How can you manage risk and uncertainty in design thinking?

As a senior product manager, I often face risk and uncertainty in design thinking. Here are some strategies that I use to manage these challenges: 1. Identify and test assumptions. 2. Embrace failure. 3. Be flexible and iterative. 4. Involve stakeholders early and often. To reduce risk and uncertainty in design thinking, it is important to identify and test your assumptions, embrace failure as an opportunity to learn and improve, be flexible and iterative with your plans, and involve stakeholders early and often.

Managing Risk and Uncertainty in Design Thinking can be mitigated by being Deeply Curious, Observing, Collaborating, Designing, and Iterating. It starts with a deep curiosity about the customer experience and their desired end goal. Customers often can't articulate their needs because they don't know what's possible. That's why it's so important to observe their routines. It reveals opportunities. Next, customers, prospects, and internal team members collaborate to define the problems, propose options, determine requirements, and draw up plans. From here, a product is designed, feedback elicited, prototypes created, field tests conducted, and iterations made, as needed, to meet the pre-determined performance criteria.

I define my role as building products that users love and solve real problems. I do this by understanding user needs, working with cross-functional teams to develop and launch products, and measuring the success of those products.

Assumptions are a natural part of developing a solution. One must assume aspects of their customer's lived experience to deliver a solution. This said, it is essential that teams document these assumptions so they can be turned into hypotheses during the testing phase of product development.

The most common approach is to use the Build-Measure-Learn cycle. In this cycle, product managers: Build a prototype or early version of the product. Measure how users interact with the product and what feedback they have. Learn from the feedback and use it to improve the product. The Build-Measure-Learn cycle can be repeated as often as necessary until the product meets users' needs and delivers value. It doesn't need to be more complicated than above.

You do not have to create a wheel twice. Open discussion, collaboration and co-operation as well sharing experiences helps you learn from others mistakes as well as success stories. However, in order to gain information from others you have to be willing to share something yourself too.

Product development is a game of trade-offs. This is why having clear outcome metrics is essential. From that point, the team can make decisions on these three variables among others in the hopes of maximizing the outcomes they have settled upon.

I have learned that experimentation and measurement are essential for success. By constantly testing new features, designs, and strategies, I learn what works best for users and businesses. Measurement tracks progress and identifies the impact of changes. This information is essential for making informed decisions about improving products and services.

One of the best frameworks for applying Design Thinking is the Double Diamond Framework. Google has some outstanding resources around it, which I highly suggest for anyone trying to put Design Thinking into practice!