What is design thinking? If someone had asked me this question a few months ago, I would have blabbered and told them that it has to do with designing objects or related to arts. Well, I cannot believe how incorrect that assumption was.
Design thinking has long been seen as the cornerstone of creativity, as well as a cure for standstill. It has been credited with incredible achievements, such as turning Zomato from a struggling startup to a billion-dollar company, the P&G Turnaround in the 1990s, RIM, who gave us the incredible Blackberry, and many more. It’s a concept that’s becoming increasingly difficult to dismiss yet cloaked in mystery.
The various aspects of the class, such as the readings, activities, team projects, certainly impacted how I approach my problems and the outlook towards finding a potential solution. I got introduced to developing structured approaches for gathering observations, breaking cognitive fixedness, and generating solutions. Working as a team has undoubtedly been an experience in itself; from applying creative problem-solving and behavior-change analysis to innovation development and internal team processes, I had a first-hand experience of how a team should channel their efforts to conclude.
A few takeaways from the team activities were assessing group dynamics and improving team performance through tools and processes designed to enhance collaboration and iteration in the development process and practicing empathy in applying human-centered design techniques, such as user research, prototyping, and journey mapping. For this, the ultimate example would be our problem statement for developing the prototype as a team, which had countless iterations that developed many possible solutions for improving bike safety in NYC. This was something I had never experienced when searching for potential solutions.
Innovation is often even harder in our paths than in the corporate world.
The consequences of making a mistake, taking a risk, or acting without a clear outcome may feel unacceptable. And our narratives often focus on what we can’t do or what’s not possible. The design thinking approach changes how you think about the problem; it certainly did for me. It focuses on correctly defining the problem and moving from a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. I always thought the analytical approach was the only approach that you need to solve a mystery or a problem; needless to say, that has changed during this course period.
Talking about the future, By altering your narrative to solutions-based thinking, design thinking stimulates us to break down our long-term goals into smaller steps, which is the crux of achieving what we want in our personal and professional lives. In turn, this enables us to be curious and take action, even when we don’t necessarily know the final result, which can help delineate a path toward our dream career; sounds compelling, right? Well, it is.
