Design thinking and your career
As we’re focussing this week on careers in engineering and design, I wanted to explore how a key concept in engineering – design thinking – can be used to help you navigate your career options. Using ‘navigate’ rather than ‘plan’ was a very deliberate choice – just like engineering design problems, careers are complex, hard to predict and don’t always turn out the way we expect. Careers and engineering problems both involve a process of trial and error, and both need a healthy dose of creativity, adaptability and keeping going in the face of setbacks to make progress.
In this post I’m going to take each stage of the design thinking process in turn and talk through how it can be used to make the complexity of career decision-making feel a little bit easier:
Empathise: empathising is all about recognising the needs of the end user of a product. When it comes to your career, the end user is YOU! Our own needs can so often get drowned out in the noise of other people’s views on what we should do, our own fears around what might happen, and the information we’re bombarded with in the news and social media. Empathising involves taking time to reflect on what is important to you in your career and what you’re good at. Ask yourself: what are my main motivators and drivers in relation to work? What is ‘career’ all about for me? What are my values? What else is important to me in life?
If these questions feel a bit too big and abstract – which they can – try reflecting on your experiences in the last three or four years. What do these tell you about what matters to you and where you like to focus your time and energies?
Building up a sense of what you have to offer employers is important here too. Spend some time reflecting on your strengths – the things you enjoy, naturally do well and which give you energy – as using these in your career can help you perform well and enjoy what you do.
The resources in our start thinking about your career get started guide will help here, particularly our Find your Future tool.
Define: defining is all about building a sense of what you’re aiming for or what ‘problem’ you’re trying to solve. Not necessarily ‘what job do I want to do’ but ‘where do I want to get to’ when it comes to your career. Try finishing the sentence ‘I want a job which…’ This will be different for different people but could include ‘I want a job which pays the bills’, ‘I want a job which is in sector x’, 'I want a job which has opportunities to learn and develop’, ‘I want a job which is close to family and friends’.
Of course, if you have half a dozen things you’d finish ‘I want a job which …’ with, you’ll need to put these in priority order and work out which you’d be willing to compromise on. Do a priorities grid if this helps, but don't forget to listen to your gut instinct about what's most important to you.
Ideate: this is (arguably) the fun bit. Go wild and list as many jobs as you think of, or ask yourself what you would do if money was no object. You could try scanning jobs on LinkedIn – regardless of level, grade or salary – pick out 10 that look interesting, and then try and what appeals to you about them and spot patterns. You could list jobs according to ‘what feels realistic’, ‘what feels a bit’ out of reach’ or ‘what I’d do straight after graduating’ and ‘what I might do later’.
If brainstorming jobs feels a bit too big and daunting, give yourself a starting point. You could look at what’s available relating to your subject, what exists within particular sectors, or mind map career options relating to a theme that interests you, such as technology, health, sustainability, or doing good Our careers in … helpsheets are useful starting points too.
Prototype: create small scale versions of the options you’re considering and try them out for size. In practice this could look like doing some work shadowing, internships (including our new micro internship programme) or virtual internships, or check out the engineering competition teams. You could also contact Bath alumni and ask what they do on a typical working day and what they like and don’t like about their jobs - great for gaining insight into what career options are actually like.
Test: once you’ve built up more insights into what the options you’re considering are like, you could talk with someone you trust (a friend, family member or careers consultant) about what you’ve learned. Was anything not what you expected? Are any of the options you though you wanted to consider now firmly off the list? Remember that the beauty of the design thinking approach is that not getting it right first time is ok – most of us do experiment with a few career pathways before getting it ‘right’, and our career ideas often change over time.
Iterate: this is about further reviewing and processing the learning from your prototyping, and planning next steps. Did you discover that you’d need to upskill in some way to pursue a particular option? When and how will you do this? Are there any other options you want to explore or revisit?
Further reading on design thinking and your career
Applying the Principles of Design Thinking to Career Development | Harvard Extension School
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