Four reasons why you should fear design thinking — and adopt it

Thais Mazucanti
Jul 24, 2017 · 4 min read
Clear ideas — René Magritte 1958

Using design thinking as a process to solve problems is not easy. If you really want to hack the brief and find out a solution to a real problem, you have to go through this crazy discovery journey.

Looking at the business perspective, design thinking is a problem-solving process that can generate innovation for a company. This name came from the fact that it combines designing methods to match people's needs, taking into consideration what is technological feasible and can be converted into customer value and market opportunity.

According to some of the most important design thinking companies and schools (K Design Council, Stanford University’s d.school and the global design company IDEO), the design thinking process can be composed of four stages.

For stages of design thinking and the double diamond

Reason #1 — Discovering the messy unknown

The first phase is about discovering and empathizing with the world of the user, as well as getting some inspiration to identify the user needs. It is composed mainly by market and user research.

It is very important to understand what the target group feels and thinks. It is when the human aspects of the team conducting it are put into test.

It is also when design thinkers go to the real world, facing a new area of knowledge and practices with which they may not be used to. The broadness of this phase can lead to what David and Tom Kelley call

"fear of the messy unknown… the fear of getting out and of making firsthand observations […]. And the data is always messier."

If you can deal with all your friend's life stories, you can certainly deal with the amount of data coming from interviews and desk research.

Reason #2 — Filtering the reality

The happy donor — René Magritte 1966

All the ideas collected from the messy unknown must be narrowed down into insights, themes and opportunity areas.

It is when the problem is reshaped, taking into consideration the new vision of the challenge generated by the “messy unknown” phase. It is a stage of sense making, when insights form connections and patterns, generating a clearer problem to solve.

When you focus your problem statement, you will tend to have greater quantity and higher quality solutions when you are generating ideas.

Getting deep into a problem and defining the reason behind it requires creativity and imagination and people may be blocked by the fear of being superficial, of being too shallow to see the underlying causes.

It only takes one person with this ability at a team to lead the process to the next stage. But don't worry: if you were able to chose a programme at the university according to your interests, you will be able to cluster insights into main topics.

Reason #3 — Losing control

Golconda — René Magritte 1953

Be sure of one thing: ideation is only valid when you let the flow flows, when ideas come out without filter.

But it is hard to "feel strong, alert, in effortless control, unselfconscious and at the peak of the abilities" when the fear of losing control and being judged by your crazy ideas keep knocking on your mind.

And real ideation is only valuable when people build on each other ideas, so you must kick out the fear of losing control. Don't try to do it all by yourself neither control everything.

If you want to make a change, in order to let go, you’ve got to let other people add their value and collaborate in a way that you’re not really controlling it all.

Ideation is about pushing for a widest possible range of ideas from which you can select, not simply finding a single, best solution. You will be able to find the best one later, through user testing and feedback.

Reason #4 — Failing roller coaster

The Treachery of Images — René Magritte 1928–1929

Rapid prototyping, testing, iterating. It is all about making things tangible, collecting user feedback and making changes until the product/service reaches the perfect format.

The fear of failure is constantly tested among team members at this stage as well, and can affect the result. Be aware of three normal reactions that can interfere in the iterations:

Denial, when practitioners may not admit they have made a mistake. You will need to challenge the status quo of your creation to keep moving.

Chasing the losses is also a common theme, when design thinkers wish to fix something wrong so badly they end up doing a greater damage.

There is also the "Yeah, I am going to fool myself" reaction, when you surprisingly acquire the ability of transforming errors into successes.

Just keep swimming. The outcome is a real solution to a real problem. And there is no better thing than knowing your product or service will really be useful.

Thais Mazucanti

Written by

Creative teams coach, design thinker, team unlocker (and unblocker), creativity translator. A human look into the digital world.

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