Why I like Design Thinking

Design business has evolved in the last decade or so and is now maturing. Companies like IBM, Whirlpool, GE, and P&G have embraced Design Thinking to become more innovative and customer-centric. A new era of Design Thinking has started where designers with the right mindset and design thinking toolset can innovate with ease. Successful designers will be those that will continue to expand the vertical stroke of their ‘T’ in the future.

UX, CX, XD, and Product Design

I come from an advertising agency background and have seen an evolution in the design process. Thanks to IDEO, last few years have seen a lot of emphasis on Design Thinking, especially within the digital design community. A shift in the traditional creative design strategy paradigm has happened and expanded to include experience design as an important component in business so that communication and channel could function harmoniously in the design of products and services. The design is no longer an afterthought or a mere screen interface. Design thinking has now become part of any good experience design process. 

Design Thinking improves collaboration, performance, team spirit and innovation output from the team. UX, CX, XD, Product Design are terms that are commonly used today, but the underlying specialization is the ability to ‘systematically figure out a design solution’. 

Agency business has evolved

In the last couple of decades, advertising has moved from the traditional targeting of consumers to influencing consumers and their behaviors. A big benefit of digital media is that it allows brands to push content in context and connect with their consumers in multiple ways for as long as possible. More than just awareness, there are opportunities for engagement, storytelling and mapping customer journeys. Brands want to create value and engagement on multiple channels beyond just digital presence. Branding firms, advertising agencies, and technology firms are all looking to improve their delivery by emphasizing on experience design.

Innovation has become important

As a designer, I do not see innovation separate from design. There should not be a different effort to innovate. Innovation is what design should accomplish anyways. The Design Thinking process has enabled organizations to get on board with a structured framework to bring innovation instead of the dated analytical methods in executive boardroom meetings.

Technologies such as mobile and tablet devices, voice devices, virtual reality, social networking, artificial intelligence, chatbots and the Internet of Things have changed the landscape of how we design experiences. There are now shorter and faster iteration cycles for products and service innovations. Competition for talent and market has also become global in scope necessitating innovation.

Everyone is innovative

Design Thinking is simply a process to facilitate innovation. Everyone is today talking about innovation and trying to create teams and processes for competitive advantage or to create new products. This, in my opinion, is a problem, waste of huge investments and hype that fails because of the huge expectations only from a small team. Why should only a specific group be focussed on innovation in an organization? Shouldn’t everyone be doing it?

A mindset change is needed

Innovation sometimes gets treated like a goal-oriented project plan rather than making it a culture in everything being done. The CXO, CDOs CIOs CCOs are pressured to magically create a winning solution. For organizations that have not yet embraced Design Thinking, they end up hiring management consultants and technologists to advice on how to turn around a company. Innovations do not happen by adding people and money in the team. It needs a change in mindset that comes with training and culture change. In traditional large organizations, this is an uphill task because one has to deal with a lot of hierarchies, egos, and traditional processes.

Design profession is shifting

Designers always had and will have a variety of technologies and trend ideas to choose from while creating a design solution. Innovation was never a creation of shiny object but solving a business problem. But today designers are constantly asking how their digital solution improves the value proposition for the customer and differentiate the product in the marketplace. 

Designers have a seat at the table

There is now a recognition of roles such as UX, product design, UX strategy etc in many industry verticals. Designers are no longer benchwarmers and called in only when the business managers have figured out what they want to be designed. Design Thinking is enabling designers to become leaders where they can deconstruct business problems using customer insights, and come up with solutions. Designers are using the Design Thinking approach to create products that affect humans, create market relevance and meaningful results beyond visual aspects. This emphasis on critical thinking has created a stronger economic case for them to have a seat at the business table.

There are now Chief Design Officers and Chief Experience Officer designations within large organizations reporting directly to the CEO. This is a welcome change and the future of design looks bright where designers will become key influencers and more responsible in the company’s success.

Empathy has become a big UX skill

Design Thinking process within the team is successful when there are open communications, ample curiosity and positive outlook within the team. Along with the skills to do analysis, metrics, vision statements, North star mapping etc, understanding human interpersonal topics and behaviors has become very important for designers. Empathy helps empower users with design solutions, improve the quality of communication within teams, build a good rapport with clients and bring inner satisfaction to the designer after figuring it all out.

Empathy improves intuition

Design Thinking is simply a common-sense process of innovating, keeping an open mind and sweetening it up with customer empathy. Designers are learning say no to themselves and clients if clients are demanding innovation for the sake of innovation. These are interesting times where designers need to keep their ear to the ground and look for trends to follow, process, interpret and collect information. The informed intuition helps them create big ideas and transition into a visionary for long term business value for clients.

Design Thinking is inclusive

Design thinking empowers everyone, who normally do not identify as creative to become creative. It allows for collaboration across different skill sets, backgrounds, departments, tenures and thus creates efficiencies that lead to solving complex problems.

Design-led is not designer-led

One of the lessons I learned from Design Thinking is that the design world is much larger than the ‘design community’. As companies are becoming design-centered, it does not mean designers are the boss. Design-led culture in companies can also send a wrong message to everyone else that their insights and contributions will be secondary. This creates fault lines and stresses an organization into believing that they all need to follow a certain preferred point of view. When such conflict arises, it is helpful to take a user-centric perspective, that is independent, specific and intuitive. Here the points of alignments within the team are around users and not what an individual team member likes. Being user-centric brings zero bias in the team and makes team members customer champions that advocate what is best for the customer.

