Design Thinking: Process and Tips for Application
Innovation is a unique concept: we may hear about something new or disruptive getting ready to hit the marketplace, but we won’t know its full effect until experiencing it.
Game-changing innovation does not occur by accident. It stems from providing something to the public that can benefit them in ways not previously considered. In some situations, it can leave people wondering how they ever lived without it. To fully understand how this phenomenon works, it’s important to explore the concept of design thinking and examine how it functions.
Design function sets the wheels of innovation in motion, and its principles guide the innovative process from idea to execution. But what exactly is the design thinking process, and why is it important for people to understand?
What Is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a human-centric approach to finding solutions to a perceived issue. In its simplest terms, it’s a concept that aims to provide a detailed answer to “what if?” However, the process’s mechanics are often far more complex.
At its core, design thinking deploys a creative and practical methodology for problem-solving. Its approach relies on understanding the needs of people and figuring out how to meet those needs in unexpected ways. Its process results in streamlining or improving a product, service, or essential concept in a way that can potentially improve a person’s daily function.
Design thinking can lead to disruptive innovations that fundamentally change the perception of a long-standing process, product, or methodology. Companies that are now household names like Netflix, Uber, and Airbnb, for example, utilized design thinking principles to create services that permanently changed the game in the home video, rideshare, and lodging industries.
From a products and services standpoint, the ultimate purpose of design thinking is to create something that influences three distinctive metrics: technology, economic durability, and consumer interest. When these metrics are met, the result can genuinely benefit a consumer’s life.
The Design Thinking Principles and Process
To fully grasp the complexity of design thinking, it’s important to analyze the five essential principles that govern the basic design thinking process. The basic principles that make up the design thinking framework are:
- Empathy
- Define
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test
The principles of design thinking are flexible. They don’t necessarily need to be executed linearly, and they can be revisited at various stages of the process as the impetus and goals evolve. A good way to think about design thinking is that it isn’t a straight pathway from point A to point B—it’s a journey with unexpected twists and turns that influence the arrival to the end goal.
Principle #1: Empathy
One of the fundamental elements of an innovation that betters society is that it must connect with its end user in a meaningful way. When trying to develop a design thinking solution, it’s crucial to have a thorough understanding of the consumer and their needs and not be clouded by assumptions. Without empathy and an ability to consider what the consumer may take away from a product or service, a design thinking solution will not work.
Understanding consumer needs isn’t just a matter of developing something that they may find interesting. It requires knowledge of why they may want it in their lives, such as convenience or cost-effectiveness. It’s also essential to gauge the attitudes of the consumer and be fully prepared to alter the product or service when attitudes change through cultural or social influences.
Principle #2: Define
It’s one thing to gather information on a particular demographic. It’s another to execute a design thinking strategy that connects to the right people. To do the latter, businesses must construct a clearly defined plan utilizing actionable insights derived from consumers. This plan should be holistic, focusing on the big picture. Those developing strategies driven by design thinking need to be adept at picking up on patterns within the data. They must also be on the lookout for gaps in consumers’ needs; this may require intuition if the data suggests the consumer doesn’t realize what is needed.
The definition stage may also reveal consumer information that had not been discerned in prior phases, such as an undiscovered barrier to the service or product. In this case, it’s important to revisit the first principle and make the adjustments necessary to produce a more concrete and workable definition.
The backbone of the defining principle is a solid brief that clearly lists the reasons behind the design thinking strategy and its desired focus. This brief can provide a blueprint for teams to reach their goals and can be used to mark progress along the way.
Principle #3: Ideate
Defining the focus behind a design thinking strategy sets a business up for the next principle: developing potential solutions. This can involve traditional strategies that bring projects to life, such as brainstorming or landscape mapping. This phase and its tools encourage different perspectives toward goal achievement, allowing for a robust array of potential pathways to emerge—often resulting in finding solutions that are both actionable and capable of greater reach and effectiveness.
The ideation phase of the design thinking process illuminates a strategy’s strengths and weaknesses, providing the chance to shore up the latter. In addition to revealing opportunities that may not have been initially considered, this phase can highlight potential threats that could disrupt progress toward the end goal.
