Discover the truth behind design thinking and how to do it creatively.
According to Tim Brown, the executive chair of IDEO, design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.
However, it is not an exclusive property of designers – all great innovators in the industry of literature, art, music, science, and business have practiced it. For many years, the business world, in this matter, has discovered the power of design thinking. It has been used as a vehicle to foster creativity and empower growth. Nonetheless, myths about the popular problem-solving method continue to linger. In this article, we will walk through some of the myths of design thinking, and how to get started in practicing it.
Debunking the myths
Myth 1: Design thinking is only for creating new products
This myth remains one of the biggest design thinking myths. Design thinking is beneficial for brilliant human product designs and services, but its usefulness doesn’t end there. Indeed, the innovation method developed in Silicon Valley can be applied; however, strategies, processes, business models, and scenario development can be adjusted. As written by Deloitte, the innovation method consists of six general principles:
- Set innovation strategy and direction – an organization should institute a structured decision-making process to formulate its innovation goals and clearly define its role. This can be done by establishing innovation goals, assigning ownership of goals, and creating a governance structure for prioritizing innovation ideas and funding approvals.
- Explore the next S-curve – Effective leaders of an organization must have the ability to sense external marketplace movement, identify partnership opportunities, and formulate new ideas. This can be done by conducting a cross-industry assessment of disruptive trends.
- Establish the innovation vehicle – Enterprises should carefully assess and justify which particular type of satellite organization would be the most suitable kind of innovation outpost for the parent company. This can be done through developing corporate venture strategy, and structuring transactions to mitigate regulatory risks.
- Scout for the right partners – The organization should scout for partners through a disciplined multi-step filtering process to help improve the odds of a profitable match. This can be done by assessing potential partners’ fit with the company’s innovation goals.
- Set the modus operandi – To facilitate the integration of satellite outposts, enterprises should establish communication protocols to encourage the launch of new products and establish the start-up or satellite entity’s value proposition.
- Optimize investments – Large enterprises should carefully plan the investment portfolio to generate acceptable returns throughout the investment lifecycle. In order to do so, organizations should build business cases, develop a proof of concept and conduct rapid prototyping, and develop innovation KPIs and key milestones.
To make it simple, whether the design thinking project results in a flying pizza drone or only in a customer-friendly ordering process does not depend on brainstorming but on selecting ideas. Therefore, it is up to the clients to decide how much the idea is “out of the box”. What matters is that solutions are consequently designed with a focus on the clients.
Understandably, this myth is widespread, mainly because the design thinking originated from product/industrial design practices and product innovation companies, like IDEO. In 1991, IDEO formed out of a three-way merger. With solid footing, IDEO attracted some highly influential people to join them for the next ten years, from academia and design practices. To date, design thinking, however, has been applied to a wide variety of organizations and companies for various objectives across sectors.
Myth 2: Design thinking does not produce results
Design thinking isn’t just a gimmick, it is leading to some incredible outcomes. For example, Bank of America was able to gain over 10 million new customers after applying design thinking.
Bank of America was looking for a way to increase the use of their savings accounts by customers. They then applied the design thinking methodology with the help of IDEO to boost their enrollment numbers and started engaging with customers to uncover insights. In this case, they found out that people liked the act of saving more than the actual amount they save. For instance, customers would get the same good feeling if they deposited $50 a month, rather than $600 at the end of the year.
From this insight, Bank of America developed the round-up concept; a product that allows customers to save with every transaction that they make. Customers, as a result, can get that same good feeling after every transaction. The outcome was staggering with Bank of America gaining over 10 million new customers and $1.8 billion in savings for them.
Myth 3: Design thinking is only for creative people
Design thinking, in essence, is a process of rediscovering yourself, to unleash your creativity and self-confidence that we all used to have as children. But the school assessment systems destroy the faith in our creativity, leaving no room for the creativity to unfold.
Tom Kelley, Partner of IDEO, stated that the biggest assets in design thinking are playful thinking, the courage to try something new, and the courage to challenge assumptions. Design Thinking is a mindset that unlocks creativity and doing with your open hands to let everyone and anyone to partake in building a better future. Believe that everyone has creative potential and design thinking helps to bring it back to light. Design thinking also stands for a changed working culture which promotes interdisciplinary teamwork and thus automatically boosts the creative self-confidence of each individual.
How to Get Started With Design Thinking
To get started on design thinking, we need to understand the process. Generally, the process you go through in design thinking is the same process on how to get started with design thinking – with both resulting in the same outcomes. As written by CareerFoundry, in practice, design thinking falls into five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.
- Empathize
Empathy provides a critical starting point for design thinking. The first stage of the process is spent getting to know the user and understanding their wants, needs, and objectives. In a way, this means observing and engaging with people to understand them on a psychological and emotional level. We need to set aside our assumptions and gather real insights.
- Define
The second stage is defining the problem. In this stage, you’ll gather all of your findings from the empathize phase and start to make sense of them: what difficulties and barriers are they up against? What patterns do you observe? What is their big problem that you, or your team, needs to solve?
By the end of this phase, you will have a clear problem statement. The key here is to frame the problem in a user-centered way, and you also need to identify unmet user needs. Once you’ve formulated the problems into words, you can start to come up with solutions and ideas – which brings us to stage 3.
- Ideate
This is the part where creativity happens, and it is important to acknowledge that the ideation stage is a judgment-free zone. Start working on potential solutions. Hold ideation sessions for you to come up with as many new angles and ideas as possible. Currently, there are various types of ideation techniques that you may use, from brainstorming and mind mapping to bodystorming (roleplay scenarios) and provocation to challenge established beliefs and exploring new alternatives. Towards the end of the ideation phase, you will narrow it down to a few ideas with which to move forward and be ready for implementation.
- Prototype
The fourth step in the design thinking process is all about experimenting and turning ideas into tangible solutions. Build real, tactical representations for a subset of your ideas. The goal of this phase is to understand what components of your ideas work, and which do not. In this phase, you will begin to weigh the impact vs. feasibility of your ideas through feedback on your prototypes.
- Test
In this stage, you will need to return to your users for feedback. You will ask whether or not the solution meets users’ needs. However, it is important to note that this is rarely the end of the design thinking process. In reality, the results of the testing phase will often lead you back to a previous step, providing the insights needed to redefine the original problem statement or to come up with new ideas you haven’t thought of before.
We live in an era of experiences, be they services or products, and we’ve come to have high expectations for these experiences. They are becoming more involved as information and technology continue to evolve. With each evolution comes a new set of unmet needs.
Design thinking is applicable no matter your role or industry. Whether you work in business, government, education, or non-profit, design thinking can help you develop innovative solutions based on your customers’ needs.
When all done right, design thinking will help you understand the mindsets and needs of the people you’re creating for, surface opportunities based on these needs, and lead you to innovative new solutions. It all starts with quick, low-fidelity experiments that provide learning and gradually increase fidelity.
“Design thinking is a mindset, not a toolkit or a series of steps.”
Arne van Oosterom
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