Design Thinking

What is Design
Thinking?

• Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that has become increasingly

popular in recent years.
• Companies like Apple, Google, or startups are adopting design thinking to
drive innovation and achieve success.
What is Design
Thinking?

• Design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to

understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine
problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and
solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial
level of understanding.
• At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based
approach to solving problems.
• It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of
hands-on methods.
What is Design Thinking?
Core Stages of Design Thinking

• Design thinking is an approach to problem-solving that focuses on

innovation and creation.
• UX/UI Designers use the design thinking process to discover problems
and come up with creative solutions by thoroughly understanding
their users’ goals, frustrations, and end-task.
Goals of design thinking:
• Their goal is to design products that are easy to use, rather than
expecting users to adapt to said products.
Design Thinking’s Phases

• Empathize – with your users

• Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your
insights
• Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating
ideas for innovative solutions
• Prototype – to start creating solutions
• Test – solutions
The five stages of the design thinking process

• Design thinking is a five-stage process as defined by

the Hasso-Plattner-Institute of Design and based on the
original method developed at Stanford.
• The stages are flexible and do not always need to be
followed in order.
• Teams may run them in parallel or out of order and re-
visit stages as needed in the iterative process.
The five phases of design thinking:
Stage 1: Empathy — understand the needs of people

• The first stage of the design thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding
of the problem you are trying to solve.
• Understanding the human point of view is crucial.
• This is when designers go into detective mode to get to know the user and
understand their desires, needs, and objectives when interacting with a product or
service.
• This detective-designer will come to understand the “problem space,” or what is
currently hindering the completion of the task. This looks like conducting user
research by observing people and/or asking questions.
• During this phase, designers set aside their own beliefs and assumptions.
• Instead, they get into the mind of the user on an emotional and psychological level
to come up with actionable insights. And then use insights from stage one to
inform the remaining stages.
Stage 1: Empathy — understand the needs of people
Example
Imagine you are the owner of a boutique gym, and you want to
improve membership retention. In the empathy phase, you would talk
to a range of current and past members. You would solicit feedback on
what they liked or disliked. You might observe how different members
interacted with the equipment or different facilities. You would look for
areas of encouragement or discouragement: what makes them happy?
What seems to frustrate them? You would keep at these observations
until you could truly understand and empathize with your members
and their needs.
Stage 2: Define — state the user’s needs and problems

The designer must clearly define the user’s needs and

problems.
They begin by making sense of the data and observations
gathered during stage one, for example:
• What patterns do they see?
• What did they hear most often?
• What difficulties did the users have?
This is also the stage in which designers create user
personas to remind them to keep the discussion on the
end-user.
Stage 2: Define — state the user’s needs and problems

Once the team has identified core issues with the

product or service, they formulate a problem
statement.
• The problem statement should remain user-centric.
For example, “Millenials in NYC will…” rather than,
“Our team will….”
• Once designers have put the problem into words,
they start to come up with solutions and ideas. It’s
now time for stage three.
Stage 2: Define — state the user’s needs and problems
Example
• Let’s continue to use the gym scenario mentioned above. During the
define stage, we’ll take all our user feedback and observational data
and analyze it to determine why some members keep their
membership and others don’t. We look for common complaints and
try to identify possible pain points or unmet user needs. Based on our
analysis, we create a problem statement that defines the issue that
has the greatest impact on member retention.
Stage 3: Ideation phase — come up with innovative ideas

• Design teams get to be wildly creative when problem-solving in the third

stage — ideation.
• With an understanding of the end-user and a clear problem statement,
designers hold collaborative ideation sessions and use ideation techniques.
• Brainstorm, Worst Possible Idea, and SCAMPER are all ideation techniques that
designers use to come up with possible solutions.
• The goal of an ideation session is to look at the problem from all angles and
generate as many ideas as possible.
• For example, the “Worst Possible Idea” ideation technique works as a great
icebreaker, putting teams at ease as they come up with the worst ideas and
then seek alternatives.
• Brainstorming leverages the collective thinking of the team, generating many
more ideas than an individual writing his or her own list.
Stage 3: Ideation phase — come up with innovative ideas

