“If you have always done it that way, you have probably done it wrong,” said the famous American inventor, businessman, engineer, and a holder of 186 patents, Charles Kettering.
When you think about a product, what is the first thing that comes to your mind? Something that is available on the market and physically present for you to feel and hold.
But physical products are long gone, and it’s time to give more space and attention to digital products in terms of an app or a website. Being modern products, designers have to apply different design approaches to make it look and feel as close to the physical product as possible.
At MoEVing, we are developing a product - a mobile and web application. What design approaches are we applying, and how do we take on a lot of brainstorming sessions among the team requires strategy. Finally, we have a full-proof plan to go about it.
Let’s discuss what it is and how we did it.
Where there is innovation, there is design thinking!
Many leading brands like Apple, Samsung, etc., are born out of innovation. Design thinking and innovation go hand-in-hand as it becomes a part of a company’s DNA.
Design thinking is a process to understand the user and their problems at different stages. It aims to provide a solution-based approach to solve user-centric problems.
The solutions that help:
- Meet the user’s needs and requirements
- Afforded by businesses to implement
- Develop a functional process or a product
Design thinking helps redefine the problems in user-centric methods by understanding the human needs and finding human solutions. We do this by adopting an immediate approach to testing and prototyping.
But, if one has to apply design thinking in their product design process, it becomes crucial to understand the five stages of design thinking.
The Five Stages of Design Thinking are as follows:
- Empathize with users
- Define the user’s problems, requirements, and your opinion on the same
- Ideate with innovations and challenging assumptions
- Prototype to devise solutions
- Test the solutions, and finally, implement them
Design Thinking is like Cooking
Design thinking is like cooking. You cannot master it overnight as there is a process to follow, like the one you follow while cooking.
You search for the recipe, gather all the kitchen utensils and ingredients required to make the recipe, and follow it step-by-step. As you gradually proceed and practice, you will start tweaking or making adjustments in the recipe, and giving your own unique/signature touch.
Now, you know the recipe by heart, and you can create an innovative and completely unique recipe out of it. Design thinking works in the same manner, you can invent a unique design altogether, but you will need a foundation for your design thinking journey.
Who are Design thinkers? Design Thinkers are inherited with problem-solving capabilities.
Design Thinkers, when presented with a problem, research from every angle to provide highly efficient solutions. The process of design thinking is based on creating entirely new ideas and strategies depending on the situation.
It is the same as no two companies or businesses cannot have the same website design, logo, or business principles. Design thinkers need to create a clear and new blue ocean and market for the business to flourish.
What is the Minimum Viable Design Process?
The stages of designing and the creative product are not linear processes but iterative processes. You design the problem, find the problem, and go back to the first step to solve the problem and recreate the design.
From the ideation stage, you will test and make improvements to the product. The process helps you solve the problem as you design and test it. Moreover, it also helps brainstorm new ideas for the design to solve the user problems.
- User Research: Conducting a number of surveys to understand the requirements and issues your target audience is facing and how you can resolve them.
- Concepting: Defining the problem and who has the problem is important in the design process. Use the data from user research to establish the problem statement.
- Detailing: Once you have a deeper understanding of the users, you can generate new ideas and solutions. This can be done via multiple techniques:
- Mind-Mapping: Put the problem in the center and find connecting dots. For example: “diet foods” at the center and find what the diet foods are.
- Challenge Assumptions: Try to find a new perspective on the product while creating.
4. Testing: Create a prototype, test on users, find the problem, and improve the product. Testing helps you understand the user flow path and the areas you need to improve.
5. Iterate: Conducting real-time user testing helps gather actual feedback on the product and design. You will know whether your design is understandable to the user or helps to smooth the whole product use process or not.
How MoEVing does the Design Thinking?
Our Approach to Designs goes as follows:
Desk Research
Information Architecture
User Journeys/User Goals
Block Frames/ Wire Frames
Low/High Fidelity designs
Let’s understand in detail how we do design thinking:
- Competitive Analysis
The process of identifying your competitors and evaluating their strategies to determine their strengths and weaknesses relative to your own business, product, and service.
Competitive Analysis help:
- Orient your business in the marketplace
- Identify the quickest path forward
- Unearth overlooked gaps and opportunities
2. Affinity Mapping
Affinity diagramming refers to organizing related facts into distinct clusters. It helps build information architecture.
Affinity Mapping provides:
- Observations or ideas from a research study
- Ideas that surface in design-ideation meetings
- Ideas about UX strategy and vision
3. User Interview
Interviews give insight into what users think about a site, an application, a product, or a process. They can point out what site content is memorable, what people feel is important on the site, and what ideas for improvement they may offer.
4. User Journey
A user journey is a series of steps which represent a scenario in which a user might interact with the thing you are designing. They should always be based on research and data.
User Journey helps us:
- Demonstrating the way users currently interact with the service/product
- Demonstrating the way users could interact with the service/product
5. Blockframe and Wireframe
Wireframing saves a lot of time!
Since wireframes are used in the early design process, it is much easier to make changes or implement feedbacks at the wireframing stage, rather than making changes in the final mockup with plenty of visual elements.
Wireframes allow us to map out the functionality of the pages, catch problems early, and save time on revisions later.
6. Interface Design
Interface design means improving the UI and UX of the web/app through visual elements and effects. It includes colors, illustrations, photography, typography, layouts, white spaces, and the like.
7. Prototyping
The last stage is prototyping. Prototypes help designers and developers build partial product implementations, which potential end-users or customers used to provide feedback.
Thus, by following the above design approach, MoEVing aims to create a seamless experience for the users.
Anuroop Reddy
Product Designer
MoEVing
