Design Thinking For Business Analyst

Why Design?

Design is inevitable to grow a business, but what is it?

“Design is a way to grow your company. It’s not just aesthetics, It’s how things work. It’s about putting the customer at the centre of your brand. I definitely see myself this way. I put design first” Says Mona Patel, CEO & Founder of Motivate Design.

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a frequentative method to identify the solution and alternative approaches by attempting to understand the end-user challenges, this magic will not happen in a day understanding but with a detailed investigation.

Meanwhile, the solution-based approach is the key practice of design thinking. It is a collaboration of thinking and working with the participation of the users. Typically design thinking twirls around obtaining a wide understanding of the user that a product or design is being created for. It encourages to witness and cultivate compassion with the target user. Design Thinking is remarkably beneficial in tackling quandaries that are indefinite, by re-framing the quandary in a user-centric approach

Why does design thinking matter?

Design thinking is a structure that encourages the organisation to push beyond the traditional business boundaries and think of freakish ways to approach a problem. It provides a floor for non-designers to jump on and experience the designer’s user-specific goals.

Here comes the role of a BA.

Does Design Thinking Work For BAs?

Design Thinking method includes the consciousness and view of a designer to align user requirements with accessible technology and binding that into a winning business strategy that has a market value. If that seems common, it’s because Business Analysts have been doing this for a while, notwithstanding the widespread opinion that BAs consume their whole time engrossed in specification documentation. Design Thinking varies from the legendary business analysis is its bottom-up approach. In fact, BAs might once have taken specification documents as directions to be followed, a Design Thinking method supports taking time to understand the characteristics and the aggregate business goals. Products are developed from the bottom-up, not the top-down.

Design Thinking method needs the participation of cross-disciplinary crews to give significant information during an agile method, supported by prototyping and cross-thinking. The crew then comes up with suggestions, mocks them up in quick models and then narrows the possible solutions down for further prototyping and evaluation.

Kickstart design thinking

1. Start with the problem definition than the solution.

RCA to be elaborated for the identified by the business problems can be classified into the following type

• Type 1 (Known / Knowns) The root cause of the business problem is known
• Type 2 (Known / Unknowns) Possible root causes of the problem are known
• Type 3 (Unknown / Unknowns) The team has no idea about the root causes of the problem.

As a BA Solving Type 2 and Type 3 problems require a new way of thinking with the perspective of compassion and experimentation. Embracing all of these, design thinking is efficient in solving complicated and complex challenges. Rather coming up with the best alternative solution and instantly sending project documents, BA and Business team to propose a design thinking workshop.

2.Design with Empathy

BA team should take into account the behaviour and demographic attributes of the target group or individual and classify them as personas.

Personas representing each group are invited to the design thinking workshop. Their requirements and pain points are distinguished by Empathy Maps technique. Also, unseen necessities and expectations of persona are recognised through ‘Affinity Diagrams’ and ‘Mind Maps’. BA will include all the observations part of the requirement for the next phases of the project. Participants primarily focus on as much as creative ideas and plan and implement them based on the expected value and difficulty in implementation. Chosen ideas are transformed into high-level prototypes. End users evaluate the new solution with their needs and expectations. Modifications on the proposed solution are done based on the user feedback.BA define the scope with the ideas and the prototype presented to the user.

As a BA, understanding the problem and working along with the end-users opens up multiple ways and increase the probability of attaining the perfect solution expected.