❝Design thinking originally came about as a way of teaching engineers how to approach problems creatively, as designers do. One of the first people to write about design thinking was John E. Arnold, a professor of mechanical engineering at Stanford University. In 1959, he wrote “Creative Engineering,” which established the four areas of design thinking. From there, design thinking began to evolve as a “way of thinking” in the fields of science and design engineering—as can be seen in Herbert A. Simon’s book “The Sciences of the Artificial” and Robert McKim’s “Experiences in Visual Thinking”.❞
❝Design thinking is not a linear process with specific milestones and where the steps are undertaken sequentially. Instead, it is an iterative process where steps may loop between stages. In the end, insights and possible solutions are constantly fine-tuned, and as a result, a sustainable, feasible, and viable product, service, or process is developed.
The term “design thinking” was popularized by Roger L. Martin (Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto), Tim Brown, and David Kelley (IDEO) and developed further by Stanford’s d. School is an institution devoted to design thinking. It’s a different way of problem-solving that brings in the human factor to find out what works. It aims to empathize with users and understand their needs, involve them in brainstorming and problem-solving processes, build on their feedback in the final service or product, then test and verify innovative solutions with them.❞
❝Design Thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? What’s unique about Design Thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques to solve problems creatively and innovatively – in our designs, businesses, and countries in our lives.
Some leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and GE, have rapidly adopted the Design Thinking approach. In addition, design Thinking is being taught at leading universities worldwide, including d.school, Stanford, Harvard, and MIT. But do you know what Design Thinking is? And why it’s so popular? Here, we’ll cut to the chase and tell you what it is and why it’s so in demand.
Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial understanding. At the same time, Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working and a collection of hands-on methods.
Design Thinking revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. It helps us observe and develop empathy with the target user. Design Thinking helps us in the process of questioning: questioning the problem, assumptions, and implications. Design Thinking is beneficial in tackling ill-defined or unknown problems by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Design Thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching, prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.❞
Thinking like a Designer
Thinking like a designer can transform how organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategies. This approach, known as design thinking, combines what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people not trained as designers to use creative tools to address various challenges.
Defining Design Thinking
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on four human-centered, possibility-driven, option-focused, and iterative questions.
What are those four questions?
What is?
What if?
What wows?
What works?
Design thinking is also both an ideology and a process that seeks to solve complex problems in a user-centric way. It focuses on achieving practical results and solutions that are:
Technically feasible: They can be developed into functional products or processes;
Economically viable: The business can afford to implement them;
Desirable for the user: They meet a fundamental human need.
When design meets business – basics of the design thinking process
We can also separate Design Thinking into five steps and 3 phases, they are:
Empathize (Immersion phase)
Define (Immersion phase)
Ideate (Ideation phase)
Prototype (Ideation/Implementation phase)
Test (Implementation phase)
How does the process work? What should we do in each phase?
➞ Empathize
What? You’ll engage with and observe your target audience during the empathize phase.
Why? This step aims to paint a clear picture of who your end users are, what challenges they face, and what needs and expectations must be met.
How? You’ll conduct surveys, interviews, and observation sessions to build user empathy.
For example, You want to address the issue of employee retention, so you ask each employee to complete an anonymous survey. You then hold user interviews with as many employees as possible to find out how they feel about retention within the company.
Explore the environment, get to know the stakeholders, stay with them, talk to them, listen to them, and try to understand the whole situation. Don’t forget that this is a human-centered approach, which means that you need to understand the ’humans’ (users/ customers, etc.) affected by the activities you’d like to upgrade or change. You need to empathize with them and find out their needs sensibly. At the end of this phase, you must have a lot of insights that can be shown on various tools (customer journey map, user persona, service blueprint, empathy map, etc.), depending on the type of service/ issue you are designing.
➞ Define (What is?)
What? Based on what you’ve learned in the empathize phase, the next step is to define a clear problem statement.
Why? Your problem statement sets out the specific challenge you will address. It will guide the entire design process from here on out, giving you a fixed goal to focus on and helping to keep the user in mind at all times.
