• Service Design
• Design Thinking
• Transformation

Design Thinking & Service Design Workshops for BNY’s Corporate Trust Team

Experience Haus worked with the Corporate Trust Product and Operations teams in New York to design, build and deliver a structured three-day Design Thinking workshop, equipping participants with modern problem-framing, ideation, and service design methodologies to drive meaningful transformation in their client-facing and operational workflows.

THE TASK

BNY’s Corporate Trust division recognised the need to upskill its Product and Operations teams in human-centred design and service design methodologies. With responsibilities spanning complex client journeys, product experience, and operational transformation, the team needed a structured learning environment where they could build new capabilities without the pressure of live project constraints. The goal was to create a foundation — a shared mindset and a common set of tools — that could then be applied directly to the division’s broader transformation agenda.

ACTIONS

To meet these objectives, Experience Haus designed and delivered an immersive three-day Design Thinking workshop for the Corporate Trust team in New York. The programme was structured as a progressive learning journey, with each day building deliberately on the last — moving from foundational mindset through ideation and into systems-level service design. A safe, non-project-specific challenge context was used throughout to encourage risk-taking and openness. Activities included:

• Empathy mapping and learning journey mapping to identify client pain points and extract actionable insights
• Question Storming and structured ideation techniques, including Crazy 8s and SCAMPER, to rapidly generate and pressure-test ideas
• Prioritisation frameworks (Value vs. Effort matrices) to move from divergent thinking to focused decision-making
• Service blueprinting, mapping front-stage client actions against back-stage processes, data, and technology

Each session was grounded in experiential learning — participants practised every tool on real-feeling challenges rather than absorbing theory passively, ensuring the methods felt immediately applicable to their day-to-day work.

THE OUTCOME

By the close of the three-day programme, participants had moved through the full arc of modern design practice: from stepping into the client’s shoes, to generating ambitious options, to translating those ideas into operational blueprints. The team left with both a shared methodology and concrete artefacts they could carry into subsequent transformation work. Key outcomes included:

• A shift in team mindset from instinctive solution-jumping to structured, empathy-led problem framing
• Practical fluency in core design thinking and service design tools applicable to client journey and product experience work
• A completed sample service blueprint in the exact format required for the division’s ongoing North Star transformation programme
• Greater confidence in facilitating ideation and systems thinking conversations internally

WORKSHOP PARTICIPANT

Coming in, we were used to moving straight to solutions. The academy gave us the discipline to slow down, understand the real problem, and map the full system before committing to a direction. It's changed how we're approaching our transformation work.