Design Thinking
A peep into the mind of innovators
“ Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, “Make it look good!” That’s not what we think the design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
- Steve Jobs
Before we delve in, here is a little thought experiment!
Before you scroll, visualize a vase to hold flowers in your home.
Are these similar to the ones you had in mind?
Hold on to that thought; we’ll get back to it at the end of this article.
Deciphering Design Thinking
Steve Jobs was an early proponent of design thinking. Under him, Apple’s commodities, engineering, sales, and marketing were diligently crafted to meet the end-user’s needs and wants. To the millions of Apple-loyal customers around the world, their products just felt right.
Empathy is a significant reason for Apple’s growth from a Silicon Valley startup to a global corporation. This forms one of the cornerstones of the Design Thinking methodology. There is no one answer to what Design thinking is, but Jobs’ quote is a great place to start; it’s about creating solutions that work.
Design thinking is simply a philosophy and a set of tools to solve complex problems with a human-centric approach.
Or, as Wikipedia says:
“ Design thinking refers to the cognitive, strategic, and practical processes by which design concepts such as proposals for new products, buildings, machines, etc. are developed. It is a modern non-linear approach to problem-solving. “
To decipher design thinking, let’s start with a popular view of the creative process known as the “Moses Myth.” It perpetuates the belief that the ability to innovate belongs to a particular class of holy men.
“Innovation is the miracle that results when a special person raises their hands to the heavens, and the Red Sea parts or the iPod is born.”
Like most myths, this isn’t true. Though there exist creative geniuses like Steve Jobs, genius is not the only way to produce innovation.
And believing the Moses myth undermines ones’ confidence in their abilities.
Rather than waiting for Moses to show up and part the Red Sea for us, we need to get on with teaching ourselves how to create our own miracles reliably.
Design thinking gives us the ability to do just that with a different outlook on the creative process. In this approach, the tangled mess of innovation morphs into a systematic set of viewpoints, as mentioned below.
Questioning Assumptions and Understanding Reality
Developing a better understanding of the situation is at the core of Design thinking’s data-intensive and user-driven approach. This inquest urges us to assess the current reality accurately.
Attending to the present pays dividends in two parts.
It enables us to broaden our definition of the problem or opportunity we want to tackle, eliminating narrow and conventional views.
And it helps us identify unarticulated needs, which are essential in producing differentiated solutions.
Most of us rush to start the process of innovation by brainstorming new ideas and ultimately find it hard to immerse ourselves in the here and now. Questioning assumptions challenge our dependence on imagination, and it gives us insights into the needs and wants of various stakeholders.
Exploring Possibilities and Generating Ideas
After identifying patterns and translating them into specific design criteria, we now focus on identifying possibilities.
This Design Thinking philosophy segment encourages us to break the shackles of constraints and brainstorm like anything is possible.
Using the insights from the data gathering phase, we pose a series of trigger questions that will enable us to think outside of our own boxes (or rather like there were no boxes ) and form multiple creative ideas.
As part of concept development, this phase prompts us to think of those unique ideas as Lego blocks and combine them to produce all possible creations called business concepts.
“Failure is an option here. If things are not failing, you are not innovating enough.”
-Elon Musk
Identifying Novel Options
This phase involves systematically evaluating our formulated business concepts against our design criteria.
To our parallel pleasure and dismay, we end up with exciting but a broad set of options after the second phase.
Vetting through these options involves identifying concepts that hit the sweet spot, where the chance of significant upside for stakeholders matches our capability to deliver the new offering sustainably.
The concepts that fall under the wow zone can now be experimented with and transformed into a prototype that potential customers can interact with.
Experimenting and Identifying the Solution
This phase involves developing low fidelity prototypes and making it available to actual users.
Iteratively refining the prototype and testing it against various user segments improves our confidence in the new idea’s value and provides us with a framework to scale.
Through this phase, we must keep in mind some core principles. These include accelerated feedback cycles to minimize the cost of conducting experiments, early testing for identifying fundamental trade-offs or assumptions, and the mindset to fail early in order to succeed sooner.
These four phases can help us build the bridge to more innovative solutions and create our miracles without relying on Moses.
Heading back to our thought experiment,
The prompt, design a vase, was too narrow for innovation and creativity to flourish. This is a common problem in the enterprise world.
Let’s take a step back and open the aperture a bit. Why would someone buy a vase? What purpose does it serve? A vase is only one way to enjoy flowers in your home. Try the activity again, but this time think of it as an experience.
Visual images as tangential as these are what Design thinking prompts you to have. It requires you to consider a person’s experience to focus on their human needs.
Summing up, Design Thinking as a problem-solving approach focuses on phases that are human-centered, possibility-driven, option-focused, and iterative in its process.
By empathizing with users, practicing expansive thinking, and experimenting with ideas, even a bunch of misfits can tap into their collective creative power!
Know more
- How 5 CEOs Used Design Thinking to Transform Their Companies
- How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking Into Strategy
- Design thinking in 3 steps: How to build a culture of innovation
- Design thinking origin story plus some of the people who made it all happen
