Design (out of the box) thinking

Design thinking is an approach to find solutions to creative problems. It always has a human centric core. Hence design thinking is considered a good approach to innovations that suits customer needs. In another way, I call design thinking as way to find and define a real world problem and the most innovative solution from it, through multiple iterations.

Design thinking approach has five stages to arrive at solution. It can have multiple iteration over those five steps to come out at an optimum solution

1. Empathize- Most critical stage of design thinking, as this is the one that helps to understand the needs of a user. User or a set of users will be interviewed to know about what they need. Key change from many other approach is that the real world, human centric problem is understood directly from the potential users than business driving the change.
2. Define- with the understanding of user needs from empathizing phase, a problem is defined. This the input for teams to come up with solutions. Defining may not be just about capturing what users communicated. It may have a few things in addition to the direct problems. So it is the user inputs plus insights on emotional and phycological needs that helps defining creative problem definitions.
3. Ideate — Problem definition is used to ideate towards innovative solutions. Purpose of this phase is not to come up with one solution; it is to find many solutions. A diverse set of people may get involved to think out of box and come up with solutions. At the end of this phase a number of solutions are listed out.
4. Prototype-With the ideas evolved, prototypes or minimum working samples are made. Of many prototypes, some of the practical difficulties are understood and the common approaches also can be assumed.
5. Test- prototypes are reviewed to find out the best solution to be give to customers. Multiple reviews and testing may be done.

To understand better on these stages, lets take an example of creating a web page for registering a marathon event.

Empathize — needs are understood carefully. More than what users say directly are understood. For eg many of the end users may refer the event to others over text messages on cell phone.

Define- user needs a page that supports event registration, fee payment etc. Page must be usable on mobile phones with option to share about the event as text message. Page must not take much time to load.

Ideate- many design ideas are formed. How the page layout looks like, approaches to load page and prevent information loss over slow connection, different payment options to align, more options to share event info through other messaging platforms and social media, help and faqs etc

Prototype-different prototypes are made out of the idea.

Test-Reviews on different prototypes gets evaluated. Optimal solution will be chosen, keeping in mind that always the most customer centric , out of the box, and most delightful experience is delivered.

When the actual needs are not covered, or better suggestions are found, all the five stages are iterated many times till a perfect solution is achieved, that exceeds user expectations.

Design thinking can be applied to many areas like engineering, business, architecture and many more. Design thinking helps organizations come up with innovative solutions and get more happy customers, as they are provided with more practical solutions.

Design thinking with agile development provides opportunities for iterative build and test, where quick feedback is obtained on prototypes and refinement can happen on the minimum shippable product released during smaller iterations.