The two small, bright yellow boxes on the shelf rattle enticingly when handled. What on earth could they contain? The answer is soon revealed: Lego bricks of all colours and sizes. Not perhaps the first thing that visitors would expect to find in an office of the leading European provider of consulting services and systems for the property industry. But that’s not all: brightly coloured felt balls, wax crayons and a wealth of handicraft materials can be found on the shelf below, while giant orange bean bags are ranged along the windows. Sinking into one of them, you catch sight of a black punch bag on the wall opposite. This is the moment when you realise beyond doubt that this is anything but a normal office. We’re in the DesignLab.

“Design thinking wasn’t a completely new concept for us, but our workshop in Aareon’s DesignLab marked the first time that we had developed a specific digital solution using this agile approach. It wasn’t just an exciting experience; above all it was productive, user-oriented and effective.”

Empathising with the user
“The property industry is no different from other sectors, in that customer relationships are increasingly moving away from the analogue and into the digital world,” explains Stefan Roth from Strategic Product Marketing at Aareon, sitting down on one of the green swivel chairs at the long conference table. “It’s often a question of finding out how our customers can best communicate with their own customers. If we establish that an app is the most sensible networking method, then users need to be reassured that it isn’t merely functional, but above all easy to operate – otherwise nobody will ever use it.”

But establishing what precisely users consider “easy” and what their detailed requirements are has much less to do with technological competence than with empathy and imagination in the first instance. That’s because design thinking involves people from various disciplines coming together in an environment conducive to creativity with a view to developing solutions by adopting the mindset of potential users and anticipating their needs.

“This interdisciplinary approach is extremely productive, given that we are used to thinking largely in terms of technological implementation,” says Martin Dunkel from Aareon’s DesignLab team. “We have always worked with user models known as personas to date. But a customer is naturally welcome to bring actual future users, such as tenants, to the workshop so that their suggestions can be incorporated directly.”