Design Thinking
When you give someone a gift, do they focus on how well you wrapped it or how much thought you put into getting them the perfect gift? Of course, the pretty wrapping paper is a nice touch, but the gift inside proves how well you know, listen to, and care about the recipient. Design thinking is a similar practice: making something functional, useful, and attractive rather than "pretty."
Design thinking is an innately human-centered approach to designing solutions for people's needs and problems. This discipline focuses on building new ideas by understanding the struggles of those involved and viewing the problem from their perspective. There are no wrong answers or judgments, only wild ideas that could turn into creative solutions.
Why is Design Thinking relevant?
In Design Thinking, Tim Brown references Thomas Edison frequently. Of course, he's most known for inventing the lightbulb, but Brown highlights that Edison knew the lightbulb was almost useless without electricity to power it, so he invented that, too. Brown suggests Edison's genius was in his ability to see how people would want to use what he made.
Design is often treated as an afterthought to the development process when designers are brought into a project near the end to make the resulting product more appealing. Comparatively, involving design thinkers from the start allows space for more creative and innovative ideas. This also encourages experimentation and prototyping to understand and showcase how an idea could work. Product innovation should consider human behavior, needs, and wants. Look for ways to include your target consumers; ask them about their needs, offer them prototypes and record their feedback, etc.
Who is a Design Thinker?
Now that you understand the need for design thinking, here are some characteristics of the best design thinkers:
Empathy allows design thinkers to imagine the world from different perspectives. Empathetic thinkers can create solutions for functional and appealing products with a human-centric approach to design.
Integrative thinking means a design thinker views the problem from various angles and develops novel ideas.
Optimism gives design thinkers the power to believe that at least one possible answer is better than the alternatives, no matter how difficult the issue.
Design thinkers use experimentalism to explore new directions and develop tangible potential solutions.
They endow healthy collaboration with other disciplines and team members.
What are the steps to Design Thinking?
Empathize
Take a people-first approach to the problem at hand by engaging with the people involved. Understand their experiences and perspectives to find their underlying motivations for a useful solution. Invite your target consumers to participate in your research and actively seek their criticism.
Define
Use your observations and feedback to define the central problem you want to solve. Then, create a problem statement that envelopes your key problem, who it affects, and how it affects them. Finally, turn your problem statement into a question to look for ideas.
Ideate
Turn your research into creative ways of solving the main issue. For example, try looking at the problem from a new perspective or sketching out your ideas. Allow time and space for each idea to develop -- no matter how obvious the solution may seem, consider all other solutions. Collaborate with your team or customers for helpful feedback.
Prototype
Here, you take your feedback from the Ideate stage and form the best possible solution. Then, create small, inexpensive versions of the final solution (and its key features) to explore new variations and optimize functionality. The more people involved in testing these prototypes, the better so you can share them with your team or community for feedback.
Test
Now, your product has come to fruition. Your design or consult team tested the product prototype for usability. Use the results from testing to further understand your users and the conditions of use, including how users think, behave, and feel.
How can Design Thinking be helpful?
The Willow team sought to create a less inconvenient and uncomfortable breast-pumping experience. With feedback from mothers of varying experiences in motherhood, the design team defined the key struggles that make breast-pumping so uncomfortable. The most common responses were lack of mobility or portability, becoming tangled in mechanical cords and bottles, and difficulty of use.
So, the team started developing a "dream pump" to give moms a mobile and discrete pumping device. They built over sixty prototypes to understand how the device could best work in mothers' lives. Feedback from these prototypes narrowed down every physical aspect of the design and incorporated a new element: easy assembly.
The Willow design team made the pump easy to use, assemble, and clean. The final product is the first of its kind: an all-in-one, wearable breast pump without cords or bottles and fits inside a bra. With just a few basic parts, the minimalistic design of the Willow pump snaps together and only has two parts that need to be cleaned.
Summary
We see issues every day that can only be solved with innovation. Design thinking is a means of innovating with a human-centered, inventive, and experimental approach. Great designs fulfill innate human needs and desires, and breakthrough ideas are inspired by an understanding of the users' struggles.
Brown, T. (n.d.). Design Thinking | Clarity at IDEO. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from http://5a5f89b8e10a225a44ac-ccbed124c38c4f7a3066210c073e7d55.r9.cf1.rackcdn.com/files/pdfs/IDEO_HBR_DT_08.pdf
Dam, R. F. (n.d.). 5 stages in the design thinking process. The Interaction Design Foundation. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process
Designing the first all-in-one, Wearable Breast Pump. IDEO is a global design and innovation company. (n.d.). Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.ideo.com/case-study/designing-the-first-all-in-one-wearable-breast-pump
Staff, F. C. (2015, April 5). Design thinking... what is that? Fast Company. Retrieved February 3, 2022, from https://www.fastcompany.com/919258/design-thinking-what