Design Thinking- The customer centric approach to Problem solving.

Finished reading the Book- Change by Design written by Time Brown. There are so many compelling stories and case studies in this book that will make you see the world differently, listen more carefully and observe more closely. The basic premise is Don’t ask “What”, ask “WHY”. Design thinking provides an opportunity to reframe a problem, redefine the constraints, and open the field to a more innovative answer. Instead of accepting the given constraint, ask whether this is even the right problem to be solving. Is it really faster cars that we need or better transportation? ?

Design thinking is a set of principles that can be applied by diverse people to a wide range of problems. From paediatric obesity to ?crime prevention to climate change, it is now being applied to a range of challenges. As the world shift from industrial manufacturing, to knowledge creation and service delivery, innovation has become nothing less than survival strategy. Most companies tend to start innovation with the constraint of what will fit within the framework of the existing business model. Because business systems are designed for efficiency, new ideas will tend to be incremental, predictable and all too easy for the competition to emulate.

For Design thinking the three spaces of innovation are Inspiration, Ideation and implementation.

Some key concepts are:

Putting people first- ?For design thinkers ,the behaviours are never right or wrong but they are always meaningful. As Drucker once said “converting needs into demands”. on the face of it, this sounds simple: just figure out what people want and then give it to them but it's not that simple. ?The basic problem is that people are so ingenious at adapting to inconvenient situations that they are often not even aware that they are doing so: they sit on the on their seat belts and write their PINs on their hands. ?Henry Ford understood this when he remarked if “I would have asked my customers what they want what they wanted they would have said faster horses” Design thinking helps people in articulating their latent needs they may not even know they have, and this is this involves: ?insight, observation and empathy. Observing their actual behaviour can provide ?with invaluable clues about their range of unmet needs

Insight: Learning from the lives of others?

Observation: Watching what people don’t do, listening to what they don’t say

Empathy: Standing in the shoes of others – Empathy is the mental habit that moves us beyond thinking of people as laboratory rats or standard deviations. If we are to “borrow” the lives of other people to inspire new ideas, we need to begin by recognising that their seemingly inexplicable behaviours represent different strategies for coping with confusing, complex & contradictory world in which they live.

The concept of latent needs, needs that may be acute but people may not be able to articulate. Beyond the functional & cognitive ideas there is a layer that connects to people on an emotional Level and that is what turns customers into advocates. Design thinking blurs the boundaries between customers and creators . It is not “Us vs them” or “US on behalf of them “ , it has to be “us with them”

Convergent & Divergent Thinking: “To have a good idea, you must first have lots of ideas”- Linus Pauling.

Visual Thinking: ??Drawing forces decisions. Words and numbers are fine, but only drawing can simultaneously reveal both the functional characteristics of an idea and it’s emotional content.

Prototyping: It is “thinking with your hands”. The goal of prototyping is not to create a working model. It is not to get validation but to seek feedback. It is to give form to an idea to learn about its strengths & weaknesses and to identify new direction for the next generation of more detailed, more refined prototypes. A successful prototype is not one that works flawlessly; it is one that teaches us something- about our objectives, our processes , and ourselves.

Design of experiences: An experience makes connections to emotions. We now live in an “experience Economy” in which people shift from passive consumption to active participation. The best experiences are not scripted but delivered on the spot by the providers. Implementation is everything. An experience must be finely crafted and precision- engineered.

“Once our basic needs are met, we look for meaningful and emotionally satisfying experiences” -Daniel Pink

Spreading the message: One of the many problems impacting the healthcare system today is “adherence”. In the words of Surgeon General c. Edward koop, “Pills don’t work if people don’t take them”. There are three self-reinforcing phases of medical treatment. First, the patient must understand his or her condition, then accept the need for treatment, and finally take action. Designing with time means thinking of people as living, growing, thinking organisms who can help write?their own stories.

Applying Design thinking: It changes the way the problem is defined. The design brief of the past may have called for “Comfortable seating in the waiting room” or “Storage unit for patient property “ to “ How might we create zones of privacy in public areas ?” or “ How might we accommodate the different spatial requirements of patients, visitors and medical staff in hospital recovery room?” It’s just the matter of how you think. If an organisation does a better job of understanding its customers, it will do a better job of satisfying their needs.