Thoughts on Design Thinking

What is the best way of learning something? Collaboration, creativity, and learning-by-doing! That’s the Hyper way of doing things.

Two weeks ago I started with this amazing course from Hyper Island that specializes in Digital Experience Design. I’ve already learned lots about group dynamics, deep reflection, giving and receiving valuable feedback and creating ideas based on human-needs. I’ve experienced the importance of these methods already. I’ve gained more confidence and self-awareness. Hyper believes this is fundamental when it comes to growing as a team and in the end it will also lead to a better outcome.

Last week we started with our first module Design Thinking. Andy Young, an industry leader from Scotland joined us in our classroom to teach us about this inventive process.

“Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services, processes — and even strategy.” Tim Brown, IDEO

So how can we define Design Thinking? I believe it’s about building products, services and solutions that customers really need. By focusing on the ‘why’ instead of the ‘what’ we create a better understanding of the customer. We do this by empathizing. We observe, interact and immerse in their experience. Then we try to synthesize the findings of our empathy work in order to form a user point of view. In the end it’s all about exploring a wide variety of possible solutions and bringing them to life by prototyping. Testing the prototype will give you a large understanding of the user-experience and with the feedback you receive you can really improve, develop and learn.

“Design thinking encourages divergent thinking to ideate many solutions (possible or impossible) and then uses convergent thinking to prefer and realize the best resolution.”

These last couple of weeks have been so inspiring. I’m looking forward continuing this journey with my Hyper teammates and working on real client briefs. Upcoming week we have to pitch our first idea to Greenpeace. I’m so excited! Interested in the outcome? Follow our journey on Instagram and Twitter by using the #bssacrew2 hashtag.

Mimi Steijaert

Experience Design student @ Hyper Island — BSSA