Synthesis Introduction

Throughout a Design Thinking project, the team will generate a large and diverse data set that will fuel your insights, ideas and innovations. Team will need a project space, whether it is physical or virtual, where they can house their discoveries and later their design concepts, prototypes and collect feedback on their solutions.

There are two objectives of Synthesis; first to identify and leverage the information most relevant to the current design challenge and second to use the connections between emergent patterns to inspire generative concept development. But the key to a successful Synthesis is to keep an Open Mind.

There will likely be a strong desire by team members to share their individual discoveries—don’t under estimate the excitement coming from a 360° Analysis, but first the team needs to step back and, consider what everyone learned during the 360° Analysis, and ask the simple question; does everyone still believes the team is trying to solve the right problem? This is an important gut check. If there is a better problem to solve, a different way to frame the opportunity, or if the assumed problem isn’t really a problem now is the time acknowledge it. The reason for asking this simple question before the team starts generating solutions is that its easier—and far more cost effective to redefine the Design Challenge at this stage than to face the inevitable truth later. Keeping in mind, there is nothing gained with the right solution to the wrong problem.



The Power of Storytelling

Assuming the team agrees the Design Challenge is still valid, the next step will be to visualize and organize the information you have collected. (If they feel they need to realign or even redefine the project direction, it might be necessary to iterate on the Design Challenge and 360° Analysis phases of the process.)

However the reports, photos, video, diagrams, notes—even books and websites, will not contain the most important information; how these items are critical to solving the Design Challenge. This information will be in the heads of the people who collected these artifacts. The easiest way to extract this information is to have the team tell the story of the items they have gathered during the 360° Analysis.

Using the project space the team should gather together and in a “round robin” format recount their discoveries for the team. Others on the team can build on the narrative by sharing their related experiences, discoveries, or simply listen and make notes but everyone should be encouraged to ask clarifying questions. In this manner the team can review, organize and prioritize the information they have collected, focusing on why each discovery is relevant to the Design Challenge.

Allowing the team to share their learning’s, insights, and stories with each other will not only allow you to capture this knowledge but it will also allow the collective team to vet each item and agree on its relative importance to the Design Challenge. Keep in mind not all the discoveries from the 360° Analysis will be important to solving the Design Challenge, likewise some discoveries might be contradictory to others. The team will need to collectively sort the “wheat from the chaff”.


Building Patterns

It is important when working with a multi-disciplinary team to take advantage of the various points of view and to use the different domains to understand the significance of the team’s discoveries, this is most evident when the team begins to identify the patterns from information gathered in the 360° Analysis.

Using the project space the team should cluster the stories, photos, print-outs—all their collected artifacts, as well as their annotations, notes, sketches, sense-making diagrams, etc. The goal is to create an immersive visualization of all the team’s discoveries. To an outsider this space will look chaotic but to the team it should be familiar and provide rich mnemonics for their process. This shared space will allow team members to recognize, discuss, explore and prioritize the various emergent patterns relative to the Design Challenge.

While it will be tempting to house the team’s discoveries in a database or spreadsheet, given the nature of human perception and the limited capability of these—it is recommended to only use databases and spreadsheets to archive the discoveries for reuse in later efforts.


Connections

In effect the team will have build a map of the problem space, within that map will be the various approaches the team could use for solving the Design Challenge. Based on the natural features of the problem landscape, the team can begin to chart a series of connections and interdependencies between the constituent parts of the Design Challenge. Be it people, roles, tasks, social or cultural norms, the physical settings, technologies, materials or demographic and economic considerations, the important characteristics of the problem will emerge—along with new insights and opportunities for innovation.

Additionally the affinities and dependencies connecting these characteristics will also become apparent; changing one will in turn change the others for better or worst. The process of Synthesis not only focuses on understanding the problem but also the influencers and inherent causalities within the problem space. Using these connections to the team’s advantage will be critical to ensuring the eventual success of the Design Challenge.


Design Principles

Creativity requires constraints. The final deliverable from Synthesis—Design Principles—provides team such constraints. Design Principles summarize the key criteria for success, encompassing what the solution must and must not provide for all the stakeholders. These principles can include criteria for the long-term impact of the solution, including the financial, environmental and organizational considerations. Design Principles can outline the discovery, adoption and deployment of the solution by the users. In short Design Principles are the shared values between the team, their organization and the people who will use their solution.

Being defined before the team develops their prototypes, Design Principles align the team and the organization on the project’s success criteria—if all the Design Principles are achieved the solution is successful. Concepts achieving greater completion against the Design Principles are better solutions.

Multidisciplinary teams often face the challenge of agreeing upon what success means—often deferring to their individual professions for the criteria. Design Thinking defines success based on user needs, business opportunities and the practicality of the proposed solution. Design Principles are especially valuable for distributed teams. A shared set of Design Principles enables the entire team stay focused on the Design Challenge ensuring they select and develop those ideas that best solve the problem.

The granularity of the Design Principles depends on the Design Challenge. However these principles should never define the solution or be allowed to validate an existing solution as the right answer. Design Principles should inspire, direct and help the team explore potential innovations. Design Principles provide the team with structure, establishing boundaries and success metrics for the team’s innovations. In effect putting rails on their efforts.


Syndication

There are many methods for turning insight into action, Synthesis allows multi-disciplinary teams to organize their research, create actionable insights, and begin to develop innovations. The final step of Synthesis is to Syndicate your discoveries, insights and Design Principles with your key stakeholders. Returning to initial alignment in the Design Challenge, the team circles back with the key stakeholders, and related projects to identify and clarify any interdependencies. This cross-organizational coordination ensures the team gains the consensus and sets expectations regarding the project’s eventual outcomes. This also provides the team the ability to both share their discoveries and potentially learn from the Design Thinking efforts of their colleagues from other teams.

The Synthesis mode of Design Thinking provides tools and activities to:

• Make sense of the research a team has collected
• Organize research, looking for patterns and themes
• Uncover non obvious but important facts
• Derive actionable insights
• Craft Design Principles to inform subsequent work

• Plan for Successful Synthesis Outcomes
• Create Meaning from Research
• Derive Insights
• Craft Design Principles
• Successfully Syndicate Design Principles