Design thinking is a method that can be used to find solutions to problems that are not obvious but are important to people. The term was first used in 1969 in Herbert Simon’s book The Sciences of the Artificial, but it was not until two decades later that the method began to be taken seriously.
The peculiarity of design thinking is that this method is considered user-centric — focused primarily on people, not business tasks. The main questions a designer asks when looking for a solution are: “Who will use the product?” and “How will it affect the user’s life?”
Application of design thinking
The design thinking method can be used in any area of business and for the design of any product. This method helps to better understand people and create useful and attractive products for them. The result of such work can be small improvements, such as changes to the application interface, or innovative developments that radically improve the quality of life. For example, creating a gadget that constantly monitors blood sugar levels and transmits the information to a doctor.
The advantage of this concept is that it allows you to quickly formulate hypotheses, test ideas, and abandon the creation of products that people definitely do not need. The design thinking method also helps to perceive the world through the prism of the future and rely on the idea of how it should look.
The process of searching for ideas using design thinking consists of five stages:
- empathy,
- analysis and definition of the problem,
- idea generation,
- prototyping,
- testing.
The order of the design thinking stages assumes that the designer goes through a shift from abstract thinking to concrete thinking and back again. This way, they do not get stuck on the obvious, but look broadly at the life situations people find themselves in and find meaningful solutions.
Empathy
Empathy is the ability to empathize with other people’s feelings and understand why they arose. Empathy helps you put yourself in the shoes of the people for whom you are making the product. In design thinking, it is a way to find out what people really need and what they fear.
What to do at the empathy stage:
- Discuss with your team or write down everything you know about people’s behavior in the real-life situation for which the product is being created.
- Conduct desk research — find reports on trends, audience surveys, and other sources of information that will help you form a general idea about people and the problem.
- Conduct qualitative research — surveys and in-depth interviews with representatives of the target audience and experts.
- Observe the target audience at the moment when they are dealing with the real-life situation for which the product is being created.
- Go through the user journey yourself.
- Try to identify obvious and non-obvious target audiences. The latter will help you find successful solutions that suit a larger number of people.
The result of the empathy stage is immersion in the context and gathering all available information about what the target audience of the product lives by: how they behave in certain life situations, what words they use, how they choose products and services, what difficulties and limitations they face, and so on.
Analysis and problem definition
The task of this stage of design thinking is to make sense of the information obtained in the first stage, draw conclusions, and establish a point of view (POV).
To do this, use the data collected during the empathy stage to answer the following questions:
- Who is our user?
- What is their deep unmet need?
- Why is this important?
The answers to these questions help formulate consumer insight — a statement that describes a person’s deep needs and the problem they face.
A correctly formulated insight always contains tension that explains not only a person’s desires but also their fears. Knowing these helps to create products that improve quality of life.
Idea generation
The task of this stage of design thinking is to come up with a solution to the problem formulated in the previous step.
Important principles of idea generation:
- First, come up with as many solutions as possible without immediately discarding options that seem unsuccessful.
- Then evaluate whether the ideas solve the user’s problem.
- Check whether the idea can be implemented in terms of available technology, production costs, and other factors.
Prototyping
The next stage of design thinking is to create a prototype that can be demonstrated to the user. The prototype can vary from a sketch and cardboard model to a test version of the application.
The main purpose of the prototype is to show the product to the user. There is no need to spend a lot of time preparing the prototype: the sooner the user tests the product and provides feedback, the better.
When creating a prototype, it is necessary to formulate hypotheses that the team will test in the next stage and create solutions for them.
Testing
At this stage, the prototype is given to users. They study it, try to use the product, and share their impressions. Testing will help you understand what to do with the idea you used—refine it or abandon it and return to the idea generation stage or even to the very beginning of the solution search cycle.
One of the principles of design thinking is that the designer wins regardless of which stage they have to return to after testing the prototype. Feedback from users helps to better understand their needs and avoid wasting resources on launching a useless product. The main thing to remember is that returning to previous stages of design thinking is normal.
Conclusion
Design thinking is useful for everyone to learn: it will help in any profession. You can practice on any project, even the smallest ones. The main thing is to go through all the stages consistently:
- Empathy: observe the people for whom the project or product is intended, look for additional information about their lifestyle and needs.
- Analysis and problem definition: process the information you have gathered, formulate insights that include people’s desires and fears, and choose a problem for which you need to find a solution.
- Idea generation: formulate as many solutions to the problem as possible, and then choose the one that seems most successful.
- Prototyping: choose a format that will help demonstrate the product to the user — this could be a drawing, a demo version of the application, or a test model of clothing.
- Test: invite the user to try the product and share their feedback.
It is important not to be afraid of mistakes. Even if, during the testing phase, the user says that the product is not suitable for them, this is an excellent result of using design thinking. Now you know exactly what not to waste your time and energy on. If the user says they like the product, you can celebrate your victory—the solution has been found.