How to Be a Great Design Thinker

Firstly, if you don’t know what Design Thinking is, MIT defines it as follows:

Design thinking is a creative and systematic approach to problem solving by placing the user at the centre of the experience.

It enables organizations to ideate better, develop new approaches to innovation, fabricate insights and concepts, and ultimately helps meet customers’ needs more effectively

The key phrase here, in my opinion, is “placing the user at the centre of the experience.”??By user when mean customer, client or whoever is the end user of your product or service.

We don’t start with the product or with features, we start with the?user.?

But how do we know what the user wants or needs???We know by using?empathy.??The key to being a great design thinker is to have empathy.??Empathy is where design thinking starts.

Empathy means “the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.”??Good design thinkers are open minded, observant, good listeners and curious.??They will immerse themselves in what the user is experiencing, observe (with ALL the senses), engage and interact with, and learn from users, and always put aside their own assumptions.

Tim Brown, chairman of IDEO, the global innovation and design company, says “Empathy is at the heart of design. Without the understanding of what others see, feel, and experience, design is a pointless task.”

My favourite empathy tool; the five whys

This is a simple yet powerful tool we like to use at Falak. We have used it successfully with a Saudi client who was facing a particular challenge.

It’s pretty simple, start with writing down a specific problem, and then ask “why?” five times.??Here’s a nice example taken from Taproot;??Taiichi Ohno, a Japanese industrialist and "father of the Toyota Production System" and creator of the 5-Why technique, is quoted using the following example to teach using 5-Why’s for root cause analysis:

1.?????“Why did the robot stop?”

The circuit has overloaded, causing a fuse to blow.?

2.?????“Why is the circuit overloaded?”

There was insufficient lubrication on the bearings, so they locked up.

3.?????“Why was there insufficient lubrication on the bearings?”

The oil pump on the robot is not circulating sufficient oil.?

4.?????“Why is the pump not circulating sufficient oil?”

The pump intake is clogged with metal shavings.?

5.?????“Why is the intake clogged with metal shavings?”

Because there is no filter on the pump.

The five whys method is by no means perfect, but it is very effective nonetheless in helping figure out the root cause of a problem or behaviour and will help make you a damn good design thinker!??Now go empathise.?