How? When framing your problem statement, you’ll focus on the user’s needs rather than the business's. A good problem statement is human-centered, broad enough for creativity, yet specific enough to provide guidance and direction.
For example: “My employees need to be able to maintain a healthy lifestyle while working in the office” is much more user-centric than “I need to keep my employees healthy and happy to boost retention.”
I think this is one of the most critical points at the beginning of the process — to set the focus. After collecting insights in the first step, we can create a “point-of-view” statement or question. This question sounds like this: “How might we encourage children to eat healthy food at school?” The query includes the user, the need, and the insight. If you work in a creative place (or are lucky enough to have a design thinking room), you can write the POV on a poster and stick it on the wall so that you won’t forget it during the process.
There is a great startup quote: “Fall in love with the problem, not the solution”.
➞ Ideate (What if?)
What? With a clear problem statement in mind, you’ll aim to come up with as many ideas and potential solutions as possible.
Why? The ideation phase gets you thinking outside the box and exploring new angles. By focusing on the number of ideas rather than quality, you’re more likely to free your mind and stumble upon innovation!
How? During dedicated ideation sessions, you’ll use various techniques such as brainstorming, reverse thinking, and the worst possible idea.
For example: Based on what you’ve learned in the empathize phase, you hold several ideation sessions with various stakeholders. Then, with your problem statement in hand, you come up with as many ideas as possible to make your employees happier and, thus, more likely to stay with the company.
Go outside into nature, and talk to people from other disciplines/ professions. It is essential to speak with other people, and there is no such thing as “your” idea. With thorough understanding and focusing on the problem, the design thinking approach helps you to create possible solutions, which are desirable (i.e., meet the user’s needs), technologically feasible, and economically viable so that they can be converted into customer value and market opportunity. If upgrading an existing service, involve the stakeholders in this ideation. This way, you can ensure ownership.
➞ Prototype (What wows?)
What? Having narrowed your ideas to a select few, you’ll now turn them into prototypes—or “scaled-down” versions of the product or concept you want to test.
Why? The prototyping stage gives you something tangible that can be tested on real users. This is crucial in maintaining a user-centric approach.
How? Prototypes can take various forms depending on what you’re testing—from basic paper models to interactive digital prototypes. When creating your prototypes, have a clear goal; know exactly what you want your prototype to represent and therefore test it.
For example: During the ideation phase, one idea was to offer free yoga classes. To prototype this idea, you set up a dedicated yoga room in the office with mats, water bottles, and hand towels.
You can prototype your possible solutions with different tools. Creativity is the only limit — lego, paper, storyboards, glue, theater, etc. Anything can come up here as a model for the solution. In a design thinking presentation, you should show your prototype to future users, ask for their feedback, and modify your model. Don’t forget that design thinking is an iterative approach, meaning you may go back to the previous steps anytime and refine the process. Failing is a good sign in this case: it means you are on the way to finding the best solution.
➞ Test (What works?)
What? The fifth step in the design thinking process will see you testing your prototypes on accurate or representative users.
Why? The testing phase lets you see where your prototype works well and needs improvement. Then, based on user feedback, you can make changes and improvements before you spend time and money developing and implementing your solution.
How? You’ll run user testing sessions where you observe your target users as they interact with your prototype. You may also gather verbal feedback. With everything you learn from the testing phase, you’ll change your design or develop a new idea!
For example, you test the yoga idea for two months to see how employees respond. People enjoy the yoga classes but are put off because they are in the middle of the day and there is nowhere to shower. Based on this feedback, you have moved the yoga classes to the evening.
When your prototype is refined enough, you can implement the service or process you were working on. In addition, since you have involved the users in the design process, ownership should be ensured, and the project’s sustainability is more likely.
Design thinking helps us tackle “wicked” problems
The uniqueness of design thinking lies in the kinds of problems it addresses. When solving problems with design thinking, we’re not just talking about common, everyday issues that have tried-and-tested solutions. Instead, we’re talking about highly complex, “wicked” problems that refuse to be solved using standard methods and approaches.
Not only are these problems challenging to define, but any attempt to solve them will likely give way to even more problems. Wicked problems are everywhere, ranging from global issues such as climate change and poverty to challenges that affect almost all businesses, such as change management, achieving sustainable growth, or maintaining your competitive edge.
