What is design thinking and how does it work?
What is design thinking?
Design thinking, which is also often referred to as Human Centered Design or User Centered Design, is a creative problem solving concept popularized by IDEO and Stanford University’s D School. It is a strategy that calls on a designer, innovator, artist, scientist, engineer or human to utilize deep empathy in order to understand their users and design to improve the lived experience of those users. By “improve the lived experience” I mean that designers who implement this process are often trying to solve a specific user problem rather than solve all of their problems. For example, I mention OXO products at the end of this article — OXO’s designers set out to make a can opener that would be easier for a person with arthritis to use, they didn’t set out to cure arthritis.
Products designed with design thinking have three key characteristics. They are:
- Technologically feasible — they can be developed into functional products or services
- Radically affordable — the users and customers being designed for can easily afford them
- Useful — they solve an actual user need and improve quality of life
Human-centered design is in contrast to designer-centered design, in which a company, organization, or person designs a product or service that they think their users need or want, rather than understanding what their users actually need or want. Now — designer-centered design can be incredibly effective and sometimes works out really well. But it doesn’t lead to the products that change the world.
What is empathy?
Dan Roam, bestselling author of Back of the Napkin, defines empathy as recognizing the gaps in our knowledge. Rather than wondering “How can I relate?”, empathy is wondering “What else can I learn about or from this?”
The first step to acting with empathy is listening. Listening with empathy means listening with openness and allowing space for whatever your user, client, or whoever is on the other end of your conversation has to express.
Empathy is not necessarily an inherent trait. While some people tend to be more empathetic than others, you can develop your empathy by practicing — just like with any other skill. One way to practice empathy is by creating empathy maps. Another is by participating in any conversation happening around you and challenging yourself to do nothing but listen and learn without attempting to insert your own thoughts, opinions, or experiences. You will be forced to let go of your ego and focus on the person talking — this, in essence, is empathy.
How do I know who my user is?
Your user is whoever is utilizing or benefitting most from your product. Your user might be different from your customer, who is the person actually paying for your product.
Your user is at the center of the entire design process. A true design thinking process begins with the user — you decide who you want to design for and then learn as much as you possibly can about them. Everything else comes from what they tell you, not from what you want to design or what you think they need.
The design thinking process
It is important to note that the design thinking process is not linear. While it is important to eventually accomplish each of these steps, they are all interconnected and at each step it can (and often is) necessary to go back to a previous step and continue working through the process.
Empathize —the first and foundational stage of design thinking is empathizing with users. The essence of this step is to first define your user (remember, your user might not be your customer!) and then get to know them as well as you possibly can. This is most effectively accomplished through in-person interviews full of open-ended questions in which a designer can put aside their assumptions and collect information in a way that makes their user feel heard. Once we collect as much information as we can, we can begin to aggregate what we find by tracing similar themes throughout. For example, we might find that our particular set of users all share a love for organization, soft drinks, or exercise, or that they all struggle with getting to work, finding childcare, or managing their diabetes.
Define — during the define stage, all of the information collected during the empathy stage comes together to present a clearer picture of the problem. It is vital that our empathy and user-centered approach remain consistent throughout this stage. In design thinking, this is most often achieved by defining the problem using a How Might We (HMW) statement. A HMW statement asks “How might we use [something our users have an abundance of] to solve the problem of [something our users struggle with]?”
Ideate — once we have our problem defined, we can begin brainstorming radical solutions. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ideation techniques — I’ll go over some of my favorites in another post — but the idea here is to come up with as many potential ideas and solutions as possible.
Prototype — prototyping consists of developing multiple low-budget, scaled-down versions of one or more solutions in order to test their effectiveness. Prototyping can look different depending on a design team’s time or budget constraints, but the goal is to come out of it with one or a couple of prototypes that can be tested with users.
Test —once a prototype (or prototypes) is finalized, a design team invites users to test it rigorously in order to learn about its benefits, drawbacks, and limitations. This is technically the final stage of the design thinking process, however — this process is iterative which means that, instead of stopping here, designers take the insights they get from testing to go back in the process and continue iterating.
The design thinking process is never really over — even once a product is rolled out, it can always be considered part of the testing phase and designers can (and often should) continue iterating on it forever. In cases where a product has to be rolled out and a team doesn’t have the resources to continue iterating, designers move through the process repeatedly until they have a product they feel confident meets their expectations during testing, then implement it.
A couple of my favorite examples of Design Thinking:
- OXO — your favorite kitchen products were initially designed when founder Sam Farber watched his wife, who had arthritis, struggle with her can opener. He designed a new product with her in mind at every stage and he didn’t set out to cure her arthritis, just to make her lived experience a little better. And in doing so, he created a product that is almost universally loved. The OXO swivel peeler was inducted into MoMA’s permanent collection in 1994 and even today, nearly three decades later, maintains a 4.8/5 star rating on Amazon and still costs less than $10.
- Guerilla Marketing — learn about a war propaganda campaign developed in Colombia on the This American Life podcast. This is such a cool one with major real-life implications. It touches on so many design thinking concepts, including the power of pivoting.
- AirBnB — AirBnB was a step away from bankruptcy when their team decided they needed to try something different and implemented a design thinking approach to improving their product. You already know how well that turned out for them.
Where can I learn more about Design Thinking?
Some of my favorite resources include:
Sources
- IDEO U — https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/what-is-design-thinking
- Interaction Design Foundation — https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular
- FastCompany — https://www.fastcompany.com/90239156/the-untold-story-of-the-vegetable-peeler-that-changed-the-world
- Professor Abby Fifer Mandell, USC Brittingham Social Enterprise Lab
