Design Thinking 101

You’re probably asking yourself “what is ‘Design Thinking’”? Well that’s what I’m here to tell you. Design Thinking is a whole new way to look at your outlook on the way you personally write, read and think about the world.

There are five basic part of Design Thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. Each of these five skills will help you to become a better blogger, writer and thinker.

Starting with Empathize: you focus on human values and how humans react and respond to things in their lives. you then engage with the person you are observing and get a feel for them personally and then you immerse yourself into how they are feeling. The goal of empathizing is to see things with “fresh eyes” so you can learn what your readers need and build empathy for what is important to them.

Define: Building off of what you learned when empathizing you use your finding from learning about what your readers want and make those into “needs and insights”. You focus on the issue without dramatizing the situation. You should develop a deep understanding for what your users want and create your own point of view (POV) on the situation. A good POV is one that focuses and frames the problem, captures heart and mind of people, inspires and provides references.

Ideate: Ideate is a little bit different from the two parts of design thinking listed above. You want to make “radical design alternatives” meaning that you want to put the things you have learned into a dramatized state. Bringing diversity and many ideas to the table with Ideate will make the next step of prototyping so much easier. DON’T just go for the obvious solutions and the “easy fixes”, widen your horizons and drive past them.

Prototype: A prototype can be anything that takes a physical form. Prototype are the most useful and influential when people can interact with them and experience things using them. Your prototype should contain all of the aspects of design thinking listed above.

Test: Testing is the chance to get feedback on your solutions and make changes and continue to learn new things about your readers. The simplest of all of the Design Thinking steps. To test and refine your POV but it is not always negative it can also be posotive and show you that all of the information and digging you did means that you learned something and executed your idea process well.