PART A (10 x 1 = 10 Marks)

1. Design Thinking is:

a) Thinking about design b) Designing ways in which people think
c) Asking users to solve problems d) Defining, framing and solving problems from
users' perspectives
2. Types of Adoption Barriers include
a) Time consumption b) Accessibility
c) Skills/Expertise d) All of the above
3. What is the first step in the Design Thinking Process?
a) Define b) Empathise
c) Ideate d) Prototype
4. If you are an innovator, and if you come across any problem, the first step is to _____
a) Ideate a solution b) Build Prototype
c) Understand the problem d) None of the above
thoroughly
5. Process innovation refers to______
a) The development of a new service b) The development of a new product
c) The implementation of a new or d) The development of new products or services
improved production method
6. Which is NOT a good practice for preparing a presentation
a) Visualize your content b) Keep it simple

c) Use big paragraphs as content d) Bullet/Highlight your key points

7. Which of the following is TRUE?
a) By empathizing, one can define a b) Empathy makes you a better person, but
problem well, and conceive innovation requires a lot of box thinking and not
creative solutions resulting in empathy
breakthrough innovations
c) Inventions are sudden eureka d) None of the above
moments and not really a part of
research or exploration
8. The storytelling method can influence how we make decisions and how we persuade others of
our ideas
a) True False
How do you conduct customer discovery?
9. a) E-Mail b) Phone Call
c) Interview d) All of the above
One needs to have professional training in design to become a design thinker.
10. a) True b) False

PART B (10 x 2 = 20 Marks)

11. What is the need for design thinking?
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 Design thinking is needed for:
● Solving complex problems.
● Creating user-centered solutions.
● Fostering innovation.
● Adapting to change.
● Promoting cross-disciplinary collaboration.
● Enhancing customer satisfaction.
● Mitigating risks.
● Emphasizing a human-centred approach.
● Enabling continuous improvement.
● Gaining a competitive advantage
12. What are the stages of the design thinking process?

The stages of the design thinking process are Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test
13. What kind of risk is associated with product innovations in the early stage that design thinking
helps to mitigate?

● Problem defining and customer selection

● Problem significance
● Motivation level of target customer to solve the defined problem
● Quantification and its acceptance by the target customer of the value proposition offered
by the innovator
● Adoption barrier
14. Explain the importance of problem validation

Problem validation is basically research that seeks to confirm, legalize and prove the accuracy
and understanding of customer problems. Customer discovery focuses on testing hypotheses and
understanding customer problems and needs
Both are achieved by research, interview and survey.
15. What is an MUP & Why do you build it?

MUP is useful, usable, technically feasible, and permanently deployed. MUP is a ‘Good is Good
Enough’ solution with the most important features that is enough to convince the end-user to use
it, test it for utility, usability and deployability, understand/experience its worth, and provide
feedback on ‘willingness-to-pay’.
16. What is human-centric design thinking?

It is a process, mindset, and approach to solving complex problems. It is based on the philosophy
that empowers an individual or team to design products, services, systems and experiences. It
works on the basis to make an object or process that already exists even better for the user.
17. What’s the difference between a user and a customer

Customer is one who pays money to buy a product or service. The user is the one who uses the
product. Any example can be given by the students to show the difference.
18. Problem Validation & Customer Discovery canvas helps in which stage of design thinking?

Problem Validation & Customer Discovery canvas helps define the stage of design thinking.
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19. List the five factors of the Product innovation rubric.

● Problem validation
● Problem significance
● Customer motivation
● Value Proposition
● Problem solution fit
20. What is the importance of the Value Proposition?

The value proposition is how much a product is worth to its target customer. Improves customer
understanding and engagement Attracts the right prospects and increases not only the quantity
but the quality of prospective leads.

PART C (6 x 5 = 30 Marks)
21. Explain Adoption Barriers with their different types.

Adoption barriers are those perspectives (financial, technical, functional) of the target
customers/users that prevent them from making the current solutions a part of their lives.
Usability/deployment constraints indicate those features/attributes which are necessary to
overcome the likely adoption barriers respectively.

Different Adoption Barriers:

● TCO - (Total Cost of Ownership)
● Maintenance/Service
● Skills/Expertise
● Installation/Integration
● Resources/materials
● Time consumption
● Physical/personal risk
● Product training
● Changes to habits/process
● Accessibility
● Inability to assess the quality of the product/service [Risk Perception]
● Monitoring the usage/deployment
22. Explain the different risks in Product Innovation.

Numerous product innovations are radically innovative and get the backing of innovation.
Innovation aimed at sustaining the mark performance of the exciting products. However, there is
always a risk. The two major risks are valuation risks and validation risk. The outcome of these
two risks gives rise to subcategory risks such as market risk, quality risk, reputation risk, credit
risk, operational risk etc.
Validation risk: proof, numbers, potential

The lack of data required to compute the valuation of mark/ business potential is called the
valuation risk.
● Target customers
● Prospects of product
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 ● Revenue
● Sales closure
● Deals closed/completed
To reduce valuation risk the innovation is expelled to demonstrate traction and that requires a
market to readily produce and money to market, sell, distribute, acquire customers and generate
revenues.
23. Explain the best practices for preparing the pitch for the investors

