The Power of Design Thinking

Design thinking is an approach to problem solving that focuses on the needs of the user. It's a popular concept among designers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Design thinking is a form of empathy, collaboration, and critical thinking. Essentially, it's an innovative way of thinking that makes ideas happen. Design thinking has numerous applications, such as in software development and medical technology. In this regard, design thinking has the potential to significantly change lives—both literally and figuratively.

It is often used in the field of product design, but it can be applied to any field where you are trying to solve a problem. This includes marketing, sales, and even business strategy. The idea behind design thinking is that we should not just think about what our products or services look like, but also how they will function for the people who use them.

Design thinking is often used in the product design process, but it can also be applied to other areas such as service design, marketing, and even business strategy.

How businesses can benefit from user-centric design. Design thinking has been gaining popularity in recent years as a way to create user-centric solutions. But what is it? And how can businesses benefit from it?

What does Design Thinking Look Like?

The best way to understand this process is through an example: Imagine you’re working on a new website for your company, and your boss asks you why customers would.

Design Thinking is a way of thinking and doing that helps us to create products, services, processes and organizations that are designed for people. It’s about finding the best possible solution by collaborating with others in an open-minded way. It involves: Collecting information from customers (What do they want and need?)

Design thinking focuses on the needs of the user and offers solutions that meet those needs. It's an approach to problem solving that encourages collaboration and creativity among stakeholders. This approach encourages human ingenuity and can be used to create anything with any level of complexity. The name 'design thinking' originated in 1971 at Stanford University as a response to the Cold War. During the Vietnam War, Richard F. Hertzberg created the 'thinking cap' concept as part of a team-training exercise for military personnel. The training led to the design of the first AR/VR glasses, which became known as 'think glasses.' As a result of this early work, 'design' became 'design thinking,' which has become synonymous with innovation and progress.

Innovation can be a key to success for businesses

It's a competitive environment, so any business, big or small, needs to innovate to stay ahead. Innovation is at the heart of any successful business and the key to a company generating new ideas on a regular basis. It's about putting 120% of your energy into everything you do, but with an extra twist so you can forge your unique identity and stand out in a crowded marketplace.

Two factors are critical to innovation: diverse perspectives and a good strategy. To successfully innovate and create endless value for your business, you must learn to look at problems differently and find solutions that no one else has ever thought of. Then you need a good strategy—one that suits your different perspectives and aligns with your priorities.

Why use Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on the user experience of a product. The term 'design thinking' was first used at Uber in 2014. Design thinking is not a rigid methodology; it is a dynamic philosophy that promotes creativity and innovation. Design thinking has become an essential tool in today's technology-fueled society. Design thinking can be used to design solutions for many complex problems.

Design thinking is a solution-focused approach to creating innovative products. It draws from design principles, such as user-experience, information architecture and system dynamics. Essentially, design thinkers use this knowledge to develop new solutions to complex problems. For example, the Walt Disney Company used design thinking to create their iconic theme parks. The most successful products are the result of combining creativity with data analysis and user insights.

Design thinking and Co-creation

Design thinking and co-creation are two important concepts in the world of product development. Design thinking is a process that helps organizations come up with new ideas by understanding the needs of their customers. Co-creation is a process where organizations work with their customers to create new products or services. Both of these processes are important in the development of successful products.

Example of a successful design thinking & Co-Creation product.

As we mentioned before “Design thinking” is a process for creating products or services that meets the needs of customers or users. It involves understanding the user, identifying their needs, and then creating a solution that meets those needs. Design thinking is often used in the product design process, but it can also be applied to other areas such as service design, marketing, and even business strategy.

There are many examples of successful products or services that have been created using design thinking. One well-known example is the Apple iPhone. The iPhone was designed with the user in mind, and it has been incredibly successful as a result. Other examples include the Nest thermostat, which was designed to be easy to use and save energy, and the Tesla Model S, which was designed to be an environmentally-friendly car.

