XYZ Product Series: Design Thinking
“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
Design thinking is a process to find a creative solution to problems that focused on the user. It consists of five design phases that allow designers to explore, identify problems, and create solutions for the problem that the users face. It is commonly used by designers, specifically UI and UX designers. How actually design thinking works and why it's important?
Why do we need design thinking?
Instead of jumping into the solution, design thinking guides us to understand more about the context of the problems from the user’s perspective and the process to generate alternatives for the solutions. Therefore, we as designers will be able to create a design that meets the needs of the users.
The image below describes the process in design thinking
As we can see in the picture, design thinking is not a one-way process. It is an iterative and non-linear process that allows designers to improve their output in every phase. For example, different groups within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently, or the designers may collect information and prototype during the entire project so as to enable them to bring their ideas to life and visualize the problem solutions. Also, results from the testing phase may reveal some insights about users, which in turn may lead to another brainstorming session (Ideate) or the development of new prototypes (Prototype).
This creates a perpetual loop, in which the designers continue to gain new insights, develop new ways of viewing the product and its possible uses, and develop a far more profound understanding of the users and the problems they face.
Difference Between Design Thinking & Business Thinking
Design Thinking
obsessive about individual users. It is an intimate process — collaborative, empathetic, visual, iterative — where user insights and epiphanies become the DNA of new or improved experiences.
Business Thinking
understanding is derived from a more aggregate view of stakeholders, replication, scale, measurement
Both ways of thinking are important and essential for designers and companies. Therefore, nowadays product designers have to combine both when developing a product.
Phase in Design Thinking
1. Empathize
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through observing, engaging, and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment so you can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved.
Methode can be used:
- Deep interview
- User Survey
- User Testing
- Empathy Map
- Talking to people to gain insights
2. Define
During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during the Empathise stage. This is where you will analyze your observations and synthesize them in order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point.
Method can be used:
3. Ideate
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating ideas. With the solid background, you’ve gathered during the process, you and your team members can start to “think outside the box” to identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created, and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem
The method can be used:
When we deliver ideas with our team, it is possible that there are differences in points of view or preferences. The following are tips that we can practice in the ideation process with our team:
4. Prototype
The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team. This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages
5. Test
Designers or evaluators test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to empathize.
The Takeaways
The aim of design thinking isn’t about reaching perfection instantly. The goal of design thinking is to create a user-focused solution through stages that allow us to continuously improve the designs we have created. We hope that this article can help you to develop your product better by understanding how design thinking works!
Source:
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process
https://essentialdesign.com/design-thinking-business-thinking/https://uxdesign.cc/
