As the complexities and uncertainties increase, the problems people face also become complex. Complex problems do not have easy answers. There is no single path that leads you to the right solutions for such complex challenges. That is why you need to get better at problem-solving. You need a path for your creative process that enables innovative ideas to flow more freely and yet be focused on the real solutions. You need a human-centered approach. Design Thinking provides you with a guide that enables you to do exactly that.
Design Thinking is not an approach to solve problems as and when they arise. Instead, it is an approach used by innovators of various fields like science, engineering, business, art, music, and literature to create and develop new products and services that have a long-term impact. It also compliments business agility, lean approach, and digital transformation that organizations are adopting to respond to the increasing uncertainties.
This article will explain all about Design Thinking – what it means, the six stages of the process, its benefits, and a lot more.
Table of Contents
What is the design thinking approach?
Design Thinking is an iterative design process where the design teams understand their customers’ needs to develop creative solutions, products, and services. It is a non-linear process where you focus on the users rather than the historical data and evidence.
Design Thinking is a problem-solving design process where you understand human needs first, restructure and redefine the problems, develop creative ideas, create rapid product prototypes and test them before implementing the potential solutions. You think outside the box.
Design thinking is a functional approach that involves practical strategies and hands-on methods that questions the problems, assumptions, and implications. It is even more helpful when faced with unknown and unclear issues because design thinking involves redefining the difficulties in a human-centered design way.
What are the six (6) stages of the Design Thinking process?
David M Kelley, Stanford University’s Institute of Design and IDEO, a design consultancy, has divided the design thinking process into various stages of the design challenge. These stages can be run in parallel, in sequence, out-of-order, or even repeat iteratively. But, of course, it all depends on the team and the problems at hand.
Empathize
This stage is where you understand and empathize with the user’s needs and problems. This stage involves research where you observe, watch, listen and interact with your customers. You need to set aside your assumptions and understand your end-users by asking questions because nobody can explain the problem better than people who are facing it.
Empathizing is a crucial step because if you fail to understand why exactly you are creating a product, you will assume the wrong criteria and create a product that won’t even solve the problem. This stage sets the foundation and makes the requirements for business success clear.
Define
Now that you have an idea about your customers’ wants, it’s time to define the problem. Analyze your research and observations. Pinpoint the user’s needs and determine the core problems. To get better at describing the problem, create user personas and establish different points of view.
It would be best if you highlighted the opportunities in your gathered information. Look for patterns. The patterns will help you to redefine and restructure your problem. Once you have a clear definition of the problem, you will have more explicit goals and visions for your end product.
Ideate
Ideation is the stage where you create ideas and generate solutions. The first two stages provide you with a solid foundation and enough knowledge to brainstorm innovative solutions.
The ideate stage provides a more excellent value when it involves collaboration and participation from every team member. If possible, involve your stakeholders too. Looking through different perspectives helps your team to come up with a better solution.
During your brainstorming sessions, explore alternative ways by considering every possibility. It doesn’t matter if the idea is good, bad, crazy, or even tedious! Generate as many as you can. Once you have enough ideas, analyze and prioritize them. Merge two or more solutions if you have to. Then finalize valuable solutions for prototyping.
Prototype
Once you have enough ideas, you need to create the solutions, i.e., make real, inexpensive, and scaled-down versions of your ideas so that you can test them. These are your prototypes. You build a practical solution that you can apply to the problem and check its feasibility. You gain insights on what will work and what won’t.
When you build a prototype, you gain much clarity over your problems. The process helps you to gain new insights into the difficulties and refine your existing ideas. Or, you can even come up with a unique solution. Design thinking is an iterative process. Remember?
Test
After building the prototype, you need to test it. You will learn how well your design or product performs. Pay attention to user feedback and criticism. Even though this is the final stage, you can develop new ideas based on the test results. That’s what makes design thinking such an effective technique – iteration.
Testing, gathering feedbacks, making necessary alterations, and going back to ideation or prototyping – this loop brings out the best design you can offer. Sometimes, testing will take to back to the first stage if you hadn’t understood the problem correctly.
Implement
Now that you have the best possible solution, you need to implement it. This stage is where you and your team will start developing the product. Next, you polish and refine your product to meet the customers’ needs. Once your product is ready, you launch it. Finally, you materialize your solution so that your users can use it.
Don’t stop once your product is on the market. Track and measure its performance and success. Improve and evolve your products or services based on the feedback you receive. This approach to innovation increases your chances of success.
What problems can design thinking solve?
Design thinking is a problem-solving approach. But often, there are other life and work problems that a design thinking mindset can help you solve.
- Design thinking can address multiple spheres like business and society, human needs and economic demands, rationality, and creativity.
- There will always be disruptions in society due to social and economic conditions. As design thinking takes a human-centric approach, you can take a fresh look at the world and the challenges it faces.
- With this approach, you get better at conducting meetings. The design thinking approach considers each idea to come up with a better solution. Better discussions should improve collaboration among team members.
- Most of the time, the solutions built are complex and unpredictable. With prototyping and testing, you implement a solution only after you have successfully predicted its outcomes.
- Most straightforward solutions are not permanent. The iterative process of design thinking allows you to tweak and make the necessary changes as and when new problems arise.
- In design thinking, you first observe and understand a problem, develop alternative solutions, and reflect on them before making a decision. This process can solve complex life challenges as well.
Benefits of design thinking
You already know the significant problems that design thinking can solve. So let’s see some more of its benefits.
- You can combine design thinking with other methodologies, business strategies, development models, and management practices.
- As design thinking is a user-focused product development process, you can increase user satisfaction.
- Design thinking allows you to explore alternative solutions in the early stages. Its practices will save your time, energy, costs, and other resources.
- As this approach encourages all kinds of ideas and alternatives, it enhances creativity among your team members.
- You can build a collaborative work culture as everyone values diverse ideas from others, free of judgment.
- The iterative process of prototyping and testing before the final implementation lowers the risk factor and saves your costs.
- Design thinking places significant importance on feedback and evaluations. The feedback not only improves the product but the people involved too. It expands your knowledge as you learn new things at every step.
What is the difference between design thinking and traditional thinking?
Traditional problem-solving takes a straightforward approach. You look at the problem, define the steps and tools to solve it, follow the predefined plan to create the product, and hope for the expected result. Even though traditional thinking involves a methodical and scientific approach, there is no room for flexibility and creativity.
The problem arises when you have not recognized the issue correctly. Or the steps don’t lead to the right solution. But design thinking is an iterative process. So you can always go back to any stage from any stage and redefine your problem or the solution.
What is the difference between design thinking and analytical thinking?
You might be aware of analytical thinking. It is where you make decisions based on reasoning and outcomes. You take a logical approach to break down the facts and thoughts and analyze the strengths & weaknesses.
But there is no room for creativity, innovation, or thinking outside the box.
Analytical thinking is beneficial to solve critical problems as it focuses on facts, evidence, and data. But if you want to focus on the user experience, you need design thinking as design thinking is a customer-centric problem-solving approach. Also, analytical thinking is more useful when using it during the problem definition stage of design thinking.
Conclusion
As the world change and technology evolve, new problems arise. And the best way to solve them is through design thinking. Because design thinking is a practical approach that not only helps to solve the issues and develop products but also solve life problems. It is a flexible method that you can apply to a variety of contexts.
