Design Thinking Toolkit for Beginners

Tim Brown is an author of Change by Design and was a long-time CEO of the most famous design companies - IDEO, defined the essence of design thinking as transitioning from "nouns" to "verbs".

It is a fundamental change and you might feel it when comparing two sentences: "How might we remodel a phone booth" into 'How might we create a private space for public calls." They are both similar, yet there's something different about them.

Design thinking or "human-centered design" is about three things:

1. Observing
2. Prototyping
3. Testing and experimenting

You get an understanding of your object of interest not by asking questions "how are things done?" but by making observations and seeing how things are really done.

You validate your ideas by prototyping, failing, and learning. The underlying principle of your thought process is not being an "all-knowing product-building prophet" but an empathetic and humble servant.

Design Thinking Process

During the winter semester of 2023, I was fortunate enough to take part in my first Design Thinking course as part of my Stanford LEAD program. The course was led by professor Stefanos Zenios of Stanford University Graduate School of Business , it lasted 8 weeks, was hard and truly transformative.

The way we were thought to think about it was to think about it as a process for innovation. A rigorous path that when followed increases a chance of getting into something genuinely original.

The process that we were following during the course, consisted of the following topics:

Observe and Interview => Saturate and Cluster=> POV=> Ideate=> Prototype=> Test=> BMC/BCC=> Experiment

During the course we were asked to identify our own innovation challenge which was based on a real-world need, which we used for learning the process.

It was one of the most demanding courses among the ones that I took at LEAD. Reason for that being extremely high-paced and packed with tools and evolutions that were packed within just 8 weeks time.

Below I present some of the tools that were novel to me and some that I believe are particularly useful and worth knowing.

Tools for Observing

Design thinking is a tool for solving problems. Human-centered problems. It doesn't work well solving abstract challenges such as planning sales, but works perfectly when you need to understand why the hand doesn't fit the glove (symbolically speaking).

It is therefore crucial to learn to retrieve observations in order to understand the nature of the problem in order to be able to properly formulate and state your user or customer problem that you're trying to solve.

Some good techniques for doing that:

Observing:

• Focusing on "extreme users" and workarounds of pain points
• Do not interact with the user - become a "fly on the wall" - observe but not interact.
• Take detailed notes: what they were doing?/ How they were doing it?/ Why were they doing that?

Interviewing:

• Your purpose is to understand the needs of your user.
• Cast a wide net: talk to the user and people who influence them
• Write an interview script
• Write effective interview questions - ask open-ended questions, avoid using leading questions, keep your questions short

Most importantly: approach your users without prejudice - predetermined vision of the solution.

Space Saturation and Clustering

Space saturation and clustering are the stages for ordering and giving sense to the observation you gathered during observation and interviewing stages.

Space Saturation

Gathering and displaying all the data that you collected during interviews and observation.

• Gather and note down data. Use sticky notes, remember to display one idea per note.

1. Display in a shared space. Invite other team members to see and comment on the data you share.

Clustering

The collection of observations and insights require further refinement in order to make it really useful. Clustering serves the purpose of making sense of the raw data. In order to achieve that you can use some of the following techniques:

1. Empathy map - grouping needs and key emotions uncovered when interviewing along: quotes and defining words/thoughts and beliefs/actions and behaviors/feelings and emotions/usability and tactical needs/emotional and aspirational needs
2. Composite character - an archetypal user, constructed of features and insights collected from numerous users.
3. User journey - timeline of all touchpoints between user and the product/service
4. Relationship Map - mapping data on the basis of relationships between the users and other people.

POV - Point of View Statement

Your POV statement is used for reframing all of the gathered and ordered information in a form of a simple and actionable definition of the user and the problem.

One of the way to create it is by using the following format:

[user name and description] NEEDS [description of need, expressed using a verb] BECAUSE [insight that uses adjectives].

Remember that setting your POV is an iterative process - make several attempts, do not be afraid to make changes and modifications to your original idea.

Below are examples of my attempts at crafting a perfect POV:

POV #1

Joe, the overworked COO of an ecommerce company, needs a state of the art throughput modeling tool because this will let him control the cost at his company.

POV #2

Joe, a busy COO, needs a tool, which will allow him to control the costs at his company.

Ideation

Ideation phase is your first attempt to jump from "the problem" to "the solution". You need to be creative - innovation goes well with multiplicity of ideas. Crazy ideas, controversial ideas, out of the box ideas.

Do not think what works, there will be time for that later on but for idea generation - let your imagination stay without constraints.

Brainstorming

The goal of brainstorming is simple - generating as many ideas as possible - not 10, not 20 but literally 100 (at the least).

However, do not think that anything goes during a brainstorming session. It is very easily transformed into meaningless "bla bla bla" talk that leads to nothing. In order to avoid that, follow "The Brainstorming Rules":

• Identify facilitator in advance
• Brainstorming is a team sport in which all participants contribute input and ideas
• Defer judgment and evaluation of ideas
• Encourage wild ideas
• Build on others' ideas
• Stick to one conversation at a time
• Use visuals
• Describe your idea quickly and at a high level.

Employing those rules, a typical brainstorming session can be organized as follows:

1. State your POV - who is your user, what his problem is and why it's important for him
2. State your "HMV" question. "How might we..."

Use different brainstorming techniques as part of your session - should be managed by your facilitator:

1. Crazy brainstorming - push everyone out of their comfort zone. Make them come up with whatever definition of "crazy" may appear.
2. Sabotage Brainstorm - choose one potential solution and force everybody to think "what can go wrong with it"
3. Constrained Brainstorm - add some constraints about your users, about your POV or the context you're working on.
4. Analogous Brainstorm - reframe the problem you're solving into a problem that has already been solved.

Remember that in the case of brainstorming as well as in the case of "design thinking" in general - a wall is the new desk.

Use sticky notes, put your ideas on the table so that everybody can see them, play with them, have fun (for real).

Conclusions

Going back to Tim Brown of IDEO, he defined the process of design thinking "as a way of describing a set of principles that can be applied by diverse people to a wide range of problems."

What does it mean in practical terms is that great or small innovations, inventions or simply working products are not a product of magic and mystery secretly nurtured by wizards.

Instead, they are a product of a process or an approach which is based on empathy, curiosity and common sense. The qualities that we all possess and all it takes is to discover them.

Hence the "d" in the famous?Stanford University?"d.school" of design is small. It's not a mistake but an attempt to move beyond the sculptural museum or lifestyle magazines covers that usually go with the capital "D" design.

Going back to?Tim Brown?and his thoughts on being design thinking evangelist, I hope to contribute to the growing legion of trained design thinkers by making positive changes to the human problems I may encounter.

Participating in a Design Thinking course at Stanford LEAD was a great adventure, one that pushed me hard and let me start thinking differently about approaching problems and searching solutions to them.