What is Design Thinking and How You Can Practice it With Your Team Now

So, you’ve heard of Design Thinking and how virtually every company and venture is competing neck and neck to iterate and innovate on the best user experience. Except, what is Design Thinking beyond simply a buzzword? How does one “adopt” Design Thinking into their company?

Maybe you’re fluent in Design Thinking, but can’t seem to get your peers to follow suit. Design Thinking cannot be practiced in a vacuum, of course. Let’s break this down together and come out with actionable steps even if you don’t have experience with Design Thinking!

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a framework or a mindset of approaching your organization’s challenges — sometimes it is used to help solve problems, pursue opportunities, move things forward, or innovate. Design Thinking enables speed and constantly delivers new value while ensuring minimal risk. It is not a problem-solving process or method — such alludes to something that is sequential or has a finite end. Design Thinking is not a checklist of which completion means your problem is solved. It’s like a set of Lego blocks that you can build, take down, rebuild, all by the instruction manual or your own creativity.

Design Thinking is all about going straight to the user. Create with the end user at the core of your work and put yourself in their shoes. By doing so, you uncover new pains and new opportunities that you may have not seen before. This framework also encourages teams to always measure against reality and to not commit a lot of time and money into one given idea. Iteration is a core principle of Design Thinking. By risking only a little bit of time and resources, you are comfortable with learning and getting better along the way.

These principles allow you to find direction. Then, the Loop (in Enterprise Design Thinking terms coined by IBM, not us the Loop Network!) allows you to move forward. The Loop guides how you act to learn and affect change. Like an infinite sign, you are constantly observing, reflecting, and making. This cycle never ends, because once you make a prototype or MVP, you go back to observing how the real-world interacts with it.

Adopted from IBM Enterprise Design Thinking

Throughout this framework, keys are what align us. They keep your team aligned in the same direction so that no one veers off.

• Hills: these are statements of alignments around the intended outcomes for users. They state the Who (specific user or user class), What (specific user enablement), Wow (specific & differentiating value to the user). Ex: A procurement manager can change buying strategies based on global market conditions as fast as social media reveals them.
• Playbacks: allow your team to align on time. Reflection means making decisions fast — playbacks can come in various shapes and forms, from low-fidelity sketches to polished demos reflecting on the story and learnings on the user.
• Sponsor Users: this is the flesh and bones of user experience. If you’re talking about a flight experience, you want the flight attendee, pilot, etc. to be with you when you are observing and getting feedback from the market.

How is it relevant? Why should I care?

At its core, Design Thinking exists to imagine a better experience and a better way for people to do something in their daily life. Designing an alarm clock becomes designing a better way for people to wake up in the morning. It places emphasis on the experience and putting yourself in the person’s shoes.

How do I start practicing Design Thinking right away?

You can start to practice Design Thinking by foundational behaviors, essentially “lower hanging fruit,” simple behaviors that can be encouraged regardless of someone’s experience with Design Thinking:

1. Practice empathy for the person at the middle of the problem you’re solving, and empathy with your teammates, manager, etc.
2. Break down silos by making decisions or brainstorming with the right and diverse group of people.
3. Diverge then converge ideation to get everyone involved and ensure that no idea gets lost.
4. Ideate before assessing. Don’t think about how good or how feasible an idea is, simply get everything out there and then come together to see what works and what doesn’t.
5. Encourage the absurd because it is easier to get wild and reel that idea in, than to try and push a half-thought out idea to be innovative.
6. Use “Yes, and…” instead of “no, but” — using “but” cancels whatever is said before, and it is important to promote a judgement-free zone.
7. Document any assumptions. You make a lot of assumptions while you’re working with a team. In any situation, it makes for a better argument when you present your assumptions and put forward a more complete perspective.
8. Listen actively — write down questions while others are talking. Engage, be patient, and keep the focus on whoever is talking.

The next level comes with applying specific activities — if you’ve heard of empathy maps, As-Is/To-Be Scenarios, and any other experience-based mapping journey — these are most tangible and tend to suffice for most business challenges. Identifying what you are trying to accomplish first and then identifying the appropriate activity helps you focus on the outcome and intention rather than doing, say, an Empathy map for the sake of it.

Here is a table of Design Thinking Activities and their desired outcomes:

Content adopted from IBM Enterprise Design Thinking

Lastly, don’t stress!! Practicing Design Thinking is all about embracing ambiguity and getting comfortable with it. Not knowing what to do next is the beauty of this framework. If you are interested in learning more about Design Thinking and want to implement this approach in your own startup, check out the Loop’s Group Salons! The Loop is a networking and mentorship community for female founders, and our Group Salons are cohorts with six womxn led by investors, founders, operators, etc to help you build your venture, for free! We invite all womxn interested in Design Thinking to join the community and sign up for the waitlist for Group Salons! Visit loopnetwork.org.

Written by: Michelle Fang