● Keep it simple, elegant and professional. Limit the use of animation, transitions, and
sound.
● Practice no more than the 4 by 4 rule when possible, 4 bullets with 4 words.
● Edit ruthlessly. Have others proofread if possible.
● Use real images whenever possible, not clipart.
● Font size needs to be large enough to read, 18-24 pt is standard. Speciality fonts are hard
to read.
● Colors - change for emphasis as needed, but be consistent with design
● Structure the presentation with an opening slide, outline of discussion, the subject
material and a conclusion or summary.
● Do not read your slides; there should be a balance between you and the slide content,
otherwise, you are not needed!
● Begin with a story to connect your audience, introduce yourself and the topic and make
the subject matter relevant to them.
● Know your audience and respect them.
● Rehearse, rehearse, rehearse

24. Explain the various metrics of challenge brief canvas with an example

Metrics:
● Challenge statement
● Use case
● Target User
● Gap Analysis
● Utility/Features
● Constrsins

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25. Describe the concept generation process in building an MUP

Concept generation is the process of creating ideas for designing a product based on the target
specifications and requirements. These ideas describe the design and working principles of the
product, along with how it can meet the customer's requirements. The concept generation phase
starts with analyzing the customer requirements from different angles and results in developing a
final design for the product.

26. Summarize the importance of storytelling during presentation

Using storytelling in presentations can evoke emotions like trust and kindness. This motivates
your audience to listen more closely and increases their likeliness to agree with your ideas. A
well-told story can leave a lasting impact on your audience’s mind. Stories are a powerful way
of communicating ideas; they signpost our experiences, make sense of what we know, and
create continuity. We learn by both hearing and telling stories and practising through stories.
Storytelling has multiple benefits:

● Memorable
● Grabs attention

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 ● Evokes emotion, especially empathy
● Uses the audience's imagination
● Relatable e.g. humanises a person, company etc
● Maintains attention because stories are so engaging
● Builds anticipation by having heroes, challenges, adventures and journeys
● Changes beliefs
● Very persuasive

PART D (4 x 10 = 40 Marks)
27. Describe all stages of the design thinking used for product innovation with target customers

The stages of the design thinking process are Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test
Empathize
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the
problem you are trying to solve. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the area
of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their
experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment so you
can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved. Empathy is crucial to a
human-centred design process such as Design Thinking, and empathy allows design thinkers to
set aside their own assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into users and their
needs.
Define
During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during
the Empathise stage. This is where you will analyse your observations and synthesise them in
order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. You
should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner.
Ideate
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start generating
ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathise stage, and you’ve
analysed and synthesised your observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a
human-centered problem statement. With this solid background, you and your team members can
start to "think outside the box" to identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created,
and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem.
Prototype
The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product
or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem solutions
generated in the previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in
other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team. This is an experimental
phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified
during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes, and, one by
one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined or rejected on the basis
of the users’ experiences. By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea of the
constraints inherent to the product and the problems that are present, and have a clearer view of
how real users would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.
Test
Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified
during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative
process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more
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 problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions of use, how people think,
behave, and feel, and to empathise. Even during this phase, alterations and refinements are made
in order to rule out problem solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product and its
users as possible.
28. Explain the process involved in problem validation and customer discovery

The above canvas can be explained in detail along with keywords including Customer Discovery,
Customer validation.
29. Hull cleaning is an integral part of any moored or berthed vessels maintenance program to
prevent the vessel from slowing down with growth and increasing fuel costs. Due to the effect of
barnacles and other biofouling processes in the ship’s hull, the drag of the ship increases thereby
causing an extra fuel consumption expense of 40%. Currently, there is no other mechanism
followed other than deploying manual labour for the inspection of the ship hull – Describe the
value proposition for the problem statement.

A value proposition refers to the value a company promises to deliver to customers should they
choose to buy their product. The value proposition provides a declaration of intent or a statement
that introduces a company's brand to consumers by telling them what the company stands for,
how it operates, and why it deserves their business.

The VP is built using the VP canvas.

Components of Value Proposition should contain the following points

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31. Explain the MUP concept assessment technique with a suitable problem statement of your own

MUP Design Tools guide innovators in conceptualising their ideas to iteratively design a
Minimum Usable Prototype with the most critical features and functionality set to test the value
proposed and look for feedback. Product Innovators follow processes, tools and techniques of
systematic concept generation and evaluate the concepts against a set of metrics. After the right
concept is chosen the Product Innovator aims to achieve the Product-Factory Fit milestone
ensuring the RIGHT Product is BUILT RIGHT.

The innovator after conceptualizing the solution idea of the Minimum Usable Prototype (MUP)
using the Value Proposition Canvas, uses the MUP Concept Generation and Assessment canvas
to ideate an MUP concept with details on the technologies that will be used to build it defining
features and functionality.

The goal of an Innovator is to translate the Value Proposition into precise features &
functionalities. However, perceived value cannot be validated unless experienced by the chosen
customer, there arises a need for a feasible prototype that can be used for validation. Essentially
to build a prototype it is of utmost importance to have a clear vision of the problem it solves,
who the target customer is, and most importantly what you're building. The next critical step
before development would be to identify the best components and materials for your prototype.
Additionally, the form of a solution is another critical element to consider during development,
imagine having a smartphone with cutting-edge technology and processing capabilities but the
form is too bulky and unusable.

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The MUP Concept assessment is done with 3 critical parameters
● Capability
● Usablity
● Feasiablity

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