What is Design Thinking?
They are two words that are commonly thrown around when we think of innovation and addressing complex problems.
But what is this design thinking process that we keep hearing about?
In a nutshell the design thinking process is an adapted methodology from design, which helps to address challenging problems through a creative solution-based approach. Design thinking is often associated with product design, however there is no reason why it cannot be applied to other areas of strategy, business and management.
While at university I have come across and used this particular framework on a number of group projects and have held small business workshops with eager high school students to address hypothetical problems such as redesigning a new society after a zombie apocalypse. In this article I will share some of my thoughts on the design thinking process.
This process is great at addressing problems that are human centric as it particularly helps individuals to develop a deeper sense of empathy and understanding of people. People are at the centre of design thinking, by understanding why people do something or feel a certain way this provides valuable insights that could be leveraged to reframe or redefine a problem.
The design thinking process consists of 5 key stages that includes:
- Empathise: At this first stage the main objective is to learn and understand who are the people/audiences that we are trying to design for through using various observational and interview techniques. Here we want to define our target audience, gain a clearer picture of what matters to them, understand their experiences and key motivations.
2. Defining the problem: Based on the insights gathered about the user we want to then synthesise this information to reframe or define a problem statement which the design thinking process helps to address.
Problem statement example: Survivors of the zombie apocalypse need to grow nutritious crops in order to be healthy, grow and reproduce.
3. Ideate: At this stage we brainstorm and generate as many creative ideas as possible using the knowledge gathered from stage 1 to form a big idea. As creativity is strongly encouraged here, a range of ideation techniques should be utilised to stimulate free-thinking. For example: Post-it notes on butcher paper, random word generators, related worlds technique and assumption challenge etc.
4. Prototype: At this iterative stage a number of prototypes are generated to better visualise and test ideas.
5. Test: Once the prototype is complete it is crucial to let the target users try the product to gauge their experience, behaviour and feelings. During the testing phase, the primary objective is to gain feedback and understand what worked and what didn't as this enables an opportunity to make amendments to the prototype or revise stages 2 and 3.
It is important to also remember that design thinking is an iterative process rather than a series five sequential steps. Now equipped with a better understanding of this solution-based approach to solve complex problems it's time to put the innovation cap on and get creative.
Want to learn more? Take a crash course at https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/virtual-crash-course-video
Readings:
https://hbr.org/2008/06/design-thinking
https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/chart-a-new-course-put-design-thinking-to-work