Moreover, examples of successful design thinking products, but one that stands out is the Nike & iPod Sport Kit. This product was created through a partnership between Nike and Apple, and it allows users to track their runs using the Nike + app on their iPod. The product has been extremely successful, with over 1 million units sold in the first year. The success of the Nike & iPod Sport Kit shows that there is a demand for products that allow users to track their fitness data, and that partnerships between two companies can result in a successful product.?

Design thinking is a powerful tool that can be used to create successful products or services. If you are looking to create something new, consider using design thinking to help you achieve your goals.

As a process for innovation

A five-phase description of the design innovation process is offered by Plattner, Meinel, and Leifer as: (re)defining the problem, needfinding and benchmarking, ideating, building, and testing. Plattner, Meinel, and Leifer state: "While the stages are simple enough, the adaptive expertise required to choose the right inflection points and appropriate next stage is a high order intellectual activity that requires practice and is learnable."

The process may also be thought of as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps: inspiration, ideation, and implementation. Projects may loop back through inspiration, ideation, and implementation more than once as the team refines its ideas and explores new directions.

1.?????Inspiration

Generally, the design innovation process starts with the inspiration phase: observing how things and people work in the real world and noticing problems or opportunities. These problem formulations can be documented in a brief which includes constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, and a set of objectives to be realized, such as price point, available technology, and market segment.?

2.?????Empathy?

In their book Creative Confidence, Tom and David Kelley note the importance of empathy with clients, users, and customers as a basis for innovative design. Designers approach user research with the goal of understanding their wants and needs, what might make their life easier and more enjoyable and how technology can be useful for them. Empathic design transcends physical ergonomics to include understanding the psychological and emotional needs of people—the way they do things, why and how they think and feel about the world, and what is meaningful to them.

3.?????Ideation: divergent and convergent thinking

Ideation is idea generation. The process is characterized by the alternation of divergent and convergent thinking, typical of design thinking process.

To achieve divergent thinking, it may be important to have a diverse group of people involved in the process. Design teams typically begin with a structured brainstorming process of "thinking outside the box". Convergent thinking, on the other hand, aims for zooming and focusing on the different proposals to select the best choice, which permits continuation of the design thinking process to achieve the final goals.

After collecting and sorting many ideas, a team goes through a process of pattern finding and synthesis in which it has to translate ideas into insights that can lead to solutions or opportunities for change. These might be either visions of new product offerings, or choices among various ways of creating new experiences.

4.????Implementation and prototyping

The third space of the design thinking innovation process is implementation, when the best ideas generated during ideation are turned into something concrete.At the core of the implementation process is prototyping: turning ideas into actual products and services that are then tested, evaluated, iterated, and refined. A prototype, or even a rough mock-up helps to gather feedback and improve the idea. Prototypes can speed up the process of innovation because they allow quick identification of strengths and weaknesses of proposed solutions, and can prompt new ideas.

As a process of designing

An iterative, non-linear process, design thinking includes activities such as context analysis, user testing, problem finding and framing, ideation and solution generating, creative thinking, sketching and drawing, prototyping, and evaluating.

Core features of design thinking include the abilities to:

• Resolve ill-defined or 'wicked' problems
• Adopt solution-focused strategies
• Use abductive and productive reasoning
• Employ non-verbal, graphic/spatial modelling media, for example, sketching and prototyping.

Wicked problems

Designing typically deals with ill-defined problems which are wickedly difficult. Wicked problems have features such as no definitive formulation and no true/false solution. Horst Rittel introduced the term in the context of design and planning, and with Melvin Webber contrasted this problem type with well-defined or "tame" cases where the problem is clear and the solution available through applying rules or technical knowledge.

Problem framing

Rather than accept the problem as given, designers explore the given problem and its context and may re-interpret or restructure the given problem in order to reach a particular framing of the problem that suggests a route to a solution

Solution-focused thinking

In empirical studies of three-dimensional problem solving, Bryan Lawson found architects employed solution-focused cognitive strategies, distinct from the problem-focused strategies of scientists. Nigel Cross suggests that "Designers tend to use solution conjectures as the means of developing their understanding of the problem".

