‘Design thinking’ — best tool to know ‘what not to do?’
Another day, during a brainstorming session we had no scarcity of ideas. “Let us have a coloured HD display”, “touch-screen is now affordable, let us have it”, “why not voice command”.. and so on. And the most clichéd “competition has these many features; we should have at least ‘those many plus 2’.” One of the most abused products of this thinking is ‘washing machine’. I think it has more buttons than a keyboard (!). Do we really use all of these functions at-least once in the lifetime of a machine?
‘Technology’ advancement and ‘connected world’ make everything feasible, there is hardly anything ‘impossible’ or ‘not feasible’. You think something new and technology to aid the solution exists. While this is a good sign of progress, it is also becoming an ever-growing trap on the other hand. One can see all sorts of products, services, and ‘start-ups’ being launched which on a fine day vanish from the market. An excellent example is the number of robots showcased at CES. Do you really need a machine which is bigger than a washing machine to fold (yes.. just fold) the laundry? The pragmatic thinking seems to be gone for a toss with the ease of feasibility.
This thinking is making products and services increasingly complex, rather cluttered. And this ever-growing clutter is just piling up creating mammoth garbage. It also encourages over consumption harming the environment.
Apart from easy of availability of technology, many a times the driver is the ‘fear of failure’ or ‘fear of being perceived dated (not adapting new technology)’ which leads in this comparative ‘feature-listing race’. Sometimes not knowing the real user and (anticipated) needs lead to the over design. Not being sure what the user would need and what could be the real scenarios, results in swelled up feature list (wish list) making the product complex, cluttered, and costly. [This is equally applied in our day to day life. The fear of being left behind or not knowing is making us continually stay connected and ‘follow’. This leaves no free-time, emptiness, time to free-wheel, ponder, digest and synthesize.]
In order to have simplified, sustainable, easy to use products and services, it is a must to explicitly define ‘what not to do.
This is where ‘design-thinking’ comes to rescue. It is the holistic thinking which anticipates future user needs, explores possibilities of technology for the context, and considers viability for business. It is combination of analysis and synthesis (Ideo calls it as divergent and convergent thinking in their double-diamond design process) which helps in exploring wider ideas and then pragmatically converge on the right ones. The traditional approach of user requirements or requirement analysis would result in a long bucket list (wish list) which would lead us nowhere. The ‘synthesis’ part in the process is crucially important to decide ‘what not to do’. It requires a deeper understanding of user, context and technology. And yes it also requires a bit if ‘gut feeling’ which is again based on the understanding of context.
