How can you use design thinking or agile methods to make better decisions with others?

1 What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centered and problem-solving process that involves understanding the needs and emotions of the people you are designing for, generating and testing ideas, and iterating based on feedback. Design thinking can help you make better decisions with others by empathizing with your users, customers, or beneficiaries to define their problems and goals, brainstorming possible solutions, prototyping and testing them with real users, collecting feedback, and iterating and improving your solutions based on what you learn.

2 What is agile?

Agile is a flexible and adaptive way of working that values collaboration, feedback, and continuous improvement. It can help you make better decisions with others by breaking down your project or goal into small, manageable tasks or features. Working in short cycles or sprints and delivering value to your users or customers frequently can also be beneficial. Additionally, it is important to review and reflect on your progress and performance regularly, while adapting to changing needs or circumstances. Communication and coordination with your team, users, or customers should also be done often and transparently.

3 How to combine design thinking and agile?

Design thinking and agile can complement each other and enhance your decision-making process. To start, use design thinking methods such as interviews, observations, or surveys to understand your users or customers and their pain points, needs, and desires. Next, use design thinking methods such as personas, journey maps, or problem statements to synthesize your findings and articulate the problem you are solving and the value you are creating for your users or customers. Then generate as many ideas as possible with design thinking methods such as brainstorming, sketching, or voting and select the most feasible, desirable, and viable ones. Follow up by testing your ideas with real users or customers with agile methods such as user stories, acceptance criteria, or prototypes to collect feedback. Finally, use agile methods such as sprints, backlogs, or stand-ups to plan, execute, and monitor your tasks or features. Review and reflect on your solutions based on feedback and data with agile methods such as demos, retrospectives, or metrics for improvement.

4 What are the benefits of using design thinking and agile?

Design thinking and agile can help you make better decisions with others by increasing creativity and innovation, enhancing user or customer satisfaction, improving efficiency and quality, and building collaboration and trust. Involving different perspectives and disciplines in the decision-making process can generate diverse and novel ideas, while focusing on the needs and emotions of users or customers can create more relevant and useful solutions. Working in small and frequent iterations, learning from feedback and data, communicating often, and coordinating openly can deliver more value, reduce waste and errors, and foster a culture of teamwork and transparency.

5 How to overcome the challenges of using design thinking and agile?

Using design thinking and agile can also pose some challenges for your decision-making process. Common challenges include resistance to change, lack of time or resources, and difficulty in making trade-offs. To overcome these, you can explain the benefits of using design thinking and agile, prioritize and focus on the most important tasks, leverage existing resources, clarify goals and values, evaluate the pros and cons of each option, and involve stakeholders in the decision-making process. Additionally, providing training and support and celebrating successes and failures can help to alleviate any resistance to change.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?