Abductive reasoning

In the creation of new design proposals, designers have to infer possible solutions from the available problem information, their experience, and the use of non-deductive modes of thinking such as the use of analogies. This has been interpreted as a form of Peirce's abductive reasoning, called innovative abduction.

Co-evolution of problem and solution

In the process of designing, the designer's attention typically oscillates between their understanding of the problematic context and their ideas for a solution in a process of co- evolution of problem and solution. New solution ideas can lead to a deeper or alternative understanding of the problematic context, which in turn triggers more solution ideas.

Representations and modelling

Conventionally, designers communicate mostly in visual or object languages to translate abstract requirements into concrete objects. These 'languages' include traditional sketches and drawings but also extend to computer models and physical prototypes. The use of representations and models is closely associated with features of design thinking such as the generation and exploration of tentative solution concepts, the identification of what needs to be known about the developing concept, and the recognition of emergent features and properties within the representations.

Applications

In the 2000s and 2010s there was a significant growth of interest in applying design thinking across a range of diverse applications—for example as a catalyst for gaining competitive advantage within business or for improving education, but doubts around design thinking as a panacea for innovation have been expressed by some critics (see § Criticisms).

1.?????In business

Historically, designers tended to be involved only in the later parts of the process of new product development, focusing their attention on the aesthetics and functionality of products. Many businesses and other organisations now realise the utility of embedding design as a productive asset throughout organisational policies and practices, and design thinking has been used to help many different types of business and social organisations to be more constructive and innovative. Designers bring their methods into business either by taking part themselves from the earliest stages of product and service development processes or by training others to use design methods and to build innovative thinking capabilities within organisations.

2.?????In education

All forms of professional design education can be assumed to be developing design thinking in students, even if only implicitly, but design thinking is also now explicitly taught in general as well as professional education, across all sectors of education. Design as a subject was introduced into secondary schools' educational curricula in the UK in the 1970s, gradually replacing and/or developing from some of the traditional art and craft subjects, and increasingly linked with technology studies. This development sparked related research studies in both education and design.New courses in design thinking have also been introduced at the university level, especially when linked with business and innovation studies. A notable early course of this type was introduced at Stanford University in 2003, the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, known as the d.school.

In the K–12 education sector, design thinking is used to enhance learning and promote creative thinking, teamwork, and student responsibility for learning. A design-based approach to teaching and learning has also developed more widely throughout education. Design thinking can now be seen in International Baccalaureate schools across the world, and in Maker Education organizations.?

3.?????In computer science

Design thinking has been central to user-centered design and human-centered design—the dominant methods of designing human-computer interfaces—for over 40 years. Design thinking is also central to recent conceptions of software development in general.

4.?????Criticisms

Some of the diverse and popularized applications of design thinking, particularly in the business/innovation fields, have been criticized for promoting a very restricted interpretation of design skills and abilities. Lucy Kimbell accused business applications of design thinking of "de-politicizing managerial practice" through an "undertheorized" conception of design thinking. Lee Vinsel suggested that popular purveyors of design consulting "as a reform for all of higher education" misuse ideas from the fields that they purport to borrow from, and devalue discipline-specific expertise, giving students "'creative confidence' without actual capabilities". Natasha Iskander criticized a certain conception of design thinking for reaffirming "the privileged role of the designer" at the expense of the communities that the designer serves, and argued that the concept of "empathy" employed in some formulations of design thinking ignores critical reflection on the way identity and power shape empathetic identification. She claimed that promoting simplified versions of design thinking "makes it hard to solve challenges that are characterized by a high degree of uncertainty—like climate change—where doing things the way we always have done them is a sure recipe for disaster".

Conclusion

The benefits of design thinking are manifold. When we take a human-centered approach to problem-solving, we can create more relevant and effective solutions that address the needs of our customers. We can also develop a deeper understanding of their unarticulated needs and create solutions that are more likely to be successful.