Design Thinking? Think Design!

This is the 2nd article inspired by my research on the role of Design Thinking in Strategy making.

Many schools and organisations are teaching and have implemented different design thinking processes. I’ve surveyed the literature on design thinking extensively in the context of my research and decided to focus on six well-acknowledged schools of thought that have had an impact on the field: the d.school, the Darden School of Business, SAP, IBM, Accenture and IDEO . In this article, I’ll give an overview of each of these and give my thoughts on where an organisation could start to implement a design thinking process.

Different Processes, Same Human-Centred Philosophy

The d.school at Stanford 

The d.school at Stanford University, also known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, was established by Plattner and by Stanford Professor and IDEO co-founder David M. Kelley. Their methodology is renowned and has been a notable influence on many of the other methodologies discussed below.

The d.school’s process focusses on five iterative stages:

• Empathize – The centrepiece of the human-centred design process;
• Define – Synthetize your findings;
• Ideate – Going wide, design alternatives;
• Prototype – Solidify the ideas emerging at the Ideate stage and bring them to the physical world; and
• Test – A highly iterative stage to get feedback on your solution, refine and continue to learn.

The Darden School of Business

Jeanne Liedtka, from the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, refers to ten design thinking tools mapped to the four design thinking questions of the framework she developed with King and Bennet. She talked to managers in ten organisations that implemented design thinking and found that the tools used (ethnographic interviewing, customer journey mapping and job-to-be-done analysis) “encouraged people to stay involved with the problem long enough to reframe the opportunity.” (Liedtka, 2014) While her process implies a linear approach, it is a good attempt at formalising the design thinking process within an organisation.

SAP

SAP has been co-founded by Hasso Plattner, who also founded the d.school at Stanford. SAP has to be one of the most influential schools of thought in design thinking. Plattner recognized that there was an urgent need for a cultural turn towards a user-centric perspective at SAP, and he said that design thinking reminded him of the “good old days at SAP when they were closer to the customer.”

SAP’s design thinking method focusses on three iterative stages:

• Discover; 
• Design; and 
• Deliver.

IBM

IBM has been transforming itself into a design-led business, as explained by Elizabeth Stinson in a 2016 Wiredarticle. The Loop, IBM’s re-envisioned design thinking methodology, is now taught across all levels of the company. Just as SAP’s method, and also like IDEO’s three stages, as will be seen below, it is centred around three concepts:

• Observe;
• Reflect; and
• Make.

Stinson explains the loop as such:

Explained simply, the Loop represents the entire product-creation process, beginning with user-centred research all the way through prototyping (“everything is a prototype!” says Hill [Charlie Hill, IBM chief technology officer of IBM Design]), to building and launching a product. The loop becomes a loop when you realize that the iterative process is never actually done; perhaps the loop's most important requirement is reflecting on what's been created and constantly improving it.

Accenture

Closely related to that of the d.school, the methodology at the heart of Accenture’s design thinking effort is also based on a similar five-stage, highly iterative process. With the acquisition of Fjord Design in 2013, Accenture strengthened its consultancy service offer by adding design thinking to its toolkit. Fjord is one of the only design firms that talks about the use of design thinking in the context of design-led strategy, understood as using the design thinking methodology to help organisations develop their business strategy.

IDEO

At IDEO, then CEO Tim Brown introduced another model with Katz (Brown & Katz, 2009) which would become popular, simplifying the five pillars of the d.school process into three stages: 

• Inspiration; 
• Ideation; and
• Implementation. 

This model adopts a divergence/convergence approach and is another highly iterative model that makes it possible to move back and forth between stages as you learn more about the human at the centre of a given problem. Brown, and IDEO as a company, are a strong voice in the design thinking field, making its methodology available through a non-profit organisation to solve wicked problems, social problems that are inherently difficult to solve, in underprivileged and vulnerable communities in the developing world.

Which is best?

There is a lack of scholarly literature surrounding the usage of design thinking in business circles. One of the reasons is the newness of the methodologies and the lack of theoretical research surrounding these models. For example, Darden’s model was developed by Liedtka, Kind and Bennett in 2013 by examining design thinking in action in only twenty-two organisations. Darden’s model, while still very useful, is probably more akin to a toolbox, as it gathers applicable processes for each of its design stages. Other models were developed through practical use and experience, such as Brown and Katz (2009) through their experience in IDEO. Longitudinal studies of many more organisations would be needed to bring the academic research lacking from the field of design thinking. More recently, Liedtka and Kaplan published a research on how Design Thinking could help an organisation shape its strategy (see How design thinking opens new frontiers for strategy development).

I am not of the opinion that any of these models are superior to one another. They all favour different approaches, yet all are deeply steeped in the same design thinking philosophy. While IBM and IDEO’s three-stage methodologies may, on the face of it, seem somewhat simplistic, when examined more closely it becomes clear that their respective three stages break down into activities closely related to that of the other schools and organisations under review

When distilled to the core, these processes are all anchored in five basic design concepts: 

1. Understanding the problem; 
2. Interpreting the results; 
3. Generating ideas; 
4. Experimenting; and 
5. Implementing. 

As stated by their proponents, the essential element common to all of these design methodologies is that they function as enablers, fostering group activities that focus on the human side of a given problem (hence the often-referenced other name for design thinking – Human-Centred design). On the all-inclusive approach, Brown and Katz (back in 2009) states that in order to transform a “business-as-usual” culture into one driven by design, an organisation needs to give its members the power to learn and experiment. The way to achieve this is by balancing management’s requirements for stability and predictability with the design thinker’s need for spontaneous experimentation.

Another keystone of design thinking also present in all of these models is the “iterativeness” of the process. Each step does not necessarily take place sequentially and can lead to going back and forth between stages. This approach emphasises the importance of incremental learning within the process that leads to an implemented solution. This approach, a variation on the “fail fast, fail often” theme, has been quoted in many different ways in various contexts.

Design Thinking for your organisation

As stated above, I don’t value any particular model over another. When the time comes for your organisation to make the shift to a design-oriented mindset, you can pick an existing model, or even create your own one. When you look at the six models explained above and put them side-by-side, they line up to 5 Design Stages as illustrated below:

The benefit of adopting a model (borrowed or your own) is that it creates a common vocabulary which helps in preventing to create a disconnect within your organisation. This common language ensures the entire organisation understands how you intend to approach problems.

To be successful in shifting towards a design mindset, an organisation needs to maintain a level of flexibility and the practitioner needs to drive cultural changes. For a consulting firm, when it comes to creating a process derived from the existing design methodologies, it is a better option to have many tools to choose from, which allows to create a bespoke solution to each client. However, the design thinking phases could also be operationalised and tools could be associated to each stages in a business strategy context. More importantly, to support an organisation through this shift to a design approach, organisational education in design thinking is key to foster acceptance and understanding of this new approach.

Eric Paquin is an Innovation Lead in ADAPT Centre's Design and Innovation Lab.