Alvin Chia is the Innovation Program Lead of DBS Bank. His tenure in DBS saw him leading more than fifty workshops, customer immersions and digital experiments across the region, leading to impactful solutions for the bank. 

Prior to DBS, Alvin consulted for the largest independent innovation consulting company, serving top-tier clients such as InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG), GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) and Unilever. Outside of work, Alvin lectures actively as an Adjunct Faculty with the Singapore University of Social Science and writes for the business and leadership verticals of the Huffington Post.

He is an alumnus of the National University of Singapore, Nanyang Technological University, and is currently completing a doctoral degree in Human-centered Design with National University of Singapore.

Research abstract: 

Human-centered design (HCD) has emerged in the business world today as one of the leading problem solving methods, as it brings the customer’s perspectives into business-oriented decision making, leading to more well-rounded and robust solutions. Despite the obvious upside, the implementation of HCD is often fraught with challenges, as businesses lacks the talents, skillsets and toolkits to launch it at scale. With a limited number of trained designers, implementing HCD often falls into the remit of non-designers from varying background and little training.   
 
Alvin’s proposed dissertation seeks to understand the problems non-designers experienced when implementing HCD in business. Proposed outcomes of the study includes (1) case studies of how businesses have implemented HCD and (2) a HCD toolkit designed for non-designers to aid business implementation.