Design Thinking: A Practical Guide to Solve Problems
Notes from the Dojo
During our first 2019 edition of Tech Dojo (if you’re not familiar with the term click here), celebrated in our Merida’s office earlier this month, Design Thinking was the lead topic to talk about. On a relaxed and fun workshop with snacks and beer, we learned the perks of using Design Thinking as a methodology to solve problems in our day-to-day, presented by Ana de León, our in-house UX Research Manager with more than 7 years of experience on the field.
“Design Thinking increases your chances of building something that people actually want. Activities like this workshop at our Ksquare Merida office, brought heads and hearts to solve problems”. — Ana de León.
Why is Design Thinking so important, you may ask. Basically, it’s the ideal process to solve any dilemma in an innovative way through observation and detection of specific needs. It also happens to be one of the methods applied by Ksquare when working with our clients. Cool, huh?
At Ksquare, our KStudio team combines the effectiveness of UX processes with the latest emerging technologies to create rich experiences for our customers, removing friction and simplifying task completion. For our customers, we assemble comprehensive UI/UX teams to provide a solution-based approach to solving specific problems, focusing on understanding the user perspective, and design the correct digital tools to ensure project success.
Workshop kick-off!
As part of the agenda of the event, we had an introduction by Ana and then went full on into activity mode: designing a solution to make it easier to recycle organic trash generated at home (in Design Thinking lingo, ‘going from the problem to the creation of a concept’). And finally, presenting the final work and receiving feedback to improve the design, AKA solving in a practical way this significant issue that impacts almost every home in the world.
Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, are the steps you must follow to a successful Design Thinking process. Based on empathy and experimentation, this methodology helps decode solutions creatively and go smooth into complexity.
In the first stage, attendants had 10 minutes to create empathy with the person sitting next to them, and in the next 10 minutes, define an approach by writing down on post-its the frustrations and motivations of their companion about recycling inorganic waste. Later, this post-its would go to a wall with quadrants on a matrix that would later help to define the attitude of the interviewed person. Is he/she active, apathetic, busy, or resigned? Is he/she doing something about recycling at his/her home? Why? Let’s get analytical, people!
In the following 15 minutes, everyone had to generate ideas to solve the recycling at home issue. One of our favorites was “Reciclando-ando”, a project that, using geolocalization, proposed a directory to find places near town to handle all kinds of organic and inorganic disposals, with the advantage of listing prices in the case of recycling any other recyclable material (like paper, cans or glass).
The idea of showing the final work to the rest of the teams was to get feedback to keep iterating. Then, through an exercise of Roses, Thorns, and Buttons (a rose is a positive element; a thorn, a negative aspect, and every button represent an opportunity), make adjustments to approach the ideal.
Let’s keep in mind that, in Yucatan, households, businesses, industries, and schools generate approximately 2,475 metric tons of urban waste per day, of which only 18% is recycled. Trash Fact: each Yucatecan generates 800 grams of garbage per day. Suddenly, attending this workshop and making up solutions to a real-life problem doesn’t look so wild, right?
Time out!
But the brain needs a rest to get imaginative, right? A break from the activity, an opportunity to grab a cold beer and some snacks, and some chatting with our partners was needed in the middle of our event. Then, with a relaxed mind and thirst quenched, it was time to define the trashy concept and present as a team, one of the solutions created during the workshop.
As the whole process went forward, analytical capabilities and creativity became the basis of the success of some super-interesting projects ideated* by the attendees, coming mainly from local universities and from all sorts of academic profiles, including technology, engineering, design, and others.
In every edition, Tech Dojo gives you the chance of networking and meeting other professionals and enthusiasts with the same interests as you. Come and meet us; and stay tuned, more Tech Dojo events coming soon! Check our social media to attend the next event.
See you at the Dojo!
*Ideate — this was not a typo. In design methodology, ideate means the transition from identifying a particular question or problem to generating a wide variety of potential answers and solutions. 💡
