What’s a ‘Design Thinking?' And what's the Fuss all about?

Think e-commerce, online food delivery or the cool of Uber pool-the end-user in each of these cases is spoilt with exclusive choices! A choice that one can have the product delivered in minutes with just a tap at the smartphone screen.

It won’t be a surprise to say that currently, the world of technology is in a massive state of flux. Changes are occurring at an exponential pace in almost every tech-driven sector. Even more in the consumer led ecosystem. The modern consumer is not holding anything back to pursue unique and authentic product experiences. To this end, businesses are constantly re-aligning their strategies to cope up with the evolving needs. As devices multiply and systems grow complex in accommodating this paradigm shift, it only becomes imperative for enterprises to not only find solutions to gain a competitive edge over the market (Business opportunity), but also infuse better ease of use(UI/UX) for faster adaptability(Sustainability).

But the important question still remains- How do you ensure a unique product experience for your brand in the clutter of cut-throat competition?

Is there a surefire way to guarantee customer retention?

If so, how does one come up with unique ideas for product designs that stand out?

The challenge raises few questions on some of the basic philosophy we have based our daily business operations on. To be fair, as a society, we are so obsessed with business, growth and technology that we sometimes fail to look at the process that goes under the sheets in defining the change that we have become a part of.

Briefly put, the answer lies in innovation. And Design thinking is the starting point. To say that Design Thinking acts as the perfect balance between innovation and business eccentricities would be an understatement.

How so, you wonder?

First, let’s get hold of few fundamentals and get going

What’s a Design Thinking?

Design thinking is an industry practice applied to solve modern challenges with a human centered approach. Through Design Thinking, a problem is seen through the end-user perspective and solutions are conditioned accordingly. Traditionally, Design thinking has been used to develop products that provide great aesthetic value to the end users. But with time, it has gained broader definition. In the modern scenario, it helps brands succeed by bringing in the user eccentricities and business value just by the right amount while cultivating scope for further innovations at the same time. In doing so, Brands not only build their loyalty but also deliver a recall value.

However, it must be noted that Design thinking is not visual design or web design, not even UI/UX. Design thinking is an approach that touches upon the key aspects of design aliments and product design through an elaborately thought out, watermarked processes.

How do you then approach this ‘Approach?’

Like any creative process, Design Thinking is perpetual.

Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon outlined one of the first formal models of the Design Thinking process in his 1969 seminal text, “The Sciences of the Artificial,”. Simon’s 1960 model has been influential in shaping wide variants of contemporary Design models.

One such model, proposed by Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (a leading university in Design Thinking) differentiates five different stages, namely-Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test to illustrate the complete Design Thinking process.

Let’s have a close look to get a brief understanding of the model.

Elements of Design Thinking

Empathize

Empathizing is the first node in the five-step model. It involves carrying out customer feedback, expert interviews and a physical understanding of the user scenario. Being on the user side of the product, a designer can get rid of the assumptions and gather insights to explore the best possible understanding of a user’s need, user experience and the glitches that can be improved upon to enhance the product aesthetics. However, it must be ensured that a time limit is earmarked, else the process turns recursive and may stretch interminably.

Define

From the perspectives gathered in the ‘Empathize’ stage, teams sit together and assemble the data, analyze and process it to form the value proposition in the most concise, clear and compelling manner.

It goes without saying that the Value Proposition for any user centered problem should reflect the customer pain rather than any business objectives. Say, for example, if company ‘ABC’ specializes in automation software for manufacturing plants. Then it should brief the designers something on the lines of – ‘With ABC’s automation software, manufacturing units can yield a higher throughput in the production line.’  Than a brief which reads as– ‘Our automation software needs to target manufacturing sectors to achieve a net quarterly profit of 5 %’

Ideate

Now that a clear value proposition has been defined, teams will generate ideas around the theme. It is advisable to bring teams from across the vertical on board to generate ideas. Greater the diversity, broader are the ideas. This ultimately leads to an increased number of useful business and design concepts which can be worked upon in the next step, the prototyping stage. Ideation in Design Thinking is a useful tool to tackle complex challenges where analytical approaches have proved insufficient. 

Prototype

Through Ideation, designers get an informed perspective. Hereafter, the experimental stage begins where different inexpensive, watertight models are investigated one-by-one and the best fit from the available solutions are measured, re-examined, improved and evaluated or rejected based on users’ experience. By the time designers are on the last leg of Prototyping, they will be aware of the constraints inherent within the product and will be able to know how the end product will work with real users.

Test

After the best solution is found out in the prototype stage, the final product is put to test. Testing is a recurring process as cases may arise where the problem statements had to be defined more clearly in one or two spots. This way, even a better, deeper understanding of users need are acquired.

Design thinking is a non-linear approach.

It may so happen that designers need to get back to a previous step after a feedback on user insight, which in turn may lead to another conceptualization or designing new prototypes. In many use-cases, more than one stage occurs concurrently to visualize the problem-solution parameters in the best possible way.

What’s the fuss about Design Thinking, you ask?

Plain in sight as it may seem, Design Thinking is essentially a collaborative approach than an individual endeavor. Unlike analytical thinking, the problem criteria in Design Thinking are not well-defined. As in, the process involves working towards challenges which are at most, tricky, vague or simply abstract. The biggest challenge in design thinking is to navigate from the uncertain to possible to the assured. (Finding the best solution from the available)

Embracing Design Thinking in the Modern Landscape

The web hosts social media sites of every form. They have a common goal-user engagement. If Facebook uses a news-feed form of structure then twitter deploys tags and mentions effectively to engage users. On the other hand, Quora provides a virtual platform to have more subjective interactions by either raising question or answering one. And Pinterest uses blocks of super-captivating infographics, pictures as their engagement model.

What differentiates each of the social media site is the way they engage their users. The difference however lies in the user-engagement model through varying user interfaces. In the coming times, with larger penetration of technologies such as cloud computing and IoT, it only makes sense to embrace Design Thinking as a primary requirement before any product design could take place. Design Thinking has more to offer than just Brand engagement or Product placement. To craft great future experiences, teams need to sit together and work across disciplines to leverage on the innovations occurring at the forefront of our industry today. When approached right, Design thinking can inculcate a habit of innovation and creativity among enterprises and cut through the competition.

Has your organization embraced Design Thinking yet to build that ‘creative confidence?’ If so, how has the journey been? And what did it take to make Design Thinking a mainstream practice?

Source: Mindsets, Tools and Terminology of Experience Design by Katie Shelly, Medium