Becoming a Creative Problem Solver With Design Thinking Approach
Have you ever experienced a hard time finding any idea related to your product that you want to develop? Or did you find it quite hard to find a solution that refers to a specific problem in your life? Well, I think it’s a perfect time to use this “thinking strategy” named “design thinking”.
so, what is design thinking by the way?
Design thinking is a dynamic and empathetic approach to addressing problems and fostering innovation. It's a methodology that places the human experience at the core of problem-solving. It is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. While its applications are extensive, its essence can be distilled into five key principles:
The core of the Design Thinking process. It's about genuinely understanding the perspectives, emotions, and needs of the people involved in a problem. In daily life, we could say you wanted to cook something for dinner but you don't really know what to cook or what is a suitable dish for all of your family members. you can start by empathizing with your household's preferences and dietary needs.
After that, you could try to organize the information you have gathered during the Empathize stage. Here comes the define phase! You will analyze your observations and synthesize them in order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. try to state the problem as clearly as possible so you know what exactly the problem is and it is very beneficial for the next step which is ideating for the solution. back to our case (cooking a dish for dinner), you could define the problem after you understand the situation you are facing (knowing the family's diet and preferences). we could say "I need to make a tasteful dish consisting of egg and fish because my family prefers to eat both of them and also those things are currently available in our fridge"
Now it's time to release your creativity! you could think of anything to explore any possible outcome from what you have defined before. Don't limit yourself by keeping your idea, ideating is about exploring every possible outcome from your mind. You could try to use the crazy eight methods to produce many ideas in only one minute or you could also use the "how might we" statement like: "How might we create a tasteful dish from egg and fish so my family could be very satisfied to eat tonight". You could also browse some recipes on the internet then imitate the recipe and adjust it to your family preference.
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Here's come the part of trial and error, be ready for the challenge! This is an experimental phase where the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages. From the lists of recipes you have found or ideated before, try to ask your family which one they like the most, and also you could try to cook it in little portions and test it out!
Validate the "solution" you provide to the "user". from this stage, you will know what can be improved, what the good side of your "product" is, and what the bad side or unnecessary thing you have in your "product". You will know if your family likes the dish you have cooked or not. Is it tasteful? Does it need some improvement?
Conclusion
Overall, Design thinking is not limited to professional designers; it's a versatile approach that empowers individuals to think creatively, empathize deeply, and find effective solutions. Remember! design thinking is an iterative process so it doesn't stop at a certain phase even though you deliver a good "product" and satisfy most of the user's needs. You need to keep iterating and keep learning! back to the cooking case, despite your family liking the dish you have cooked for dinner, you need to keep on improving what you have right now! so you can provide the best experience possible for the "user" that you are targeting.
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