Design thinking is an actionable approach that can be used to tackle the world’s wickedest of problems. It fosters user-centricity, creativity, innovation, and out-of-the-box thinking.
With that in mind, let’s explore the principles and pillars of design thinking in more detail.
What are the principles of design thinking?
Certain principles are pivotal to design thinking. These are reflected in the design thinking methodology, which we’ll explore in detail later. We’ve outlined five of design thinking’s most essential principles below.
1. User-centricity and empathy
Design thinking is finding solutions that respond to human needs and user feedback. People, not technology, are the drivers of innovation, so an essential part of the process involves stepping into the user’s shoes and building genuine empathy for your target audience.
2. Collaboration
Design thinking aims to pool a diverse variety of perspectives and ideas; this leads to innovation! In addition, design thinking encourages collaboration between heterogeneous, multidisciplinary teams that may not typically work together.
3. Ideation
Design thinking is a solution-based framework, so the focus is on coming up with as many ideas and potential solutions as possible. Ideation is both a core design thinking principle and a step in the design thinking process. The ideation step is a designated judgment-free zone where participants are encouraged to focus on the number of ideas rather than the quality.
4. Experimentation and iteration
It’s not just about coming up with ideas; it’s about turning them into prototypes, testing them, and making changes based on user feedback. Design thinking is an iterative approach, so be prepared to repeat specific steps as you uncover flaws and shortcomings in the early versions of your proposed solution.
5. A bias toward action
Design thinking is a highly hands-on approach to problem-solving, favoring action over the discussion. Instead of hypothesizing what your users want, design thinking encourages you to get out there and engage with them face-to-face. Rather than discussing potential solutions, you’ll turn them into tangible prototypes and test them in real-world contexts.
An Example of Problem-solving: The Encumbered Vs. The Fresh Mind
❝ Thinking outside the box can provide an innovative solution to a sticky problem. However, thinking outside the box can be a real challenge as we naturally develop patterns of thinking modeled on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge we surround ourselves with.
Some years ago, an incident occurred where a truck driver tried to pass under a low bridge. But he failed, and the truck was lodged firmly under the bridge. As a result, the driver could not continue driving through or reverse out.
The story goes that as the truck became stuck, it caused massive traffic problems, which resulted in emergency personnel, engineers, firefighters, and truck drivers gathering to devise and negotiate various solutions for dislodging the trapped vehicle.
Emergency workers debated whether to dismantle parts of the truck or chip away at parts of the bridge. Each spoke of a solution that fitted within their level of expertise.
A boy walking by and witnessing the intense debate looked at the truck, at the bridge, then looked at the road and said calmly, "Why not just let the air out of the tires?" to the absolute amazement of all the specialists and experts trying to unpick the problem.
When the solution was tested, the truck could quickly drive free, having suffered only the damage caused by its initial attempt to pass underneath the bridge. The story symbolizes our struggles, where the most obvious solutions are often the hardest to come by because of the self-imposed constraints we work within.❞
Design Thinking is an Iterative and Non-linear Process
Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
❝ Design Thinking is an iterative and non-linear process. This means that the design team continuously uses their results to review, question, and improve their initial assumptions, understandings, and results. Results from the final stage of the initial work process inform our understanding of the problem, help us determine the parameters of the problem, enable us to redefine the problem, and, perhaps most importantly, provide us with new insights so we can see any alternative solutions that might not have been available with our previous level of understanding.❞
Design Thinking is for Everybody
❝ Tim Brown also emphasizes that Design Thinking techniques and design strategies belong at every business level. Design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees, freelancers, and leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service to drive new alternatives for business and society.❞
“Design thinking begins with skills designers have learned over many decades in their quest to match human needs with available technical resources within the practical constraints of business. By integrating what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable, designers have been able to create the products we enjoy today. Design thinking takes the next step, which is to put these tools into the hands of people who may have never thought of themselves as designers and apply them to a vastly greater range of problems.” – Tim Brown, Change by Design, Introduction
Amazing content!!!! As a Designer it will help me a lot! ❤️