What is Design Thinking Process?

INTRODUCTION

Have you heard about the design thinking process? Design Thinking is a method or process for solving complex problems. Many industries are implementing the design thinking process and user-centric approach to solve their customer problems and improve their existing product.

Probably, you are not aware of the design thinking process. In this article, we will explore all the 5 steps of the design thinking process. Let’s understand the design process in simple terms.

WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?

Design thinking is a non-linear and iterative process means the results of one stage may require you to return to the previous stages again. The design thinking process is a method for solving highly complex problems. This approach can be applied to real-life problems, too. This helps in seeing a bigger picture of the problem where we can consider all sides of the problem, which brings towards clarity.

Design-thinking approach is a 5-step process that is applied for problem-solving. This method emphasizes user needs and behavior so that we can build products which can help and change the lives of people. We should have empathy towards the user during the overall process to understand the goals, needs, and pain points of the ideal user. Design Thinking is an iterative process involving redefining problems, empathizing users, ideating solutions. Design thinking process involves 5 phases — Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.

1. Empathise

Design thinking process starts with empathy. Empathy means the ability to understand the feelings of others, their experiences, and motivations. This phase involves understanding the user deeply. Who are the ideal users? What are they expecting from the product? What are their pain points? What are the goals of the user? During this phase, we advise user researchers to put all their assumptions aside. In order to empathize with users, we have to observe users. The typical activities performed during this phase are:-

• Observation — You spend time with real users and observe their activities, engage with them. How do they interact with the existing product? What are the problems faced by them?
• User-Interviews — You perform one on one or group interviews with the real users. This interview aims at collecting qualitative data related to users. How do they interact? How do they feel about using the product? What are the pain points with the current product?
• User Surveys — User Surveys collect qualitative and quantitative data about the target audience. We mostly conducted these surveys online to capture their interactions and experiences with a digital product/service.
• Empathy Mapping — This tool is mostly to gather all the important insights of user research in one place. Empathy maps include what people do, feel, say, hear in relation to a product.

2. Define

This is the second phase of the design thinking process. After collecting all the gatherings of empathizing phase, the next phase is defining the problem. Now you have to analyze all the observations, identify the similar patterns in the gathered findings, and start placing them together. This will lead you to find the Problem Statement. Problem Statement or POV (Point of View) Statement is a concise description of the major problem or issue to be solved.

We should not define the problem statement as per business goals. At the end of this phase, you will get a simple problem statement, which will be the basis for the next steps in the design thinking process. The activities performed during this phase are:-

• Clustering-This task involves finding and grouping prominent and similar patterns in data. This phase involves brainstorming.

User Personas -A persona is an archetype that is used in empathizing with users’ needs and problems. This helps to define the problem statement in a human-centered way.

3. Ideate

Now You have empathized with your users’ needs and goals in the first phase; You know who your ideal users are and what they expect from your product. You have observed all the similar patterns in data and discovered the Problem Statement. After defining the problem, the next step is to ideate solutions or ideas for the problem. In this phase, we try to brainstorm ideas as much as possible. This is a transition phase from identifying problems to exploring solutions. Then the collected ideas are evaluated by the entire team; Everyone has the full freedom to think up to a bigger picture and explore the ideas as much as possible. The team decides what they are going to prototype in the next phase. It is good to have many ideas at the beginning itself. You can pick ideation techniques to test your ideas at the end of this phase. The different Ideation techniques are:-

• Brainstorming -This technique is a group activity performed by all the team members to find the conclusion or solution to a specific user problem. All the team members generate ideas.
• Worst Possible Idea-This technique is a fun activity in which the worst solution among ideated ideas.

4. Prototype

The fourth phase of the design thinking process is prototyping. This is an experimental phase in which we turn ideas into something tangible to find solutions for specific problems and to test on real users. Prototyping allows us to test our ideas quickly and update and text them on time. This phase involves building scaled-down versions of the entire product or some specific features of the product to test. A prototype allows us to know what features work and what does not. Prototyping can be a simple paper model or a digital interactive model. It can be low-fidelity or high-fidelity. You can start with low-fidelity prototyping, as it is easy to make changes. Prototyping is an iterative path, and they are updated and improved as per users’ feedback in the testing phase. We may share these prototypes with anybody inside or outside the design team. Prototypes are accepted, rejected, improved as per users’ feedback.

Paper Prototyping is a major technique performed during this phase:- Paper Prototyping is a process involving the paper presentation of the ideated solution or a digital product. They are low-cost, flexible, and can be easily updated. Paper Prototyping helps in realizing design possibilities and concepts and test designs.

5. Test

The last phase of Design Thinking process is the Testing phase. The designers evaluate the complete product during this phase. This phase is also known as Usability Testing. In usability testing, prototypes are evaluated and design flaws are determined during this phase. The prototypes build in the previous phase are tested by real users of the product. You will analyze users’ observations and interaction with prototypes — How do they feel using the product? How are they interacting with the prototype? Is the product fulfilling users’ goals? Then we make changes according to their feedback. However, testing is an iterative process and a non-linear process. Based on users’ feedback, the results are then used to redefine problems and you have to return to the previous four stages as per requirement.

CONCLUSION

The design process plays an important role in providing a pleasant user experience. It requires us to follow the design process systematically to create useful products. The design process can be unique regarding the business and product.

I hope that you have found a proper design process for you and your team.