Empowering Women Entrepreneurs with Design Thinking

Empowering Women Entrepreneurs via Design Thinking

Client

CARE International

Industry

SME’s

Work

Design Thinking Workshopping
Research
Testing
Experience Design

Background

CARE International, a global humanitarian organization, sought to understand, redesign, and enhance business solutions for women-led Small and Growing Businesses (SGBs) across Vietnam’s rural and urban regions. The goal was to address their unique challenges and unlock opportunities for growth and empowerment.

How We Helped:

Doodle Design partnered with CARE International to apply a human-centered approach to this challenge. The process began with hypothesized persona profiles representing diverse women SGB owners across Vietnam. These personas were validated through ethnographic interviews with 35 SGB owners, uncovering key insights into their goals, pain points, and needs.

Building on these insights, the team developed priority challenge statements to spark ideation. Using Design Thinking tools, we co-created and refined a range of creative ideas, ultimately prioritizing five key solutions. These ideas were visualized and prototyped, enabling rapid testing, iteration, and refinement to deliver the best-fit solutions for the entrepreneurs.

Work Outputs: 

Ethnographic Research & Persona Design
Customer Journey Mapping
Prototyping & Testing
Design Thinking Learning Sessions
Design Thinking Workshops

Read more: Learn how we co-created financial education for Vietnamese factory workers with IDEO.

“People ignore products that ignore people. HCD is 100% about the people. Their true needs. Each and every designer at Doodle Design or IDEO.org needs to stay unbiased and see the world as how it could be, not as it is. This inclusive mindset reduces the chance for ideas to be rejected or ignored. This is how we can break the vicious cycle to widen financial access to people who are truly in need.”

Nhu Vo

Founder, Doodle Design

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