When Experience Becomes a System: New Member of Kharkiv IT Cluster — Design Thinking Lab

July 07, 2026

Sometimes, a partnership is not born at a networking event or sealed by a contract, but after twenty years of parallel paths, shared challenges, and lessons learned along the way. This is exactly how Design Thinking Lab emerged — a consulting company that helps businesses transform internal chaos into a well-orchestrated system and teams into a true engine of results.

This spring, Design Thinking Lab joined the Kharkiv IT Cluster to stay closer to IT companies and help them navigate growth stages in a more structured and confident way.

Two Kharkiv natives, twenty years of experience — one approach

The founders of Design Thinking Lab, Nadiia Khokhlova and Iryna Bobrus, met twenty years ago. Since then, they have followed parallel paths: solving similar business challenges, experimenting with different approaches, sharing clients, and exchanging experience. Each built her own career in top management across IT, healthcare, retail, and banking.

Nadiia is an expert in change management, customer service design, and internal communications, with strong operational leadership experience. She understands deeply what a company looks like from the inside when processes break down — and what needs to change for people to move in one direction.

Iryna is an HR expert with deep specialization in organizational design, team development, and corporate culture. She translates complex HR systems into clear business language — from competency frameworks and evaluation systems to motivation and compensation models. She is also a speaker at the HRD Academy.

In 2024, they realized their values were aligned and their approaches were complementary. What each had built separately over the years gained a new level of depth when combined. That is how Design Thinking Lab was born.

What hurts fast-growing IT companies?

Owners and CEOs of IT companies know this feeling well: the company is growing, the team is expanding, and suddenly it becomes unclear who is responsible for what. Processes that once worked “by intuition” start failing. There are more meetings, but less clarity. People change. Goals exist — but how to achieve them is unclear.

These are the most common requests IT companies bring to Design Thinking Lab:

• Scaling chaos: processes fail to keep up with growth
• Blurred responsibilities: unclear decision-making and ownership
• Lack of shared direction: teams work, but not always in the same trajectory
• People management challenges: turnover, demotivation, conflicts between management levels

These pains are not unique — but the solution is always individual.

Why design thinking is not about pretty sticky notes

When you hear “design thinking,” it is easy to imagine a workshop filled with colorful sticky notes. But Design Thinking Lab applies a fundamentally different approach to organizational work.

Design thinking is a way of solving complex human problems through deep understanding of the people experiencing them.

Unlike traditional consulting, which often delivers “best practices,” or coaching, which focuses mainly on individual development, Design Thinking Lab combines both dimensions — systemic and human. They analyze structure, processes, culture, and team dynamics simultaneously. Their belief is simple: sustainable change happens only when it is built together with the people who will implement it.

“Team development is inseparable from leadership development. If only the system changes without a shift in leadership mindset, new practices will not take root.”

What exactly does Design Thinking Lab do?

• Strategy and facilitation: when companies face ambitious goals but lack a clear path to execution, Design Thinking Lab facilitates strategic sessions and helps build a living, actionable strategy with clear ownership and deadlines.
• Their clients include IT companies targeting x2, x3, and even x10 growth. The goal is to ensure the organization can withstand that scaling. The team works with real metrics — OKR, KPI, P&L, ROI — not as buzzwords, but as instruments that show whether the company is truly moving in the right direction.
• Leadership assessment and development: they build competency frameworks, conduct individual and team assessments, and run hands-on mentoring. Leaders are the driving force of transformation — and company growth stops where leadership growth stops.
• Design Thinking Lab enters the process before transformation becomes intimidating. From day one, they define what success looks like and how it will be measured. Every step is backed by metrics.
• HR systems and culture: the team helps build systems ranging from compensation and incentives to value-based management and internal communications — ensuring that what works for 50 people does not collapse at 300.
• Design thinking training: workshops where teams learn to explore the experiences of customers and employees and design solutions that truly work.

“We do not bring a beautiful presentation and disappear after a strategy session. We join companies when serious growth is ahead — and stay until it happens.”

What collaboration looks like

Design Thinking Lab is committed to walking the entire journey with a team until results are achieved.

It all starts with an introductory consultation: understanding the request, identifying the real pain, and analyzing context. The outcome is either a clear proposal on how the company can be supported — or a recommendation of partners better suited for the task. If alignment is reached, project scope and expected outcomes are defined. Change does not happen in one meeting. But it does happen when the right people are involved.

If your IT company is going through a scaling phase, searching for answers to “where are we going and how,” or building a team grounded in shared values — Design Thinking Lab is ready to start the conversation.

Learn more about Design Thinking Lab and book a consultation