Design thinking, is first an attitude…

Design thinking, is first an attitude…

Design think is the buzzword today. Businesses want design think experts and they want their teams to be trained in Design think as a concept. Even before we understand that design is a thought process we are talking about, its important we know design think is an attitude. You might attend a lot of courses and get dozens of certifications and work on even more projects, but it still won’t make you a great design expert. What you need is a design attitude.

Usually the design think process is described in a couple of steps. Lets take the Stand-ford model and talk about the attitude needed in each step.

Lets take the first step – Empathize

To empathize, you need to get into the shoes of your users. Now, we have heard this many time. But the fact is, its more difficult than it sounds. Each of us come with our own biases that’s shaped by the background, circumstances, experiences and influenced by the people we meet. The easiest to do is connect the users situation to the ‘google’ in our head. Just like how you start typing and google tries to guess what you are looking for. It is difficult to build that unbiased attitude. As a result, we miss some information or delve less on some inputs because, we know the obvious answer! That is what differentiates a great designer to the one trying to be one. A great designer would look at various points of data. He would do a full circle of all the ‘Why’s.

Now how do you make sure you are unbiased when you are interacting for needs and insights with your user? Off course, you try to not make judgements. Also, you need to meet people from varied backgrounds and experiences. People from different cultures and different thought processes. And then, you will truly understand the importance of being an open book when you start the empathy stage. I have often met designers in class who refuse to delve much because they say ‘they know it’. Henry Ford should have looked for faster horses and not come up with a motor car if ‘he knew it’. After all, you only know as much as existed, not the one that’s yet to be innovated. Isn’t it?

Now, lets talk about the next step – Define

You will have a lot of data after your field research. Your biggest temptation here is to come up with many solutions to many small problems. After all, no one likes to tread on a path that we don’t know the end to. We want to see the end and not knowing where we are going, annoys us. And when we do that, we shut our minds to the insights that we gathered already that can indicate to a clear problem definition. You should be able to see a real, practical problem. At this point, a focused attitude helps. Don’t try to solve too many problems at a time. The problem might be complex. You should be able to break it down and deduce a clear simple story of the problem. When you put your field data together, you should be able to connect the dots and find that simple thing that is the definition of the problem.

Talking about the next step – Ideate

At this stage, your canvas is huge. While brainstorming, you don’t limit yourself. There are no bad ideas. Go crazy, go weird. Your biggest threat is judgement here. You will need to suspend judgement about the idea that you are presenting. Innovation happens when you are free to think as wild as you can. So, an optimistic attitude helps. There will be plenty of time to figure if they would work or not. Now isn’t the time.

Lets talk about the next one – Prototype

In this step, you will convert your wild ideas to something that can work in real life. You need to have a confident attitude here. You need to know that no matter how wild or impossible your idea sounded, it is still possible to put in the real world. You will also have to be ready to continuously prototype or ‘rapid’ prototype. Start with simple paper and pencil and then use colour pencils and other stationery. You will not get the right one at the first go. You have to design, re-design, re-visit the design time again. It is uncertain when you are doing this. What will keep you at your best is the belief that you will find the right shape and colour of your idea. You just have to hold on.

The last stage is – Test

After prototyping, here is the time you share your design with your user. Their feedback and observation will tell you how good it will be in the real world. Every time you share your sparkling-intelligent-never heard before design with real people, you will be put with your two feet on the ground. Often that reality-check is hard, but you should know that there is no other way to improve your design. The attitude to unlearn and learn again will be important. This is the only way; you and the user can get more clarity to the user’s need. The ability to not let feedback affect your notion about yourself or dampen your creative spirit will be important. Its how you learned to walk, cycle or swim for that matter. You initially built your strategy and you thought it will make you walk, cycle or swim. You might still need to evolve your strategy if not change it!

One for the whole process – Iterate-fail-learn

You would have heard design think is an iterative process. No matter how fancy the name sounds, the process is equally frustrating. Every time you do the last stage, you take inputs, you go back to the previous stage, or to the drawing board to design again. However, this is the only way. That’s how you know what really works, right?

Now, why is it important to be sure? The only intent of design think is not only to come up with any innovation. It has to be something that is viable(business), feasible(technical) and desirable(human). Edison was one of the earliest design thinkers who smartly built an entire industry around his innovation. It was viable, feasible and desirable!