How to Implement Design Thinking in Your Business

Innovation and creativity fuels any organization to foster trendsetting ideas that rule the marketplace. Traditional and repetitive methodologies prison individual thoughts and the business, therefore, lacks an ingenious business approach.

Design thinking for any enterprise can function as a breath of fresh air. It promotes the development of user-centric solutions by understanding their needs. With design thinking, you remove the element of superficiality.

The aim is to introduce solutions that are tangible, human-friendly, and follow a holistic approach.

Design Thinking in Brief

Design thinking is often confused as a tech-inclined concept meant for UI/UX or graphic design business. However, it's an open methodology that is compatible with any business that aims to produce innovative solutions.

Every business has a set of principles they follow to tackle any problem. With the introduction of design thinking, these principles can be replaced or redesigned. The prevalent design in business thereby evolves into a system enabling the employees to come-up with judgment-free ideas.

Design Thinking – Process of Implementation

Design thinking integrates the people's needs with your business requirements to pave the path for success. It's implemented in 5 phases that are listed below:

1. Empathize

The process of design thinking starts with the abolishment of prior assumptions and the introduction of real-world interests. The team can follow any approach to bring in people's wants, desires, and must-have requirements.

This phase ends when the business members are satisfied with the information collected. You try to ask as many questions as possible so that it's market-ready when you test the final product.

2. Define the Problem

After collecting data in the first phase, you slash-and-choose the points that make the most sense. The solutions to the problem are evaluated on user-centric grounds. This establishes a virtual connection with the consumer, and all your steps intend to offer them enhanced convenience.

Digital visibility is critical for any business in 2020 because online solutions are fast, accurate, and convenient. Therefore, web design for small business is always an integral part of any design thinking campaign in modern times. You also get valuable feedback from users that you can keep in mind during the execution phase.

The end of phase 2 should give you a clear understanding of the target users and a detailed problem statement.

3. Ideate and Hatch Optimized Solutions

Once you have an elaborated problem statement, it's time to formulate the most optimized solution. The designers involve themselves in brainstorming sessions and descriptively discuss with other members in this stage.

The window for creativity and innovation is always open, and new ideas receive a warm welcome (for a change). Mind-mapping also helps designers to think of game-changing ideas that incline with customer needs.

After your list-of-solutions are full, filter them further based on tangibility, budget, and approach. Schedule a few discussion sessions to revisit all the approved ideas and jump into the next phase post complete satisfaction.

4. Prototype and Practical Implementation

After refining your solution on paper, it's now time to see your design in action. You develop a prototype of the most optimized solution, which is a toned-down version of its market counterpart.

Stay attentive and deeply examine the functioning to find out flaws and shortcomings. Don't be biased in your observation and look for minute errors so that they can be rectified within time.

If the prototype doesn't match the desired standards, the idea is dropped, and the testing phase is skipped. If modifications are needed, the prototype phase is repeated to achieve the sought outcome.

5. The Testing Phase

The final phase of design thinking is marked by hands-on testing under various constraints. However, note that this is not the end of the process but rather a "first iteration" in the design thinking loop.

User-centric evaluation remains constant throughout the operation, and testing is done on the same grounds too. Usually, testing is followed by re-designing because, as they say, "there's always room for improvement."

To Conclude

Design thinking, unlike other business methods, doesn't require a linear approach.

All these steps are followed one after the other only when you hit all the set goals in the first attempt. For many businesses, the process would involve multiple iterations of each phase. When in doubt, start again with the previous step and explore deep waters.

It's a compelling concept that fosters innovation and enables all the participants to express themselves fully. You need to begin with user research to have handy data beforehand and formulate a detailed problem statement.

Dedicate time to hatch corresponding solutions to the problem and select the best idea. Develop a business prototype to test functioning on a practical scale and look for flaws in the system. Thoroughly test the mini-prototype, keeping customer usability at priority.

Loved reading about design thinking? Tell us how you"ll implement it for your business in the comments section. Click here to express your information with a guest blog post.