If you have ever wondered what Design Thinking is, this article will get you covered on that. At least, it provides some proofs why this methodology is still relevant in 2019. According to The Current State of Design Thinking Practice in Organizations study report, 69% of organizations consider the innovation process to be much more efficient with design thinking. Sounds interesting to you? Alright, let’s get started and clarify the idea.
Design Thinking process: A brief overview
Design Thinking as a formal discipline has been taught at Stanford’s d.school since 2005 and become a mainstay for professional designers and creative agencies all over the globe. Actually, the Design Thinking principles and elements can be traced back to the early ’90s, when IDEO showed its design process to the public. Since then, there’ve been multiple attempts to reconsider or modify these rules, — or even question them. Either way, the very essence of the rules remains the same — a user-centric approach must prevail in design.
“The amazing thing about good design is that it looks at ambiguity and disruption and sees fertile ground. There is huge opportunity when we focus on things that humans are uniquely equipped to do — empathy, creativity, care, love.”
David Webster, Partner and Executive Portfolio Director, IDEO Palo Alto
Understanding customer-centred design: Advantages explained
Together with the integration of more particular design trends that are gaining traction in 2019, we should not underestimate the adoption of the Design Thinking rules. The competitive advantages of utilizing these principles are almost undeniable. According to an Adobe-commissioned study done by Forrester, design-driven companies reap much greater benefits by prioritizing design practices during their work process.
These stats look very promising, especially to the companies still lagging behind, don’t they? As we can see, the most important assets that businesses can gain from employing design-led initiatives boil down to the following:
- To expand their brand footprint on the market
- To soar ahead of the pack and differentiate from their competitors
- To improve customer experience (CX)
To better understand why Design Thinking means so much for design experts today, let’s take a sneak peek into its main principles. First of all, it is based on a human centricity approach so much appreciated by both end-users and businesses. To put it bluntly, the human-centred approach when applied to software development and design goes like this — having a lesser focus on hardware and product deployment, while paying way more attention to UX that customers will get by using this product.
Design Thinking definition: So, what’s behind it?
Leveraging the customer-centric principle, Design Thinking dives even deeper and creates its own philosophy being both the way of thinking and a toolkit of practical methods at the same time. In view of this, it becomes table stakes alongside more specific design prerequisites for each and every UI/UX designer.
Its definition is more or less generally accepted worldwide nowadays saying that Design Thinking is a synergy of a user-centred mindset and hands-on tools for creating an iterative problem-solving UX design process that caters to evolving customer needs. On the other hand, it also enables designers to optimize their workflow and streamline the deliverables by modifying the initial product features along the way to better tailor them to user feedback and expectations.
5 Design Thinking rules you should follow in 2019
Basically, every Design Thinking workshop on its agenda focuses on 5 main stages. Let’s see what should you know to ensure a robust and smooth design flow for your business projects.
- Empathize
The first step on the design journey when you should realize what your end users are, what are their concerns, interests and expectations from your product. Empathy is very essential when it comes to understanding other people’s needs in order to unveil the most viable ways to address and solve their problems. So, at this stage, try to follow the rules while keeping an eye on:
- Observation
- Engagement
- Immersion
- Discovering your customers’ needs
2. Define
This phase, as the name implies, encourages you to sum up and analyze all the insights on the topic you have gained before, during your emphasizing efforts. What has to be done here is:
- Reshape the initial design concept
- Reallocate human and machine assets
- Pinpoint a problem and the challenges you may face throughout the design process
3. Ideate
Ideation is exactly the moment when you can generate and brainstorm any ideas — even the most unusual ones — that ensure the overall efficiency of the design project. Individual, as well as collective takeaways, are both welcome as they can help avoid high expenses that may incur further down the line. So, try to zero in on the next aspects:
- Think over an actionable roadmap based on the findings collected
- Come up with alternative viewpoints and perspectives
- Accept any reasonable idea available
- Identify new meaningful solutions
4. Prototype
Prototyping is a great time for experiments without any significant costs involved. It is where you can generate some scaled-down versions to realize your weak points. This stage is also ideal for getting to know how feasible are the ideas you’ve generated along the previous phase. The more compelling ideas you’ve got — the more design variations you can try your hand at. With all that said, you need to:
- Try out all sound ideas to see how viable they are in practice
- Learn from all the shortcomings occurred
- Reconsider doable options and features
- Improve the design on the go
5. Test
Now, make your design experts work at full throttle! This is the final step, on which you have to pilot test the efficiency of the overall product. The process is purely iterative, so your design specialists can streamline the results by optimizing the existing features and elements. What’s more, users are allowed to share their first-impression feedback on the product. It helps designers adjust the necessary changes on the fly to eventually create the high-quality deliverable. To put it simply, you need to:
- Gather user feedback on your design solution
- Leverage feedback to refine the solution
- Iterate the proof test of the end product
Keep in mind, though, that the Design Thinking rules are not at all straightaway. Some stages are repetitive and can be set in motion in a nonlinear way.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article. You can always contact us, in case your an eCommerce website or mobile business app needs implementing the following design principles or you just want to have a profitable turn-key design solution created exactly in line with these rules.