Design is a team sport

A good visual design is useless without code making it a reality and a marketing effort pushing it to people. There are many other people who play an equally important role, like developers, product managers, strategists etc in the success of the design. While working in a team a designer may only be focussed on trying to design something beautiful. A developer might challenge himself to build that idea. A business manager may find it a waste and simply want to get the product out in the market and focus on promotion. Amidst such competing priorities, It is important for designers to become inclusive and not alienate others. Everyone is important in the large scheme of things. Harmony with the team is important for designers to have influence and success in the organization. By being inclusive designers have a better feedback system and gain acceptability. Innovation also happens when the team has people from different departments, skills, and seniorities so that a variety of ideas are brainstormed, challenged, modified and tested.

Design Thinking is about ‘thinking’ too

Humility goes a long way in allowing everyone to be a part of the process. At the end of the day what we are doing is simply making great products that solve real problems. It’s not really about the aesthetics, it’s about the outcome. Design Thinking is not just about design, it is about thinking too. This thinking is the wisdom about business and other contexts in which design functions.

Pros and cons of the process

Creating a design process within a client organization has its advantages. It helps identify opportunities, generates new ideas and new lines of business. It saves money through a systematic process that includes validation of the idea, improving on it, before launching it. Clients can use such Design Thinking to promote innovative thinking within the organization and bring positive energy to the staff.

The process of prototyping and testing with customers to get actionable data brings a huge benefit in acceptability for innovative ideas. There is no longer a leap of faith for organizations to launch ideas.

There is still resistance to change

Design Thinking has empowered and made everyone a design thinker. This change has upset designers still used to working in traditional roles. Today anyone without a design background can run design sprints, create storyboards, journey maps, and sketch ideas. What we forget is that the inclusiveness of design thinking has brought awareness, appreciation for design craft, and made the role of a designer important in solving business challenges. 

Problems with the design process

One of the problems in following the Design Thinking process is rushing to find a solution to a problem given by the client. This is especially true while running design sprints. The teams operate under tremendous pressure to finish it off within five days or least possible time due to time, availability and budget constraints. The mindset shifts from a fresh and focussed mind to a mind that is constantly watching the clock. There is also no stepping back and evaluating if the problem really exists. Sometimes design process can take too much time in some companies. It is time to make it efficient instead of restricting design sprints it to 5 days or less.

User testing on the other hand sometimes focusses on refining the visual solution rather than validating the problem and solution.

The ‘design by committee’ is another common problem in the process. This democratization of design process has diluted the innovation quotient of the solution when the Design Thinking process is not done right. The critics of Design Thinking have rightly pointed it out. However, it can also be seen as a team effort that has openness, ease of communication and allows creative contribution from everyone. The role is a facilitator, his seniority and decision-making authority is very important in running such projects.

Large design teams are tough to manage. When working with a large-sized company, one must try to create a nucleus group of important members from different expertise area and tenure instead of packing with too many people from everywhere in the organization. We should have one person be the driver and owner of the process. This person should have enough authority to take the lead and make decisions.

The right mindset part needs some work

The right mindset and Design Thinking toolset are both needed to successfully innovate. While there are enough Design Thinking tools, there is not much available to bring about the right mindset in the team. If anything is created with the right mindset, it will create a positive effect on the stakeholders and users.

In the last couple of years, I have ventured to create certain frameworks that will help achieve the right frame of mind needed for innovation. I have been experimenting with some clients and team members to see how it can be fine-tuned before tabling it for the community at large.

Mantra for design success

Firstly there is no magic wand for success. Design Thinking is simply a process. 

Ask the right questions

Every client wants to increase market share, scale quickly, and be ahead of its competition. This is a very common goal in any creative brief for a marketing campaign or to build a new product. As design thinkers, we need to be critically looking at why something would and would not work when suggesting a solution. Are the solutions being brainstormed, pushing boundaries and taking enough risks? Is the design team getting regular feedback from customers? Is there a roadmap of product innovation and iterative improvement? Is there enough experimentation in the design process? Is failure, and learning from failure ok for stakeholders in an organization? 

Be willing to get uncomfortable

Being willing to experiment and creating things never done before helps not only our clients but is good for the personal growth of a designer. It is ok to get uncomfortable, to fail, and then get up to succeed the next time. Being vulnerable and accepting it improves creativity in us.

Think more than just ideas

To innovate, designers have to think beyond just ideas. Ideas are easy and plenty available if the customer-centric design thinking process is in place and the team is talented. However developing them, marketing them and creating a loyal customer base is the hard part.

Become human-centered

It is welcoming to see more and more clients rallying behind Design Thinking today. The best innovations happening today are ones that are human-centric where designers have understood customer problems and needs. More clients are today looking at design teams to use valuable customer insights for both product development, and marketing. Ignoring human-centered design thinking methods is simply not possible today.

About the Author:

Himanshu Bharadwaj is a digital creative director in New York and Connecticut area, with expertise in crafting UX/UI designs. You can view his work at Epitomecreative.com. Himanshu’s mailbox is always open if you would like to work together, or just have something interesting to say.