What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a human centered process of understanding the users needs and bringing creative ideas which can make more value to develop products, services, process and organization/business. It is a creative way to solve problems. The instinct of evidence based on their need and proof of the users observation/data collected. The ideas can also be expected to bring innovation and solution to the root of the problem being solved.
Design thinking(DT) keeps a user-centric approach to make an intersection between desirability from human perspective primarily with empathy, viability by taking into feasibility of technology aspect and viability economically. DT requires us to dig deeper into the user needs and allows us to identify the hidden opportunities when we address those needs creatively popularly known as Innovation.
“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
— Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO
We have an idea that there is some problem out there that someone is willing to solve and pay for bring the solution to the table. The need for the solution is needs to be real to the end users/people which can add value out of the solution we provide. The people have recognized that they have the need or desire to have this product or service.
This solution must also be considered that it is technically feasible way. So we have to think about the scope how can we technically achieve this.
The third dimension is that there should be a viable and sustainable business around it. Business that can make some profit from the investment that is currently being made. There should be a business model in order to define how the business works.
These is the framework we generally tend to use to achieve successful innovation on demand.
The Phases of Design Thinking
“Basically, there’s a problem statement at the beginning and a solution at the end, and the solution is reached in an iterative procedure.”
- Larry Leifer, The Design Thinking Playbook
Explore
In the real world most smart people if given a problem would say — I can solve the given problem. But as a designer with the mindset of design thinking we would go and see the problem in the real world. We only may have one perspective but the customers would have many perspective of the product. Designers meet the customers in the real world and see the problem with their bare eyes and develop empathy to establish a connection. With this they can explore and know them better with conversation, research, artifacts and observation.
There is a need for exploration may be a initial preliminary research which might include qualitative and quantitative analysis is done. This might yield some findings which might be useful in becoming the foundation to build up our solution on top.
“Fall in love with the problem, not the solution”.
- Great startup quote
Create
In the second phase we take what we have learnt in the explore phase and develop different solution to solve the problem in a new and innovative way. Some solution can come right away but we set aside in that solution and come up with whole sets of solutions for different aspect of the design. They can put them together to solve the problem with better ideas. We build and test to create a better solution with our prototypes to carter the end needs of the users.
Failing is a good sign in this case: it means that you are on the way to find the best solution to carter the needs of the people.
Implement
Here we will have a lot of details and engineering involved. This is a trail and error phase where we take our design and validated are we solving it right. Even a tiny details matter in the process of design, the tiny details will build and impact the experience overall. We still need to go back and fourth in the design process to validate our assumption and findings are addressed in the solution we create is right and valuable which indeed meet the needs of the people.
We might initially create a prototype with the different tools available to us. This can be a fake product replication to test how users interact and behave using the product or service we have designed. When our prototype is refined enough with the iteration we can build real product and further improve and learn from our users.
Conclusion
After all Design Thinking process is not just a liner process that has certain milestones and where are undertaken sequentially. Instead, it is an iterative process where steps may loop around between stages. In the end, insights and possible solutions are constantly fine-tuned, and as a result, a sustainable, feasible and viable product, service, or process is developed.
It requires a completely new mindset, patience, openness to new knowledge in a multidisciplinary team. Overall, we should understand that these stages are different modes which contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps. Your goal throughout is to gain the deepest understanding of the users and what their ideal possible solution/product would be.
With Design Thinking process we can help teams to shape up into a new transformation of opportunities into specific innovations. With this process we can set a strategy that applies tools from the world of design that focuses on human behavior shapes and addresses them.
