Design Thinking – Key Terminology

In this article I would like to share the key terminology we use in Design Thinking.

1) Empathy - Empathy is the basis for the Design Thinking approach. I have shared a lot about empathy in my previous articles, so here I would like to explain it with an example. In one of the interview Indra Nooyi, Ex CEO of PepsiCo highlighted that - As CEO, I visit a market every week to see what we look like on the shelves. I always ask myself—not as a CEO but as a mom—“What products really speak to me?”

This is a real example of putting yourselves into customer shoes to understand their problems. [1]

2) Outside-In Approach - In simpler terms, it tells that focus should not be what we as a company want to sell,?but instead focus should be given to understand what customers want to buy, that is, shifting the focus from selling the products to solving the customer’s problems.

3) Divergent Thinking – It says go limitless and this approach is foundation for Creative Thinking.

• Let the ideas flow and do not interrupt during idea generation process
• Defer judgement
• Generate as many ideas as possible. Do not focus on the quality of ideas rather focus should be on the quantity of ideas, the more the merrier.

4) Convergent Thinking -

• It is opposite to Divergent Thinking
• It helps the team to converge on a single or a selected few solutions
• Like in Divergent Thinking we deferred the judgement, but Judgement is required here because we are trying to converge on one or selected few solutions
• Here focus is on quality of ideas instead of quantity

5) Embrace Failures – With Design Thinking we are solving the complex problems so failures will be part of this journey. In this journey we have to embrace the failures by keeping a record of all the failures, learning from them and move on.

David Kelley, founder of IDEO very well summarized it -

Fail faster, succeed sooner

The adage of Len Schlesinger is very well applicable here where he highlights that -

?Failure doesn’t mean the game is over, it means try again with experience.

6) Embrace Ambiguity – The dictionary meaning of Ambiguity is – “the state of having more than one possible meaning” and that is exactly where Design Thinking helps because in Design Thinking approach we have to acknowledge that we do not have clearly defined problem and no clear-cut solution of it. That is where Design Thinking is a journey of exploration in which by embracing the ambiguity, we work towards defining the problem & then finding all the possible the solutions.

We can say that this is opposite to the conventional approach of problem solving where we assume that there’s a clearly defined problem, with only one solution to it.

Ultimately feeling comfortable in saying – “I don’t know yet” while you are on the journey of this creative problem-solving approach, is alright.

7) Synthesizing - Synthesis is a process of making sense out of the information gathered during user interviews. This process gives the Eureka moment because once pieces of puzzle, in the form of field observations and interpretations are shared and put together, then more comprehensive picture emerges and helps the team to gain insights they were not able to discover individually, before. [2]

This is similar to the parable of blind men & elephant. Each man has touched only one part of elephant and described to others as per their understanding, but no one was able to envision the whole elephant until they all sit & synthesized their data points. [3]

[Image 1]

So, I can say that synthesizing is more about connecting the dots to understand the bigger picture.

8) Story Telling - This skill is required at different stages of Design Thinking (1) while sharing the fields observations with the team members. This will help designers to empathize with users & help them to understand what users want from the solution. (2) while sharing the prototype of the solution with the users.

As we are trying to provide the best experience to users, so we are not only considering the requirement provided by users, but we are also considering the emotions attached to it.

9) T-Shaped Professionals - These are the professionals who are strong in one area, represented by the vertical bar (as depth of one skill), while knowing multiple other areas, represented by the horizontal bar (as breadth of multiple skills).

10) Making Dissent as one of your team’s key trait – Design Thinking is a creative problem-solving approach. In order to be creative we have to take best out of each and every member of the team. To do that we have to challenge each other, we have to have disagreements, we have to have dissenting views to stimulate our thinking.

Research shows that when a dissenting view is presented in a group, it raises the creativity of the group. Dissent promotes divergent thinking, enhances the quality of decision making and leads to better innovation. [4]

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[1] hbr.org [2] codify.in [3] en.wikipedia.org [4] forbes.com [Image 1] en.wikipedia.org