Common misunderstandings about Design Thinking

A quick scan of the top business priorities of corporates in 2022 shows that Sustainable, resilient operations is on top of most CXOs minds. Covid, which doesn’t seem to be abating, has forced everyone to re-imagine our relationship with the environment. As individuals, as a society, and as corporates.

Re-imagining, unfortunately, is not natural to human beings but is rather an acquired skill that needs to be consciously practiced. ‘Why?’ you ask. Our brain is lazy- it wants to optimize resources and do less work. That’s why our brain forms habits so that after a few days, we can drive on a familiar road without paying much attention (read my article on Changing a habit is tough or is it?)

In essence, we are neurologically hard-wired to NOT re-imagine in our day-to-day tasks. We don’t wake up in the morning and think of new ways of driving to the office. We have found a way that works best for us, and unless there is disruption, that is how we reach the office.

This tendency of habit formation extends into our workplaces. The organizations set up processes, which guide how to think and act for commonly occurring tasks. At a personal level, we put our hard skills into practice in repetitive scenarios - some roles being more repetitive than others. We all -organizations and individuals- are trying to reduce the decision-making burden we face daily and free up mental energy for more demanding tasks.?

Re-imagining disrupts this established, reptilian behavior of our brain. It needs us to relook at something which we have already established to be working well, and question the assumptions, solution, process, and even the problem statement. Rethinking can be done in a couple of ways- rational and analytical way or emotional and gut-feeling way.

Design Thinking provides a third way- a more human-centered approach.

What does Design Thinking do differently?

?There is no better way to answer this than to quote what Don Norman, one of the gurus of Design Thinking, wrote:

“Design Thinkers take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a final statement, then think broadly about what the real issues underlying this?problem statement?might really be (for example by using the "Five Whys" approach to get at root causes). Most important of all, is that the process is iterative and expansive. Designers resist the temptation to jump immediately to a solution to the stated problem. Instead, they first spend time determining what the basic, fundamental (root) issue is that needs to be addressed. They don't try to search for a solution until they have determined the real problem, and even then, instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a wide range of potential solutions. Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal.”

Design Thinking probes, ideates, scrap the ideas to go back to the drawing board, rethinks, tests the ideas, converges on some possible solutions, (maybe scraps them again!), tests it with a market segment, evaluates, improves on feedback, and prototypes.

Design Thinking lays out the framework, tools, and processes. But from there onwards, how it is applied, what tools are to be used, how long it is going to take from discovery to prototype is going to be different in every situation.

..and where do corporates go wrong?

?Appreciation of the complexity of Design Thinking takes an investment of time. A lot of us have heard about it, but we might simplify it to other processes we come across- Kanban, Lean, etc. Design Thinking is not a process- it is a philosophy. It is complex and dirty, and this is one of the reasons why a lot of organizations get it wrong. Other reasons are:

1. Design Thinking Training- I have nothing against training, but like you cannot see videos of swimming and jump into the ocean, you cannot apply Design Thinking after a theoretical course. It is applied philosophy. You can of course understand the framework, tools, phases, processes, but after that, the learning is in the application. Also, as in swimming, you get better at it with practice and consistency.
2. Doing the ‘thinking’- well-intentioned people have told me, ‘You have done Masters in Design Thinking, you can surely come up with new ideas'. I can, but doing it alone beats the purpose of Design Thinking. It is at its core, a collaborative process. It needs at each phase a team to research, ideate, converge on the problem to be solved, explore all the possible solutions, converge again on which ones to test out. Who participates in different phases can change, but more than one person is needed to keep solution-thinking and biases in check. Also, good ideas are always built on others iteratively.
3. Culture- Design Thinking applies convergent and divergent thinking in an iterative, non-linear fashion (more of ‘What is Design Thinking’ in the next article, this one is getting too big!). Divergent thinking needs creativity and convergent thinking needs analysis.

Creativity has got renewed attention from corporates in the last few years. Why? Creativity leads to new ideas which leads to new sources of revenue which leads to winning over the competition. ?

But creativity is an acquired skill; it needs to be practiced. A lot of corporates who want their employees to be creative are trying to do so by making the office décor more colorful, or by improving inter-team engagements or by team outbounds focused on group plays. Does it help? Maybe a little. Most of the actions which corporates are taking are passive interference whereas boosting creativity would need an active one. More on ‘Better ways to boost creativity’ soon!

To summarize, Design thinking needs a healthy mix of both creative and analytical thinking. While analytical comes naturally to a lot of us, creative thinking doesn’t. Design thinking cannot be fostered in the organization by passive interference such as training and getting more colorful décor. It needs a culture shift. Finally, it takes more than one person to apply Design Thinking to a given problem statement.

How is your organization using Design Thinking and what is your opinion on its impact? Drop me a note!

References:

1.????https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular

2.????https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-design-thinking-works

3.????https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/design-thinking-explained

4.????https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6701929/

?

?