Design Thinking and its comparison to DMAIC.

Design Thinking and its comparison to DMAIC.

Introduction

There are various methodologies and tools adopted by the business world today for developing any product or services or to solve business problems. What is significant to observe is that knowing which tool to use when, is as important as to know the tools.

The beginning of the 21st century brought a significant increase in the interest towards Design Thinking as a methodology.?This got even more popular during the last decade in the business press.?

Six Sigma is another strong problem-solving methodology that existed much earlier than the popularity of Design Thinking.?Hence, we have more people trained on Six Sigma today in the industry than Design Thinking.?In this article, I have tried to give a bird’s eye view of what is Design thinking and how is it compared to Six Sigma.

What is Design Thinking

Design thinking is a non-linear, human centric, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.

It has two cycles of diversion and conversion which is followed by the testing phase.?This framework is also known as a double diamond framework or 4D.

Discover

Action – In this stage we diverge and open up to a problem - Gather large amount of mixed and unstructured data, facts, ideas, observations, needs, issues, opinions. This can be done through both, Qualitative and Quantitative method.

Output – Best possible understanding of user and their needs.?Consolidate the user research data using visual tools like – Empathy Map and User Persona.

Tools/Techniques - Tools used in this stage are: - Affinity diagram, User Persona and Empathy map.

Define

Action – This is a stage to Converge and look for patterns and synthesize your learning into insights.

Output – Thoroughly researched and clearly defined problem statement using the format: - A UP, needs to do (CN) because (UI).

Tool/Techniques – Action oriented problem statement using the User persona (UP) – critical need (CN) – user insight (UI) format.

Develop

Action – This is the second instance of divergence where we open up for ideas – Generate large number of ideas or frame large number of questions (HMW format) to solve the problem. HMW question format has three components. 1- How might we – 2 – Question (10 different ways to ask the question for the specific problem you want to solve) – 3 – Capture the essence of the problem.

Output – Frame large number of ideation question using the HMW format, which can be filtered and narrowed down to most practical and innovative ones.

Tool/Techniques – HMW Question format, 10 ways of framing question, 11 techniques to help people generate ideas, Affinity diagram to segment ideas, Six tools for prioritizing ideas.

Deliver

Action – This is the last step of 4D, where we converge back and prototype – Develop concept or functional prototypes. Gather user feedback and iterate.

Output – Tangible or testable solution.

Tool – Six golden rules of prototyping.

Testing

Action – Collect feedback from real user or customer. Run small experiments in controlled environment.?Check if users’ need is being met.?Redefine the problem in case needed.?Go back to the drawing board and check if problems were captured well during Discover stage.

Output – User feedback.

Tool/Techniques – Type of user testing

Difference between Design Thinking and DMAIC.

Design Thinking is a Nonlinear process / Six Sigma is a linear process.?It follows sequential steps to solve a business problem.

Design Thinking prefers experiment to theory.?Encourages use of visuals and drawings as much as possible and as early as possible / Six Sigma is a data-based problem-solving methodology that uses Science and Logic Instead of Gut Feel.

Design Thinking is a five-step double diamond non-linear process / Six Sigma is a five-step linear DMAIC process.

Design Thinking is more used for product design / Six Sigma is more used for process improvement.

Design Thinking materializes a potential solution for testing and perfects it through iteration basis user feedback / Six Sigma identifies the root cause of problem through Hypothesis testing before the solution reaches the user.

Design Thinking relies less on past data.?More inclined towards qualitative method of problem identification and solving / Six Sigma relies heavily on data.?Makes more use of quantitative methods than qualitative ones.

Design thinking is human centered / Six Sigma is data centered.

Design Thinking focuses on open ended customer problem / Six Sigma focuses on close ended customer problem.

Design Thinking oversimplified the design process and trivialized the role of technical knowledge and skills / Six Sigma gives extreme importance to Technical knowledge and skills.

Similarities between Design Thinking and Six Sigma.

Both are problem solving techniques.

Both the methodologies are user centric.

Both of these methodologies in their space starts with Customer problem space and not solution.

Both techniques begin with deep customer focus.

Both methodologies focus highly on testing or pilot to ascertain solution of problem.