It’s often common to have ideas bouncing all over the place in a start-up, which makes it tough for founders to focus on the bigger plans. Design thinking provides a solution for this, by helping founders put everything into place whilst keeping their customers at the center of the business.
The Design Thinking approach is all about finding the problem that’s worth solving. It involves framing and solving problems based on empathising with customers and their pain-points.
There are four main phases: design discovery, ideation, prototyping, and testing.
- Design discovery
This phase will help you discover your real users and deliver a project or product that aligns closely with their needs and your start-up’s objectives. Do this well, and you’ll gain crucial insights into the pain points that your customers are experiencing.
There are two types of design discovery: functional discovery and design discovery.
Functional discovery is usually conducted using UX (user experience) analytics to collect all requirements needed for a future product and research the market. It analyses user expectations, the user journey and your business objectives. Additionally, you can carry out a competitive analysis to understand your niche and where your start-up sits within it.
Design discovery involves researching what design decisions are applicable to a particular product. It can help you come up with a genuinely creative design decision.
After completing both stages, connect the dots between the two to create a product design direction.
2. Ideation
This is a brainstorming phase where you spark ideas based on your discovery findings. It provides fuel and source material for building prototypes. Effective ideation phases help your design team look beyond the usual ways to solve problems to find elegant and innovative solutions to user problems.
3. Prototyping
This differs from project-to-project and is an iterative process. It requires experimentation and a lot of different approaches to find the one that works for you. Don’t expect to find the perfect solution in your first attempt.
4. Testing
Web usability consultant Jakob Nielsen once said that “You are not your user” — which perfectly summarises why the testing phase is so important. Your product will always need additional refinement after it reaches the market. To do this successfully, test at regular intervals and early-on in the product development process. Make sure you have clear metrics to measure success that you can base your future decisions on.
How you can do Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is an involved process. Doing it well requires patience, know-how, and dedication. You have two options for going through the phases:
- Do it in-house
- Get external help
There are several good reasons for turning to external help. First, external companies that specialise in Design Thinking come with a wealth of experience and expert knowledge. This is invaluable when launching a start-up rapidly and making sure you get the most out of Design Thinking.
It’s crucial if you and your team have limited expertise in Design Thinking or you’re on a limited time-frame. Getting external help will speed the process up. In some cases, you can work through the Discovery, Ideation and Prototyping phases in one week.
How Innovify can help?
Of course, if you’re not familiar with the process, we can help you. Our approach is to guide our start-ups through a discovery and design sprint as the first step in our collaboration together.
With Innovify, you’ll be guided through creating a product vision and roadmap, outlining your user journeys, and refining the features and functionalities of your MVP.
This approach helps you to reduce the risk when launching a new product, service or feature to the market. It’ll define your goals, validate your assumptions and outline your roadmap before writing a single line of code. (Prakash Pilley — Co-founder & Head of Innovation Innovify)
Success ensured
Design Thinking lays solid foundations for your start-up’s continued success. Don’t scrimp on the process.
Planning and execution are key, to focus your resources and give your team direction.
Set your start-up on the right tracks using Design Thinking and you’ll never put a foot wrong.
