How do you test and validate your change assumptions and solutions with design thinking?

Often when applying design thinking process for innovation, there's an assumption the space is new which is rarely the case. Conducting experiments and interviews are key to validating what's already been attempted & understanding the problem. One might look at causal loops, conduct interviews using Jobs to be done framework, or simply follow best practices from The Mom Test (Rob Fitzpatrick). Feedback loops are important for reflection. Consider who might need to be involved in these and at which stage. These may be early stage teams trying to evaluate user needs or development teams trying to understand where to pivot. The earlier these systems are introduced into the lifecycle the higher chance of success for the project.

Learning by doing is powerful, but shouldn't be started without a plan in the background. You need the backbone of a business plan to know the board direction of your work and, critically, to know when you should move to the next step. Otherwise you just end up doing the next thing that 'feels' right rather than stretching to the next thing that will make an impact.

Experiments and feedback loops are critical components of the design thinking process. By conducting experiments, you can test your assumptions and hypotheses in a controlled environment and gather data to inform your decisions. Feedback loops allow you to gather feedback from users and stakeholders throughout the design process, enabling you to refine and improve your solutions based on their input. By using experiments and feedback loops, you can ensure that your solutions are grounded in user needs and are effective in addressing the problem you are trying to solve.

Involving stakeholders early and often is essential to the success of any design thinking project. By involving stakeholders from the beginning, you can ensure that their needs and perspectives are considered throughout the design process. This helps to build buy-in and support for the project and increases the likelihood of successful implementation. Additionally, involving stakeholders early on can help to identify potential roadblocks or challenges before they become major issues, allowing you to address them proactively. By keeping stakeholders engaged throughout the design process, you can ensure that the final solution meets their needs and is aligned with their goals and priorities.

Building time with your stakeholders is important, but we should be careful to not just 'drop' them into a four hour workshop and never follow up. It's better to communicate and interact in a gradual, way so that folks aren't overwhelmed and have time to understand what you're trying to do and what you need from them.

Using both qualitative and quantitative data is important in the design thinking process. Qualitative data provides insights into users' attitudes, behaviors, and motivations, helping to identify user needs and pain points. This type of data can be gathered through interviews, observations, and surveys. Quantitative data, on the other hand, provides numerical measurements that can be used to validate assumptions and test the effectiveness of solutions. This type of data can be gathered through surveys, analytics, and other metrics. By using both types of data, you can get a more complete picture of users' needs and behaviors, and use this information to design more effective solutions.

Low-fidelity prototypes, such as sketches or wireframes, can be created quickly and easily and are useful for exploring and iterating on different ideas. They are also useful for gathering early feedback from users without investing a lot of time or resources. Medium-fidelity prototypes, such as paper or digital prototypes, provide a more realistic representation of the final solution and are useful for testing and refining specific features or interactions. High-fidelity prototypes, such as fully functional prototypes or mockups, provide the most realistic representation of the final solution and are useful for testing and validating the overall user experience.

Understand the goal of the prototype before deciding on fidelity. For instance, one might chose to do a design sprint for feature validation rather than building a fully functional prototype. The sprint might provide the feedback the team was looking for without investing significant effort.

Using testing criteria and evaluation methods is critical to the success of any design thinking project. Testing criteria are specific, measurable criteria that you use to evaluate the effectiveness of your solution. These might include metrics such as usability, efficiency, or user satisfaction. Evaluation methods are the processes you use to gather feedback and data to evaluate your solution against these criteria. These might include user testing, surveys, or analytics. By using testing criteria and evaluation methods, you can ensure that your solution is effective in addressing the problem you are trying to solve and meets users' needs.