What is Design Thinking?
Khwaja Shaik
IBM CTO ? Digitally-savvy and Cyber-savvy Board Director ? CEO Advisor ? Competent Boards Faculty ? Making Purpose Real Through Board Excellence ? Global Perspective, Digital Transformation, AI, Cybersecurity, ESG Expert
Design Thinking is a strategy making process to create better products, better experiences, and, ultimately, better institutions.
Design thinking is a collection of principles that uses human-centered problem solving approach with users, a discipline of prototyping, and tolerance for failure.
Design Thinking can help you unlock new markets and identify new strategies
Design Thinking is a way of thinking with the following characteristics:
- Utilizes an interdisciplinary and deeply collaborative approach.
- Focuses on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones.
- Eliminates siloed design practices.
- Better understanding of users.
According to Stanford University's d.school, Design Thinking consists of the following five steps:
Empathize - Observe the customer's needs and motivations. Look at all stakeholders in mind.
Define: - Define the problem you want to solve.Useful for resolving extremely complex issues.
Ideate: Come up with a variety of solutions, without judging which are good or bad. Test the ideas out.
Test: Test the models. Bring the new products to life.
Use Case: By defining the core problem, P&G decided to turn around "olay" skin product. P&G was previously targeting specific users of over age 50 who are primarily worried about wrinkles pretty much ignoring wide variety of users with age group of 30s and 40s who has different kinds of issues. So P&G experimented with new formulations that can meet multiple skin care goals. Then tested different prototypes, price points and store displays, Finally P&G launched widely distributed products that were well received by wide range of customers.
Thus Design Thinking is an innovative tool for simplifying and humanizing experiences by embracing risk, tolerating failures and accepting more ambiguity.
Question: Ready to drive innovation by understanding your customers at a deeper level? Have you discovered unexpected opportunities in the marketplace using Design Thinking? Please share your thoughts in the comments section below.
References:
The design thinking transformation in business - By Cathy Wang & Nuno Andrew
Design Thinking comes of age. - By John Kolko
The Explainer: Design Thinking
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ABOUT KHWAJA SHAIK:
Khwaja Shaik is the award-winning global IT Leader with 20+ years of business technology leadership with GE, PwC, IBM and Bank of America. Recognized for Cybersecurity, Innovation, Architecture, Cloud and Large-scale execution, He was instrumental in major IT transformations that have delivered cost reductions, efficiency gains, agility and competitive advantage to Fortune 500 companies. Khwaja holds an MBA (Global Management), Bachelors in Engineering & executive programs. HBR Advisory Council Member, McKinsey Global Institute's Executive Panel Member, University of North Florida's Computing Advisory Board Member, World Affairs Council of Jacksonville Member, Atlantic Institute's Advisory Board Member, "Night of Asia" Advisory board member (2015) and 2014 CIO IT & Security Forum - Speaker.