What is Design Thinking
Design has become a core competitive advantage for those companies who apply it well. However, while Design (capital D) is a recognized profession, complete with PhD’s in the field, the successful application of design thinking (lower case d), as with any business process, is not limited to a select few. Entrepreneurs, CEO’s, politicians, social activists, have all adopted Design Thinking to address their wicked problems. Design Thinking can be applied to solve the most wicked problems and when combined with Design those truly elegant and market redefining products can be created.
So how do you know if you have a "wicked problem"? According to Jennifer Riel, associate director of the Desautels Centre, you know you have a wicked problem if:
- The causes of the problem are not just complex but deeply ambiguous; you can’t tell why things are happening the way they or what's causing it to be so.
- The problem doesn’t fit neatly into any category you’ve encountered before; it looks and feels entirely unique, so the problem-solving approaches you’ve used in the past don’t seem to apply.
- Each attempt at devising a solution changes the understanding of the problem; merely attempting to come to a solution changes the problem and how you think about it.
- There is no clear stopping rule; it is difficult to tell when the problem is “solved” and what that solution may look like when you reach it.
- In order to solve a wicked problem, you must get at the nature of the problem itself, and the way to get at the nature of the problem is through design thinking.
So why have people come to recognize Design Thinking's potential in addressing these types of problems? Businesses have long valued the capacity to measure and mark improvements in a predictable and controlled manner however innovation is neither, yet it is the lifeblood of organizations. Design Thinking has demonstrated an ability to help anyone achieve quality innovations by giving them, and their organizations, the ability to:
- Deeply understand the customer; their environment, goals, motivations, behaviors and outlooks
- Take risks & eliminate fear of failure from the earliest stages
- Challenges a product or service’s usability, feasibility and desirability; in short its perceived value
- Support the build-up of ideas and outside-the-box thinking
- To make their ideas tangible allowing them to engage customers and stakeholders early in the cycle to gain immediate feedback
Following the basic principles of observation, understanding and prototyping, applied in a rapid, cyclical manner, teams are able to quickly gain new insights and test both their understanding and proposed solutions. However it is important to remember that Design thinking is not design. Thinking like a designer doesn't make you a designer. While you will be able to solve wicked business or societal or organizational problems, you will still likely need the skills of a designer to create those elegant, iconic artifacts that embody the innovation.
Its important to understand that Design thinking is not a step-by-step process; rather it is four sets of overlapping problem solving tools. Tim Brown, in Change by Design, explains, “many people outside professional design have a natural aptitude for design thinking, which the right development and experiences can unlock.” Brown lists the characteristics of a design thinker as:
- Empathy – They can put themselves in other’s shoes and are focused on end-user goals rather than business, technology or aesthetic ones.
- Integrative thinking – “They not only rely on analytical processes (those that produce either/or choices) but also exhibit the ability to see all of the salient – and sometimes contradictory – aspects of a confounding problem and create novel solutions that go beyond and dramatically improve on existing alternatives.”
- Optimism – They are convinced there’s a solution to be found for every problem.
- Experimentalism – Design thinkers pose questions to find new directions and open up unseen areas.
- Collaboration – Design thinking is a collaborative effort that brings people together with a wide range of disciplines, skills and knowledge. Marketers, psychologists, industrial designers, anthropologists and engineers all might be recruited to work alongside each other.
The application of Design Thinking is not linear, that is the team will cycle through the different areas iteratively as they go deeper into the problem and refine their solution. Unlike the hand-offs in traditional waterfall models, since all the members of the team are participating from the inception, Design Thinking team can move fluidly back and forth between the components without jeopardizing their project’s timeline. The diagram below may help explain the nature of the relationship between the various aspects of Design Thinking.
Begin by defining the design challenge, that is the problem you are attempting to solve. Then collect the people, ideally from multiple backgrounds and disciplines to begin working with stakeholders to try and get a better understanding of just how wicked your problem is. This ensures that even for the most challenging problems the team is able to take into account changing conditions and expectations of stakeholders to identify, scope, and frame the problem for maximum success. At times it might be necessary throughout the project lifecycle to reframe the problem based on the team's learning's in order to achieve greater success for the project, making the definition of the Design Challenge an on-going activity within the project.
Design Thinking takes a holistic approach to problem solving and champions the use of 360° Analysis to explore all relevant influences. In addition to the understanding business and technological parameters, Design Thinking commonly looks at external market influences, physical environments, adjacent business contexts, the human, social and organizational constraints, etc. As with the other aspects of Design Thinking this analysis is continual. Whether it is researching customers or validating prototypes, or keeping a vigilant eye on the changing organizational societal or market demands, Design Thinking provides a framework for the team to constantly and efficiently assess their efforts ensuring alignment and acceptance of the solution.
Synthesis provides the team and its stakeholders the ability to generate both opportunity insights and actionable ideas and to create alternative responses to these business opportunities for the organization. In addition to identifying how to potentially improve the problem condition, Synthesis generates a framework for prioritizing and selecting the best ideas. There are many methods for turning insight into action, the goal of Synthesis is for the multi-disciplinary team to organize their research, create actionable insights, define design principles and generate alternative solutions. In addition to developing the ideas to improve the execution of the problem this section will also show you how to effectively select those ideas that best solve the problem based on user needs, business opportunities and practical feasibility.
The mantra of Design Thinking is “make to think”. Prototyping is fundamental to Design Thinking. Rapidly iterate on prototypes, evaluate proposed solutions, gather feedback about them, and refine solution by incorporating feedback, accepting and learning from failures. Design Thinking is a continual process of iteration and refinement, building and validating prototypes in order to continually insure the design challenge will deliver value to the customer and the organization. Prototypes provide teams with the ability rapidly develop multiple solutions and how to use them to align the organization around the implications for each alternative. This section will provide you with the tools and methods for rapidly building a range of prototypes and the ability to select what type of prototype, from simple paper prototypes to complex functional systems; best meets the team’s goals. It will also give you the means for gathering feedback and refine prototypes. As well as the how to best accept and learn from the team's failures—not all the prototypes the team builds will work. But even failures provide insight and value!
It should be noted that different pundits of Design Thinking use different terms and even different models, some branded or trademarked, in an effort to equally explain how Design Thinking works and promote their own services. The above model was developed over two decades of reflection and research into Design Thinking and has been refined to try and provide clarity and simplicity.
