Design Thinking And Empathy In The Work Space

by Geoff Bickford

Welcome to our SovTech DevChat series, where we invite external guests, as well as internal employees to talk about things they love. These guests will share their deep knowledge of everything from Engineering, to Cryptocurrency to Finance and Business.

The first guest of the series is Geoff Bickford. Geoff has a rich background in research, being very involved in the corporate environment. After realising that there was a great need for empathetic design thinking in every industry, Geoff started his company Lively. His company is a human-centred company that focuses on research, design thinking and facilitation. Lively empowers other businesses to tackle major issues with empathy and collaboration. Geoff speaks about some of the thinking that has informed his journey and his current life, touching on love, process, and people. He kicks off with an experimental exercise which is an integral part of design thinking. The experiment is based on thinking in the opposite mind frame to yours, as well as putting yourself in their position, such as a designer and a software developer.

Listen to our Podcast to hear how Bickford has developed his design thinking mind frame, skills and focus.

About SovTech:

SovTech is a custom software development company providing a complete software design and development service. We design, build, deploy and maintain innovative custom software that gives our clients the opportunity to start, run and grow world-class businesses. We believe technology will be at the core of businesses of the future. We aim to connect businesses across all industries to innovative software, technological development, solutions and services, in a manner that’s faster, easier and better than ever before. To date, we are operating across continents and have offices in Johannesburg, Cape Town, London and Dubai.