The Design Thinking Process

A brief framework explained

What makes a product more desirable is the value it adds by a unique feature. Many products are launched hoping that it would help people, but often after launch the reality differs to the expectations. But how do we find out what people really want? Through the Design Thinking Process.

Design Thinking is a design methodology to solve different problems. You can design how you lead your team, define a company culture, change business processes, or solve problems for your customers through a mobile application with this very approach. Designers in particular use this methodology to find desirable solutions for clients to the complex problems they present them with.

How to integrate Design Thinking into an innovation process

What is critically important, is that design thinking becomes recognized as a potential organization capability building methodology. Of course design thinkers take years to get to a real experience level, most probably passing through numerous design school courses. Yet within each organization the general understanding of basic design thinking has its place.

Shown in the graphic below a really good visual along a six-step design thinking process:

1. Discovery

Choose a strategic topic to focus on and learn about. Design thinking starts with an end goal, a desired future, and approaches to how you can make it happen. The topic should be one you find compelling and motivating. Research your topic for insights. What do you need to understand? What are the opportunities embedded in problems? Ask “why” questions to dig deeper.

Leverage stories to discover insights. What stories are your customers telling about their experiences? What are the hopes, fears and goals that motivate them? What insights can you draw from their problems and aspirations?

2. Define

Framing the right problem is the only way to create the right solution. Make sense of research by seeing patterns, themes, and larger relationships between the pieces of information. Uncover customer insights to reframe problem areas into opportunities.

3. Ideate

Now that you have some deep insights about your customers or users, generate ideas for offerings that will deliver value to your customers. Build on ideas by asking “What else?” The goal is to push beyond the obvious and generate a set of really good options for consideration.

4. Prototype

Combine, expand, and refine ideas in the form of rough models or sketches. Invite users to test out and respond to your prototype. How do they feel about your ideas? What feedback do they have? Their responses will inform whether you move forward or kill your idea before investing additional resources.

5. Test

After having mocked up your ideas is necessary to understand how people feel using the product/service. If it is intuitive or have difficulties. Observe and capture every single feedback during the test, catalog it and use in the next phase.

6. Implement and iterate

The prototypes you have tested, built and launched will have a better chance of succeeding in the marketplace. However implement is not the last step. Design is an iterative process: use feedback to improve on your ideas and keep iterating until there is nothing more to add or subtract. There are countless sites that can offer ways to build design thinking capabilities

Conclusion

I just want to finish this article with a quote:

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

— Steve Jobs

Tweet me for any questions you have, feedback!

If you enjoyed this story, please click the 👏 button and share to help others find it! Feel free to leave a comment below.

Originally published at www.dileoalessio.it