Design Thinking

Design thinking is one of an interesting concepts that helps to come-up with innovative ideas and close to ideal decisions. It is a process and to define design thinking the roots of the definitions are to be understood. This article gives some conceptual clarity about the important terms of design thinking and its definition.

What is Bias?

The general condition of being biased is to rely on a particular conclusion or to have a strong belief on something that could possibly vary or could have changed over time. Bias is defined as a disproportionate weight in favor of or against an idea or thing, usually in a way that is closed-minded, prejudicial, or unfair. Biases could be innate or learned and people may develop biases for or against an individual, a group, or a belief. In science and engineering, a bias is a systematic error. Statistical biases result from an unfair sampling of a population, or from an estimation process that does not give accurate results on average.

           Biases are erroneous in nature and it would cause deviations from achieving the preferred outcome or in getting at the conclusions. It is always ideal to avoid or remove the biases in possible ways. Generally, the bias is said to be cognitive bias and there are several kinds of cognitive biases in several formats and in different definitions, some of the most common and the famous biases are:

• Overconfident Bias
• Self-serving Bias
• Herd Mentality
• Loss Aversion
• Framing Cognitive bias
• Narrative Fallacy
• Anchoring Bias
• Confirmation Bias
• Hindsight Bias
•  Representativeness Heuristic 

To avoid all these biases thinking and making deep research is the only solution, before getting into any solutions.

What is a thought?

Thought is something that always run in our minds it will be altered by several factors like the environmental conditions, situations, feelings etc., It is generally defined as Thought which is somehow close to thinking encompasses an "aim-oriented flow of ideas and associations that can lead to a reality-oriented conclusion". There could be several thoughts running in one’s mind and some could be streamlined or stimulated by one’s own ability to think and control the thought process. Thoughts could be generally classified as

• Necessary or Normal Thoughts
• Waste Thoughts
• Positive Thoughts
• Negative Thoughts

Thoughts could be considered as the fuel for imagination and thinking process for a person. Thinking is what we try to become real or which can be possible. While, Thought is something that comes in our mind when we are free. It can be real or imaginary i.e. It can be made possible or it cannot come into existence. Thinking is something that comes with some efforts from the person who does it, but thoughts have no boundaries and it is like a free-flowing water that would flow in any direction. Thinking is something that is confined to the person’s experiences, imagination and it is directed by the motive to think. Thoughts could be influenced by the five senses, and it is something like an idea that appears. But thinking is a more like a kind of working of the brain. Thoughts are also related with the consciousness, there would be some thoughts while we are unconscious, and the dreams are kind of reflections of our thoughts.

What is thinking?

Thinking allows humans to make sense of, interpret, represent, or model the world they experience, and to make predictions about that world. It is therefore helpful to an organism with needs, objectives, and desires as it makes plans or otherwise attempts to accomplish those goals. Thinking helps to arrive at better conclusions and to make proper solutions without any errors or biases. With the process of thinking new ideas that are obtained through thoughts could be streamlined and could be upgraded into better ideas. As there are some types of thoughts there are also types in thinking, like:

• Convergent thinking (using logic) - This type of thinking is also called critical, vertical, analytical, or linear thinking
• Divergent thinking (using imagination)
• Lateral thinking (using both logic and imagination)

What is design?

Design is a plan or a specification / definition for making an object or finishing an object. It is the process of envisioning and planning the creation of objects, interactive systems, buildings, vehicles, etc. Its user-centered, i.e. users are at the heart of the design thinking approach. It is about creating solutions for people, physical items, or more abstract systems to address a need or a problem. It could also be considered as an up-gradation process of a thing like an object or product. When we take a car as an example, the base model with engine, seat, and the mechanism to drive, apply brakes and the protection with the glass etc.., are the object or the product created. To put everything together to make it into an end product and to add some interesting additional features to the car like the color, door type, the style of the outer body parts of the car could be modified with a help of a plan called design. Even optimization can also be said as a kind of designing. Designing ideas help in innovating, inventing new things, creating, developing.

Design is both an art and a science, as it takes elements from both. Art is about creating something that expresses the author’s vision, ideas, and feelings. While designers can express feelings and leave impressions through their work, doing so is not their prime objective. So, it takes the creating aspect of art, as it is about crafting an item, a tool, an experience even. On the other hand, it takes the problem-solving aspect of science. It exists primarily to address a particular need. To quote Steve Jobs:

“Design is not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”

It is achieved when the user doesn’t even notice its presence. This principle is particularly true in interaction design. Navigating a user interface should feel natural and unhindered. The user should be able to understand its rules and the meaning of its elements almost immediately. The user is guided by an invisible hand made of colors, shapes, contrast, repetitions.

What is design thinking?

It is a process used to understand, identify, challenge problems, redefine solutions, improve creativity, test, and iterate for better outcomes. This is a very long process and it is the combination of both the activity of thinking and designing. There are three major kinds of problems that would occur in any processes, they are:

• Critical Problem
• Tame Problem
• Wicked Problem

When a problem is critical problem it would require immediate action and the process will be driven by a subject matter expert in-charge.

For the tame problems, there would be predefined solutions and it could be applied, and this would be solved easily.

But when it comes for the wicked problem, it would be much difficult to find solution. The problem may not be encountered earlier, and it would be new, the solutions may satisfy a small part of the problem or minimize the side-effects. But it will be very difficult to find a good or minimum possible solution. For such cases design thinking is required. There are five stages in design thinking and they are:

All these steps are to be followed and these steps could be iterated as many times as possible to get a better solution, given the time constraints and the criticality of the problem.

Why should people in higher positions and management do design thinking?

People in greater positions like VPs, CXOs in the management, would get into the critical and wicked problems that would have severe impacts on the organization they work and they need to make several decisions with some constraints like resource, time etc., The power of the decisions and the criticalities of the problems that they encounter may increase as the positions in the organizations and in the management increases. They would largely face wicked problems and hence design thinking could be one of the best solutions for critical decision making and that would help to acquire good experience in approaching wicked problems and finding solutions easily thereby making them the best version of themselves.