Principle #4: Prototype
The prototype principle represents the creative phase of the process, where a product becomes something physical or tangible. For instance, if a medical equipment company is trying to develop a new blood testing device, the prototype stage is where an actual device is present and can be scrutinized. It’s a phase that should be approached with an open mind and a willingness to explore solutions that previously eluded strategists.
Prototyping puts design thinking to the test as the tangible objects can demonstrate whether strategies developed from the first three principles are feasible. A physical manifestation of an abstract strategy can highlight previously undetected gaps or flaws, and it provides an opportunity to experience the idea from a consumer perspective.
Principle #5: Test
The final phase of design thinking involves testing it with consumers. When done correctly, the testing phase provides insights that go beyond predetermined sales or numbers and explain consumer reactions to the product or service. This phase also invites consumer feedback on what did and did not work, which can then be used to improve shortcomings.
Gathering optimal feedback in this phase relies on the questions asked. Ideally, a company will avoid “yes” or “no” questions and inquiries based on choice. Instead, questions should be designed to elicit answers that provide insights into why a consumer reacted the way they did. The insights derived can inspire improvements.
What are the Benefits of a Design Thinking Process?
While a design thinking framework can be applied to various disciplines, its use in the business field can arguably cause the most widespread impact on people’s daily lives—the right innovative product or service can change how people function within the context of society.
Companies that know how to harness the principles of design thinking can experience many benefits.
- Ongoing innovation. Design thinking centers customers and focuses on how to best adapt to their needs. Companies that employ design thinking can become change leaders within their industries by launching the right product or service at the right time. If this product or service is effective, its success can create lasting associations between a company and its innovation even after competitors enter the market.
- Collaboration and new insights. The design thinking process can boost efficiency because its collaborative nature allows for the organic exchange of ideas and solutions, generating them at a faster pace. Gathering different perspectives can help one gain unique insights into problems and situations that one may not have otherwise considered.
- User-centric. Design thinking is rooted in empathy, so it naturally calibrates an organization’s focus toward the customer. This can make it easier to keep the pulse on consumer behaviors as they evolve, which in turn can create solutions that proactively meet the changing needs of the consumer. This can help build relationships between companies and customers if the customers believe their needs are being understood and met.
- Widely applicable. The design thinking process can be tailored and customized to suit a variety of business models in a wide range of industries. Leaders in many different contexts can use the basic principles to come up with adaptable solutions to almost any problem or obstacle imaginable.
Companies That Use Design Thinking
Several businesses have turned to design thinking to develop previously abstract or disruptive concepts into an integrated part of daily life. By coming up with ways to challenge the status quo, they ultimately progressed how people work, live, and play in dynamic ways. Below are some modern companies that use design thinking in various ways.
Netflix
Netflix had already achieved success as a DVD delivery business. Yet their evaluation of tech innovation and consumer attitudes compelled them to pivot from chiefly offering DVDs to being a pioneer in streaming content. Ultimately, this move proved to be successful enough to allow Netflix to produce an abundance of original content.
Intuit
Intuit’s application of design thinking to its software-based accounting services led to the creation of a stripped-down product. The new product aimed to enhance the experience for non-accounting professionals needing to track personal finances. The more user-friendly software quickly catapulted Intuit to the top of the personal finance software market.
Uber
Uber’s disruption of the taxi industry may not have been possible without design thinking. The app keeps the user constantly informed on key data like wait time and driver location, which can keep users engaged as they wait for their next ride. This can ultimately enhance the customer experience.
Uber also launched the food delivery platform UberEats, which revolutionized food delivery by creating systems that were unique to each city they operated in. The design team used insights from local restaurants to develop and test platform prototypes that made each user’s experience more accessible.
Airbnb
Airbnb used design thinking to create a more interactive website user experience that allowed prospective guests to directly engage with the host and the surrounding neighborhood. This allowed the experience to strike a balance between being a cost-effective alternative to hotels and the service engagement a consumer may receive from a hotel’s front desk or concierge.
Design Thinking Tools at a Glance
Optimizing design thinking principles is a complex task with several moving parts. If these components aren’t appropriately integrated and sufficiently tracked, the process could potentially fall apart. Fortunately, there are various resources an organization can utilize to help streamline the design thinking process, improve consumer focus, and generate impactful feedback. Examples of design thinking tools include:
- Immersion tools: Designed to gather consumer data and help companies develop user-focused strategies, these tools can focus on consumer behaviors or consider the consumer holistically through elements like cultural dynamics. Examples of immersion tools include exploratory research, interviews, and focus groups.
