Design Thinking in Consulting (& everywhere else)

My clients hire me (and my company) to solve their complex business and technology problems. As part of detailed user requirements gathering, I cannot tell you how many times I have heard “but we have always done it this way” | face palm | I want to [politely] tell them Charles Kettering's saying, “If you have always done it that way, it is probably wrong.” Business transformations, be these of digital or other kinds, depend on new ways of thinking. I always suggest that any transformation starts with Design Thinking (DT) as it provides comprehensive views of the problems and issues that are sometimes missed using other transformation models or innovation tools.

DT is often referred to as ‘outside the box’ thinking, as designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods. According to IDEO, design thinking looks for solutions to “wicked” (or complex) problems that are:

• Technically feasible: They can be developed into functional products or processes.
• Economically viable: The business can afford to implement them.
• Desirable for the user: They meet a real human need.

For those new to?design thinking, it’s a highly user-centric mindset and methodology for dealing with complexity and exploring a problem that affects a particular user or user group. It is based on cycles of courageous action, reflection, insight, and incremental improvement. Therefore, although design can tend to focus on a tangible product outcome, the design process is never really complete; there are always opportunities to refine and incrementally improve. The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) describes DT as a five-stage process. These stages are not always sequential, and you can often run them in parallel, out of order, and repeat them in an iterative fashion.

1. ?Empathize - Research Your Users' Needs - The empathize phase is all about understanding the needs, feelings, and experiences of others—and it requires learning about and directly from the user. People, not technology, are the drivers of innovation, so an essential part of the process involves stepping into the users' shoes and building genuine empathy for your target audience.
2. ?Define - State Your Users' Needs and Problems - The define phase focuses on more accurately clarifying the needs identified in the empathize phase, defining the problem, and creating a point of view from which to identify solutions.
3. ?Ideate - Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas - This is the brainstorming phase. Ideating is all about creativity, divergent thinking, and coming up with “moon shot” ideas. Understanding and improving brainstorming skills enable you to develop more innovative options for prototyping.
4. ?Prototype / Concepting - Start Creating Solutions - Prototyping is about building to learn by combining and connecting different ideas. Instead of sitting around and talking about why an idea may or may not work, test it! This phase is all about transforming an idea into a tangible form. Prototypes can be physical, virtual, or experiential, but they are always relevant, rapid, and rough.
5. Test/Implement- Try Out Your Solutions - Design thinking is an extremely hands-on approach to problem-solving favoring action over the discussion. Instead of hypothesizing about what your users want, design thinking encourages you to get out there and engage with them face-to-face. Rather than talking about potential solutions, you’ll turn them into tangible prototypes and test them in real-world contexts.

If you are not yet a practitioner of Design Thinking, I highly encourage you to look through the below resources or better yet, pick a book from your local library and add this very useful mindset/methodology to your toolset.

Useful resources:

• What is Design Thinking? [IDEO]
• Design Thinking 101 [NN/G]
• Design thinking, explained [MIT]

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