovative organization. However, the design team was unsure what current reinforcement systems were in place at DFW Airport around innovation. They saw an area of opportunity emerging between the interview themes — Activation, Connection, and Storytelling — and organizational change at DFW Airport. They sought an innovation reinforcement system that would support the employee trainings and the priorities that leadership had been communicating.
PROTOTYPE
The team wanted to design the Innovation Ambassador program with DFW Airport employees, not for them. In Phase 1, they sought to understand, “How can Innovation Ambassadors work specifically for DFW Airport?” To answer this, the team facilitated a one-hour co-creation workshop with ten DFW Airport employees from six different business units. During the workshop, the design team introduced the concept of Innovation Ambassadors and asked the participants to help the team understand what it would take to make the program thrive at DFW Airport. By volunteering a portion of their work week to serve in this program, the Innovation Ambassadors would relieve pressure from the Innovation Team as they work to preserve bandwidth. The design team asked participants to imagine that they were Innovation Ambassadors while answering the following five questions:
- Incentives – What motivated you to become an Innovation Ambassador? Why did you decide to be part of this program
- Challenges – When creating an Innovation Ambassador program, what potential challenges/hurdles should we consider?
- Success – As an Innovation Ambassador, what do you need to succeed?
- Resources – What topics would you want to be covered in specialized training, and what resources would you want or need to help you when you meet with employees?
- Stories – How could we show or communicate your wins and learnings as an Innovation Ambassador?
After the co-creation workshop, the design team analyzed the data and saw several themes emerge across the prompts. These themes were structure, connection, value, time, and support.
The design team focused on the three themes that emerged during the co-creation workshop: connection, time, and structure. The participants were excited to connect to people in different business units. Ideally, the design team would like to see Innovation Ambassadors in every business unit. Additionally, the design team heard that time was a big concern during the workshop, so they limited the Innovation Ambassador experience to one hour. Finally, in the workshop, employees expressed a strong desire for templates, tools, or frameworks to use as Innovation Ambassadors. The design team concluded that templates are beneficial, but Innovation Ambassadors should make adjustments as they see fit. The templates are tools, not rules.
KEY DESIGN PRINCIPLES IDENTIFIED
Based on the learnings from both prototype phases, the design team identified key design principles that would need to be true to successfully roll out a program similar to the Innovation Ambassador program that was tested. The design principles are organized by the overarching themes of Activation, Connection, and Storytelling.
- Activation– Innovation Ambassadors activate the innovation learning process by creating a program that allows employees to practice innovation via unique opportunities for innovation and consistent resources to support activation.
- Connection – Innovation Ambassadors connect employees across business units to solve problems through peer-to-peer learning and an organic, flexible ecosystem in the workplace.
- Storytelling – Innovation Ambassadors tell stories to show innovation outcomes that showcase measurable value along with relatable wins and learnings.
