Design Your Best Life Through Design Thinking
How to use design thinking as a practical tool for personal wayfinding
Do you love words? Are you excited to discover words you didn’t know existed? Are you thrilled to find a word that perfectly defines an experience or emotion you’ve had?
I recently came across this word that I now absolutely love and appreciate.
The word is Wayfinding. It’s defined as “the skill of figuring out where you’re going without knowing how to get there.”
I appreciate this word because now I know the exact word to describe how I’ve been navigating my life! I realise with some sheepishness that all my life, I’ve been figuring out where I’m going without really knowing how to get there. Wayfinding is where I live! It’s my zip code. But it’s also the process of my becoming me.
This word came to mind again when I found myself in my first design thinking workshop earlier this year. I was two months into my new content and marketing job at 55 Minutes, a user experience design studio in Singapore who live out human-centred design thinking day in and day out. It was an Introduction to Design Thinking workshop that was open to the public at the Tampines regional library.
Design thinking has been a buzz phrase I’ve been hearing for years, but the workshop was the first time I was properly introduced to this problem-solving framework.
Design thinking is a process that starts with understanding people’s needs, before creating and testing solutions with them until you build something that works for them.
The workshop participants were from all walks of life — educators, social workers, bankers and stay-at-home moms — all curious and willing to learn about design thinking.
After a warm-up session where participants got to know one another, our colleague Luke shared what makes for good design and then walked through the five steps of design thinking:
- Empathise — understanding people’s needs and problems
- Define — determine the key problem to solve
- Ideate — brainstorm solutions
- Prototype — build mockups of the solution
- Test — find out what works and what can be improved
Participants were then divided into pairs and Wendy, our head, walked the participants through their design challenge: design an ideal wallet for the person they were paired with.
To achieve that, each participant went through the five steps of design thinking, and were able to build mockups of the most useful and meaningful wallet for their workshop partner using materials and tools provided for the session. They then shared their prototypes with each other, and gathered valuable feedback for future iteration.
It was heartening to see how the participants appreciated the 2.5 hours of hands-on learning. Here are some of the feedback we’ve received that have inspired our team to continue to improve on the workshop:
“Very hands-on and fun! Facilitators were reassuring. It felt safe to be creative in the session.”
“I like that I was allowed to take charge of my learning and be personally involved — not just follow a set of examples.”
“Appreciated the trainers’ professionalism and honesty throughout the programme.”
“A fantastic crash course on design thinking. Thank you for the workshop!”
As for me, I too learned some life lessons from the workshop, specifically these three things:
There is real value in listening to others
To successfully create solutions to a problem, you have to start by intentionally making an effort to understand and empathise with people first. That’s hard for us humans who have an attention span of a measly eight seconds! But just think how giving someone your active attention can transform your relationships with the people around you. Listening is loving. Being heard is being seen.
The best way to learn is by doing
The workshop was also an opportunity for me to learn more about the team I was now a part of. The workshop was designed to be literally hands-on for the participants. This showed in a tangible way the commitment of the 55 Minutes team to live out its shared philosophy of learning by doing.
Design thinking can help you design a flourishing life
Design thinking is a practical way of wayfinding — finding your way in your life. Trust the process and you become a better problem solver. You become a better human being who has empathy for people, thoughtful about their needs and open to creatively work for the good of others. Design thinking is a tool that will help you find what works best for you now, and paves the way to the future you desire.
Interested in design thinking and keen to arrange one for your organisation or community? Let us know! Write to 55 Minutes at general@55mins.com.
Mai is the content and marketing lead at 55 Minutes. Outside of work, you’re likely to find Mai taking long walks, baking cakes for friends or singing alto in the choir.