• Lastly, teams can take an existing product, service, or idea and go through
the SCAMPER list (Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another
use, Eliminate, Reverse) in order to improve it.
• Brainwriting: Write down all your ideas on a sheet of paper, then pass the
paper on. Whomever you pass it to develops your ideas further, then
passes the paper on.
• This continues until a certain time limit is reached, then the entire team
gathers
• At the end of the ideation stage, the best ideas will move forward to the
next phase, prototyping.
Example
• Example: Based on user feedback, you were able to identify the
number-one issue keeping members from renewing their
membership is that there aren’t enough open exercise machines.
During the ideate phase, you gather your team together and
brainstorm ideas. Nothing is off the table. Any idea to resolve this
issue is worth considering.
Stage 4: Prototype — start creating solutions

• During this phase of design thinking, teams will create prototypes of

the ideas they generated in the previous stage.
• Prototypes don’t need to be finished products.They are meant to
convey a possible solution, not deliver it.
• Sketches, models, and digital renders are all examples of prototypes:
scaled-down versions of the product created during the ideation
stage.
• With minimal effort, prototyping can reveal whether the proposed
product will work, whether it’s technically feasible, and what
challenges you will face bringing it to life.
Stage 4: Prototype — start creating solutions

• Prototypes can take many forms — low-tech sketches, storyboards, and rough
paper prototypes to mocked up, coded apps on the high end.
• With the high or low-fidelity prototypes, it’s time to investigate and run
experiments to see if the solutions generated in the previous stages function.
• Although a designer may personally like one prototype the best, this phase
aims to identify the best possible solution for each of the problem statements,
always keeping the end-user in mind. It’s essential that teams work together to
test and highlight any flaws, and accept, improve, or reject the ideas based on
data.
• Once you’ve agreed on the best prototype, you are ready to test your product
in the last stage.
Stage 4: Prototype — start creating
solutions
• Wireframes: Low-fidelity prototype that represents the basic
visual layout of an interface or product.
• Low-Fidelity Prototypes: These are cheap, quick, relatively simple,
and can be used to express broad concepts or ideas. Low-fidelity
prototypes require little design skills to produce.
• High-Fidelity Prototypes: Realistic designs that look and operate
close to the final product.
• Walk-Through: A task-specific approach to determine the usability
of a prototype.
Example
• Examples: Believing that neighboring pieces of equipment are being
used simultaneously by users performing “super sets,” your idea is to
relocate those machines to opposite sides of the gym. This should
prohibit users from occupying multiple machines at once. Your first
prototype is a rough sketch of what the new floor layout would be
and where the machines would go. Based on feedback from staff
members, you prototype it again as many times as necessary.
Stage 5: Test — try out solutions
• In the last stage, evaluators rigorously test the complete product.
• Although this is the last stage in the design thinking process, it’s not likely
the end.
• The results either confirm or challenge the solutions from a previous stage.
Since design thinking is iterative, designers examine the results and head
back to previous steps, constantly making changes, refining, and
improving.
• Remember, these hands-on steps are not necessarily sequential, and
teams may revisit them as needed. The main goal throughout is to gain a
deeper understanding of the users and what their ideal product would
look like.
Stage 5: Test — try out solutions
• The testing phase of the design thinking process involves real users and
real user feedback.
• During this phase, prototypes are given to participants to try out. Design
teams observe how participants interact with the prototype and gather
feedback about the experience.
• Testing reveals what is or isn’t working. Don’t forget: design thinking is an
iterative and non-linear process—that goes for testing, too.
• Depending on user feedback, changes to the product might be required.
These changes might require you to restart the testing phase or revisit past
stages.
• Feedback from user testing might also inspire new potential solutions or
actionable insights..
Commonly used testing tools include:

• Usability Testing: A testing tool that gauges the usability of a design

with a group of target users.
• Beta Launch: Releasing your prototype to a limited pool of users to
determine usability, detect bugs, and test whether your product
addresses users’ needs.
Example:
• Rearrange the exercise machines and see how customers respond.
Does the new arrangement solve the users’ problem? Does it create
new issues for different users? Solicit feedback from gym members:
are they happy with the new arrangement? Based on user feedback,
revisit the design thinking stages as necessary.
Advantages of Design Thinking
• Design thinking helps us in the process of questioning: questioning
the problem, questioning the assumptions, and questioning the
implications.
• Design thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill
defined or unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric
ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a
hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.
• Design thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching,
prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.