- Analysis and synthesis tools: These types of tools can help a business interpret key consumer data once it’s been collected. Visual tools such as empathy maps or affinity diagrams use data visualization to analyze important information such as consumer behaviors and user journeys. They can also be used to facilitate and organize brainstorming sessions or detect biases and assumptions.
- Ideation tools: These types of tools focus solely on brainstorming and creativity as a means to make ideas tangible. Ideation tools, such as co-creation workshops and idea menus, typically work best when used collaboratively because the potential solutions generated can stem from different perspectives. They also allow a business to hone in on the pros and cons behind the execution of each potential solution.
- Prototype Tools: These tools don’t bring a design thinking idea to market, but they do bring it to life. They can give a business tangible proof of an idea’s viability through components like storyboarding or proof of concept. Ultimately, they can represent the final say on whether or not an idea is ready for the consumer in its current form.
Tips for Implementing the Design Thinking Framework
As with any resource, these tools are only effective if a team knows how to use them. Business or team leaders looking to take a design thinking framework to build a product or service should bear these things in mind to optimize effectiveness:
- Be flexible. Since design thinking is more of a journey than a straight path, it’s important to understand that the ideas at the beginning of the project will likely look different at the end. As such, it’s important to roll with changes as they come. It’s also important to realize the impetus of these changes can stem from customer data as well as fresh internal perspectives.
- Optimize research. Analytics can provide a large amount of consumer data that helps to more efficiently shape a design thinking strategy—if designers know how to maximize its evaluation. It’s not enough to merely gather the data. Data analysis tools and data visualization software can represent data in clear, easy-to-read presentations that highlight the most relevant information. This could be key to transforming convoluted data into information that yields actionable insights.
- Be patient. Problems will likely manifest throughout the design thinking process. Rather than trying to apply an immediate—and possibly temporary—solution, it’s often important to take a step back and determine the root of the issue. This may take some time to determine through the use of “why” questions, but doing so can create more permanent solutions that fix the issue in the long term.
- Interact with experts. Design thinking in business works best as a collaborative process. To optimize this collaboration, it can be important to seek out ideas and opinions from those with expertise in the element driving the design thinking strategy. This high-minded interaction can reveal unique insights that may not be considered by a team that doesn’t have that level of knowledge.
Become a Game Changer in Business
Design thinking is the rudder that guides innovation. It’s complex, but when utilized properly, it can result in paradigm-shifting concepts that can make life simpler. Those that are well-equipped to apply design thinking concepts to business can play an important role in helping a company stay top of mind among its targeted consumer base. Their experience in design thinking can also help them earn a reputation as an esteemed thought leader in their industry.
Earning Suffolk University’s Design Thinking certificate offered by the Center for Continuing & Professional Education (CCPE) can help fully prepare you to embrace the concept of design thinking and its possibilities. The certificate program is designed to cultivate expertise in the principles of design thinking through five modules:
- Module 1: What Is Design Thinking?
- Module 2: Observe, Understand, and Create Empathy
- Module 3: Reframe Concept Statement and Ideate
- Module 4: Prototyping and Testing
- Module 5: Social Good & Final Presentations
These modules can help learners understand the design thinking process and framework and how to apply it to business contexts for innovative solutions. Explore how a design thinking certificate gives you the confidence to use design thinking to improve business processes and outcomes.
Recommended Readings
Do You Want to Prepare For the Future? Consider Upskilling
Education As An Investment
The Impact of Lifelong Learning on Your Health
Sources:
American Marketing Association, “The 5 Phases of Design Thinking”
Eleken, “Design Thinking Examples: Five Real Stories”
Forbes, “The Benefits of Incorporating Design Thinking Into Business”
Growth Natives, “Why is Design Thinking So Important?”
Ideou, “11 Products & Services Made Using Design Thinking”
Ideou, What is Design Thinking?
Inside Design, “What is Design Thinking, and How Do We Apply It?”
Interaction Design Foundation, “What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?”
MJV Innovation, “Design Thinking Tools: How to Use Them to Solve Complex Problems”
Simplilearn, “How Top Companies Are Using Design Thinking Techniques”