Last week, four Liipers joined a crowd of customer experience practitioners for the LISTEN14 conference at the GDI near Zurich.

Special guest among the key note speakers was Larry Leifer, professor at Stanford University and author of best-selling books on Design Thinking.

In his keynote, Larry gave examples of how his students achieve innovative products in teams through Design Thinking.

Innovation starts with very early prototypes: “Don't brainstorm, but protostorm”, says Larry. Another point that Larry makes is that successful teams ask more questions rather than stating facts. “Wow teams ask 40 questions per hour,” suggest studies done at Standford. In contrast to “thank you” teams which stay silent in the beginning, ask only 20 questions, and decide quickly on pre-existing facts.

Stanford's research focuses increasingly on artificial intelligence. Larry says, the challenge of our time is to make the robots among us (like iPhones) more human. He suggests seeing humans and machines as one team. In this relationship of person and robot, both have to be able to share information, emotion, and learning.

Many of Larry's thoughts were reflected throughout the conference in the other keynotes and in the workshops. Also the closing podium discussion raised thought provoking questions on the purpose of technology and the products we create for our customers. The value of Design Thinking was best highlighted in a statement from Marcel Altherr: “Design Thinking helps us to create products that don't force us to live like machines.”

The LISTEN conference is an inspiring event at the wonderful venue of the GDI with friendly staff. If you want to connect with the LISTEN conference you can do so on the event's Facebook page.

This tweet by @stengl puts it well: