When undertaking a design project using the Design Thinking methodology, our intention should be to create a multitude of different possibilities and solutions. Therefore, this method should not lead to pigeonholing and limiting ourselves to a single specific outcome.
Design Thinking doctrine 🙂Using Design Thinking, we want to unleash our imagination, generate more or less realistic ideas, and approach standard solutions from a completely different perspective. What are the practical applications of this methodology? How can your company use it to create a new offering, generate a creative marketing campaign concept , or generate new ideas for CSR activities? Learn more below!
Design Thinking – what is it?
Design Thinking is a method for solving problems and creating new solutions. It's also known as design thinking. This methodology is based on understanding and identifying a given problem or need, then searching for solutions, often in unconventional and ambiguous ways, and ultimately implementing these ideas, testing and improving them in practice.
The concept was first defined in the United States in the 60s. However, it has gained popularity in Poland in recent years. Design Thinking courses, workshops, and training have emerged. This solution quickly gained fans among marketing and social media specialists, employer branding specialists, brand managers, and project managers (in most fields where there is a particular need for unconventional ideas and creative problem-solving).
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Design Thinking – for whom?
The Design Thinking process, although seemingly complex at first glance, is actually a highly versatile method, not reserved solely for large companies and large project teams. Anyone can apply it, as it has applications in business, science, and culture. It's versatile enough to be useful for smaller internal projects as well as global advertising campaigns . And that's not all. The following organizations can also benefit from the Design Thinking approach:
- UX, UI and graphic designers interested in gaining a new approach to solving design problems and generating solutions that work;
- project managers looking for a holistic process that integrates all stakeholders to create user-centric solutions;
- developers interested in participating in the idea generation and design process;
- entrepreneurs who want to empathize with users and create products that fit the market and users' lives;
- marketers who want to deeply understand customers;
- project/company stakeholders who want to be involved in the process of building a product or service
- anyone interested in an innovative approach to solving problems in both work and life.
Design Thinking is useful for solving complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown by understanding the human needs involved, reframing the problem in a user-centric way, generating multiple ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing.
Design Thinking – examples of when it is worth using?
Design Thinking can be used by anyone with even a passing familiarity with the purpose and process of this methodology. This process can prove more fruitful than standard processes aimed at creating a new service, product, or approach within a company. When is it worth exploring Design Thinking and trying to follow its principles?
- creating a new service for customers or improving current services/products,
- creating a new one advertising campaign (offline and online), including its strategy, necessary materials and techniques for reaching the audience,
- improving strategies for acquiring new customers, partners and collaborators,
- streamlining our potential customer's paths,
- developing employee benefit packages and forms of remuneration,
- designing company processes (hiring, administration, procurement, technology or customer service, etc.)
- creating a concept of CSR activities,
- developing an Employer Branding strategy,
- during rebranding activities, changes in the company's visual identification,
- and more.
Design Thinking – How to get started?
The Design Thinking process is divided into five stages: Empathizing, Defining (the problem), Ideating (finding solutions), Prototyping, and Testing. In practice, however, the process can be conducted in a more flexible and non-linear manner. For example, different groups within a design team can conduct more than one stage simultaneously, or designers can gather information and prototypes throughout the project to present their ideas and visualize solutions to problems at a given moment.
Importantly, in Design Thinking, designers don't make early assessments of the quality of ideas. The goal is to minimize the fear of failure and maximize stakeholder input and participation during the ideation (brainstorming) and prototyping phases (more on this below). To begin your Design Thinking journey, simply understand the general assumptions of the process and divide the work into established stages.
Design Thinking Stages
The Design Thinking method can be divided into several ways. The most popular and commonly used is the five-step process, divided as follows:
- Empathizing – collecting data and getting to know our recipients.
- Defining the problem – collecting all information from phase I and analyzing it in order to identify the problems/concerns of our recipient.
- Ideation – the stage of starting to generate ideas.
- Prototyping – designing solutions that will address problems identified and analyzed in earlier stages.
- Testing – checking whether the generated ideas and created prototypes are effective and helpful.
Empathizing (Empathy)
The first part of the Design Thinking process involves "empathizing" with the recipient's needs. It's essential to look at the problem from the recipient's perspective and attempt to understand how they think, act, and feel. The first stage of Design Thinking involves collecting data about the recipient. It may turn out that how we perceive a given problem differs from how a potential recipient perceives it. Analysis and information gathering can be accomplished through interaction and conversations, but also through observation or statistical analysis. Popular methods used at this stage include empathy maps, ethnographic interviews, user observations, and surveys. Everything collected at this stage, to some extent, determines subsequent steps.
Defining (the problem)
The next stage of Design Thinking aims to define and formulate the problem more precisely. To do this, it is necessary to synthesize the information gathered during the empathy stage. Identifying the recipient's real needs is difficult, especially since we tend to get stuck in our habits and mental frameworks. Defining or redefining the problem allows us to determine the further direction of work. It's important to define the problem optimally, meaning not to limit it to too narrow or too broad a scope. It's also worth abandoning habits and stereotypes, which can significantly influence our perception of problems and thus hinder our objective perspective. Techniques that help define and define the problem include brainstorming , the 5x why technique, problem mapping on the "how" vs. "why" axis, etc. It's difficult to definitively recommend one specific technique. Each project team may have a different favorite or more proven method that works best for them. You can also experiment with techniques to identify differences in approaches and gather as many different results as possible.
Ideation – searching for solutions
Having defined the problem, in the next step of Design Thinking, we search for solutions. This should be a series of ideas, of which only at the very end will the best ones be used for the prototyping stage. The solution-finding stage is somewhat tricky. We often want to immediately seek answers. However, without thorough work through the previous two stages, we may find incorrect solutions, because the client's needs differ from our initial assumptions, or the problem has different underlying causes than we initially imagined. The fundamental tool at this stage is brainstorming. The approach of searching for multiple possibilities, rather than a single, specific outcome, is crucial here. Our goal should be to find unconventional solutions, and these may not always be appropriate or rational for everyone at first glance.
Prototyping
This is the time to create preliminary versions of our solutions and specify the materials, sources, and resources necessary to implement them. We're creating a prototype, our beta version, which we'll modify and refine based on the results obtained in the later phase, i.e., testing. At this stage, it's worth informing our team that we're not yet focused on having everything perfected or the solutions perfectly refined. Rather, we want to visualize what we've been working on. If it was a mobile app, we can evaluate the mock-ups submitted by the graphic designers. If it's a new service we want to expand our portfolio, we can submit it for final review by the team. What we've been working on in the last stages will soon see the light of day. Prototyping is the last opportunity to analyze the collected data, verify whether the solution meets the needs and problems of our users, and compare it with other solutions to ensure it's ready for testing.
Testing
This is the final stage of Design Thinking, although some sources cite a sixth stage: implementation. The results obtained during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or more problems based on available data about users, their thinking, behavior, and use of the product or service. Even at this stage, changes and refinements are still made to eliminate any shortcomings and achieve the most effective solution.
Design Thinking – tools that will support your work!
Different tools can be useful at each stage, depending on how we work: whether it's an online meeting where we can communicate only via instant messaging, or whether all stakeholders are gathered together in a room.
- Design Thinking tools for online work
Online tools will certainly be useful for gathering all the ideas generated during brainstorming in one place. These include RealtimeBoard, Milanote, MindMap, MindMeister, Coggle, or the familiar Google Documents.
- Design Thinking tools for offline work
When working offline, in addition to a desk and comfortable chairs, you will also need materials that make it easier to write down or visualize collected ideas, such as flipcharts, colored sticky notes, or boards.
- Tools in the prototyping and testing phases
During the prototyping phase, tools like Figma and Adobe XD can be useful. During the testing phase, tools like HotJar, SmartLook, and A/B testing will be useful.
In summary, Design Thinking requires conscious action and openness to ultimately achieve a proven and rational solution, such as an innovative product or service that precisely meets the needs of our clients. It's a way to introduce unconventional solutions to our company and allow colleagues to propose their ideas to a wider audience, without exposing themselves to criticism or hasty judgment. Although this method is relatively simple, the use of appropriate tools and group moderation by a responsible person play a key role in determining the project's success.
Frequently asked questions about Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a proven method for creatively solving problems and creating new solutions. It involves thoroughly understanding the needs of the target audience, seeking unconventional solutions to those needs, and then implementing, testing, and improving the ideas in practice.
The main goal is to generate as many different possibilities as possible and to think outside the box. Design Thinking isn't about quickly pigeonholing yourself and limiting yourself to a single outcome, but rather allows you to unleash your imagination and look at standard solutions from a completely different perspective.
While the process may seem complex, it's actually quite universal. Design Thinking isn't reserved solely for large corporations and large teams—it works perfectly for everyone, regardless of whether they're involved in business, science, or culture. It's successfully used by marketing, social media, employer branding, and project managers, among others.
This method is extremely useful wherever a unique and creative approach is needed. Within a company, it can be used to create a completely new product offering, develop an original marketing campaign concept, or generate innovative CSR (corporate social responsibility) initiatives, among other things.
Although Design Thinking has gained enormous popularity in Poland in recent years (in the form of numerous courses, workshops and training), the concept itself has a much longer history – it was first defined in the United States in the 60s.
Summary
The above article covers the following topics:
- Design thinking is a methodology based on understanding the recipient's problem, searching for unconventional solutions, and testing and improving them in practice.
- This method is universal and can be used by various professional groups – from UX designers and marketers to entrepreneurs and programmers interested in an innovative approach to problem-solving.
- Design Thinking is worth applying when creating new services, advertising campaigns, streamlining company processes, CSR activities, or rebranding.
