Thinking about Design Thinking

We completed our first design thinking exercise in class two weeks ago and then again during a workshop last weekend. Before trying out this method in class, I had never heard of the concept of design thinking. Design thinking takes away the limitations of normal project constraints and pushed the design to do what they do best, create. This process can be broken down into five main steps:

Empathize. Define. Ideate. Prototype. Test.

Empathize. This step in the process is key to gaining a better understand of the person(s) you’re designing for. Getting into the mindset of your user is a critical part of creating successful and relatable designs and should be in every UX designers’ toolbox.

Define. Once you’ve figured out who your user is, it’s time to figure out what they need. It’s the designers job (especially as a UX designer) to know what your user needs, even if they don’t. You need to create a point of view and a ‘user persona’ based on what you as the designer thinks your client needs.

Ideate. This stage of the process is all about getting your ideas on paper. Designers are encouraged to come up with as many ideas (not matter how outlandish) as they can and write them all down. This allows for the designer to not feel restricted at this point in the process and allows for the ideas to flow freely.

Prototype. This step in the design thinking process is all about explaining your idea. By taking your top ideas from the previous stage and creating prototypes of them you allow your users to understand what you’re trying to create.

Test. This is where you as the designer get to see if your design is successful. By showing your user what you’ve come up with, you get to see if you’ve done a good job of solving the design problem you started with.

Overall I thought this was a really interesting way of generating a ton of ideas. I feel like I was able to freely come up with concepts without feeling like they had to be correct the first time around. This is definitely a process I will be trying again in the future with other design problems I come across.