Back-to-the-basics: Design Thinking

We live in an era where competing for customers, no matter the industry or niche, is the norm rather than exception. For organisations, large or small, finding a completely fresh customer base or an unserved user need has become almost impossible. And yet, or perhaps due to this, innovation abounds!

Organisations across the globe are pouring in billions into innovation and R&D, intensifying their efforts into building new products and features, exploring areas that push the boundaries of what you believe is possible.

As one might expect, not all innovation leads to great outcomes, but when it does, the impact some of the created products can make is mindboggling. Case in point, Uber revolutionised taxi services, Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry, Netflix transformed entertainment, Tesla redefined the automotive industry…

Let’s dig into Airbnb a bit. When they started off, they faced a critical issue: How could they establish trust between the host and the guest? They had used a rustic concept where hosts and guests of a bed-and-breakfast would originally meet each other in person or over call, and scaled it to a point where they were connecting complete strangers, some of whom might have previously been neither host nor guests, with each other – sometimes internationally – through their app.

You can guess what these users might be thinking: “Is there any chance these guests might damage my property? How do I make sure they pay me?” “Is the property any good? I wonder what people who have stayed there before think about it?”

Airbnb stepped into the shoes of their users, immersing themselves into their personas, diving deep into the needs and pain points of both hosts and guests… And they built this trust through transparent user profiles, reviews, secure payment systems and more.

That’s what Design Thinking is at its core, a human-centred approach to innovation that puts the real needs of your customers in focus, helping you empathise with them to understand and creatively solve their problems.

By leveraging Design Thinking to resonate with your customers, you can build exceptional customer experiences, iteratively channelling your investments into innovation in the right direction.

Now, let’s explore one of the more commonly used approaches towards Design Thinking step-by-step, with a few examples of the tools or techniques you might use to bring each step to life.

Ideally, when you begin, you have at least some idea of what challenge or problem you’re trying to solve, and for whom.

1. Empathise: Begin by trying to understand your prospective users' needs, motivations, and pain points. You can do this through user research, such as with observation, and through direct engagement, such as through interviews.
2. Define: Pull together a coherent problem statement based on insights you gain from empathising with your users. It’s important that you do this from the users' perspective, such as via personas.
3. Ideate: List out a variety of creative ideas and solutions to deal with your users’ problem. Encourage non-judgemental, diverse thinking though exercises like brainstorming.
4. Prototype: Start converging your workable ideas and construct tangible models to facilitate user testing and feedback. This can be through low-fidelity paper prototypes or high-fidelity wireframes, depending on where you are in the process.
5. Test: Collect feedback from your users by having them test your prototypes. Evaluate the effectiveness of your solution, and iterate on the design.

This last bit is particularly important, as you will be able to develop and launch your actual product or solution based on the insights gained from testing and iterations. The best part is that you can continuously refine and improve your solution through iterative cycles of prototyping, testing and feedback!

You should keep in mind that there are nuances in these steps that need to be highlighted. Let’s do this through another excellent example, which is the Oxo measuring cup.

A few years ago, Oxo reached out to its customers as part of a study to figure out how they could improve on their simple measuring cup. During the study, customers often mentioned that the handle was a little small and it would get slippery once they started measuring any liquids, water, oil or otherwise. Now that’s great feedback to have, and the issue seemed rather easily fixable with a larger, non-slip handle.

However, during practical observations of how customers used the measuring cup, it was seen that users would always pour in a liquid, pick up the cup, read the measure at eye-level, and then place it down on a surface to either add more of the liquid, or pour out the extra quantity added.

Based on this observation, Oxo introduced an angled measure, one where customers could view top-down inside the cup, never having to lift the cup to measure at all! It was a wild success.

And that’s where the nuances come in. Revisiting step 1, you will find that you can empathise with your customers through user research, such as with observation, and through direct engagement, such as through interviews. Focusing on doing only one or the other will generally not give you the full picture about your customer’s real needs. Have you ever read this quote before?

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” - Henry Ford

Each step comes with a plethora of tools and techniques that can be used depending on the type of challenge or problem you’re looking to solve. Here are a few examples:

• Empathy Mapping: By putting yourself in the shoes of your customers through observations and interviews, you can pull together an idea of what your users see, hear, say and do, think and feel, and their pain points and gains.
• Customer Journey Mapping: You can create a visual representation of your customer's interactions, emotions, and touchpoints through their journey from initial awareness about your product or solution, all the way until after they purchase it.
• SCAMPER: You can converge your diverse collection of ideas by choosing to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate or Reverse them.

In summary, Design Thinking can be the differentiator between whether your product or solution will sell or fizzle out. Using this approach, you can maximize the value you deliver to your customers by understanding their real needs, as opposed to simply creating new products or features in the name of innovation.

What do you think? Do you see a place where you could give Design Thinking a shot?

You can access my other articles by scrolling down further, or read more about this and other thought-provoking topics on?Coucal Consulting Insights.

Disclaimer: While I've written this article at the request of?Coucal Consulting, it only contains my personal views, thoughts and opinions. It is also not endorsed by Swiss Re nor does it constitute any official communication of Swiss Re.