Design Thinking: A Useful Summary

(This is an excerpt from my forthcoming book, "Design for Strengths: Applying Design Thinking to Individual and Team Strengths" due to be published in April, 2018)

The Design Thinking Process in Brief

Here are some quick snapshots of each of the six Design Thinking steps. Detailed stories and examples of each step are explored in future chapters.

1) Accept: Like so many problem-solving methodologies (including AA!), the first step in the Design Thinking process is to admit that there is a problem. A corollary to this is the idea that you don’t want to accept or work on problems that are completely intractable. There is a fine line between giving up too early and taking on the impossible. In this chapter, we will share the difference between a “gravity problem” and a properly scoped challenge.

As Dave Evans and Bill Burnett illustrate so well in Designing Your Life, complaining about the ever-present reality of gravity (“oh, it is so hard to climb this hill, these stairs, etc.”) is not a particularly good use of your designer’s mindset or the Design Thinking process. Unless you are an advanced physicist, you are probably working a problem you can’t solve. Related are world hunger, aging, and “other people.”

As my friend and mindfulness expert John Cregier put it a number of years ago, when it comes to gravity problems, “Acceptance is key. It doesn’t mean it is right, it doesn’t mean it is ok, it simply means ‘it is.’” Only when you accept the things that “are” versus things “that should be” can you focus your problem-solving energies effectively. (Dave Evans shares his views on "Acceptance" in chapter five.)

2) Define: So, we know there is a problem: we have accepted it. The product isn’t selling, the company’s growth is slowing, our Net Promoter Score (NPS) is lower than it should be, my boss is always freaking out. We know (we think) our target consumer or problem or challenge that we are trying to solve. Or do we? Is there more data out there? What else can we learn about our target consumer/challenge? Are we sure we are solving the right problem?

Often the “obvious” fix to a problem is the wrong one—or is subject to gravity impossibility. “How can I fix my boss, partner, business” is nearly always the wrong challenge to solve. Steps one and two feature strongly here. For example, instead of “how do I fix my boss’s inability to handle surprises,” a better challenge might be “how do I better prepare my boss for sudden changes?” The define stage is all about framing and reframing the problem in meaningful and solvable ways. (David Eagleman shares his views on "Define" in chapter six.)

3) Empathize: Perhaps the most important element of Design Thinking and probably also the hardest. Empathy sounds like a basic human value, a native mindset and a skill that everyone “should” have. However, as we will share in the chapter, in the context of Design Thinking empathy can be extraordinarily difficult. What if your job as a designer is to design for an 8-year-old boy when you are a 38-year-old woman. What if your job is to solve for a 68-year-old grandmother of seven when you are a 26-year-old male? What if you are an African-American aiming to understand the mindset of a Klu Klux Klan (KKK) member? Chapter 7 includes the story of Daryl Davis—who did exactly that.

Empathy doesn’t mean sympathy or agreeing with a particular viewpoint. Empathy means being able to shift your own thinking to emulate the thought patterns of someone else, to understand why something can make sense to someone possessing a particular mindset in a particular context. “Being in the shoes” is a core precept of Design Thinking. (Tom Kelley shares his views on "Empathy" in chapter seven.)

4) Ideate: Probably the simplest step in Design Thinking—and yet the one with a methodology most quickly abandoned. Business leaders today are programmed to move swiftly, to evaluate options, and to make decisions. However, the generation of ideas is a very sacred moment.

Brain science teaches us that generating ideas—divergence—is a discrete function from the evaluation or judgment of those same ideas. We also know that mixing the two is a serious mistake. As we will share in the chapter, the generation of ideas without judgment is a vastly superior process to the simultaneous divergent/convergent process that almost every meeting in the world manages to evoke. You know you are doing the “Ideate” step wrong when you hear someone offer an idea followed immediately by a judgment. As we will show, “We’ve tried that before” might be the single worst phrase offered in boardrooms across the country. (Craig Sampson shares his ideas on "Ideate" in chapter eight.)

5) Prototype: The prototype phase is perhaps the most obvious and well-documented element of Design Thinking. This step has evolved into a host of modern processes including Lean and Agile. Critical to this step is a “learn-by-doing” action bias and mindset.

Design Thinking classes at Stanford always included a mock-up or prototype that we could share for feedback with the class in the early going. This was less about feedback and much more about the willingness to produce a less-than-perfect artifact that we could learn from. Outside of school or the lab, this is also the step that begins to create antibodies in the system and generate resistance. (Dennis Boyle shares his thoughts on "Prototype" in chapter nine.)

6) Test: The test phase is the last part of the iterative process of Design Thinking, coming immediately before Launch. This phase is a decision point: either, A) we have confidence to launch through quantitative data, or B) we need to return to Define, Empathy, or Prototype to tweak our problem statement, understanding, or approach.

In this phase, you take a prototype—a new way of doing something—and actually try it in “real life.” For products and services, you share it with consumers and gauge their responses—qualitatively at first, quantitatively closer to launch. When it comes to our activities as individuals and teams, we want to avoid the “tyranny of the anecdote” and make decisions after proper testing first. (Luisa Uriarte shares her thoughts on "Test" in chapter ten.)