What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving approach that involves empathizing with users, creatively generating ideas, prototyping solutions, and continuously iterating to find effective and innovative solutions.

Design thinking finds applications across diverse fields, from product development to business strategy and beyond. For example, in product design, Apple's iPhone resulted from empathizing with users' desire for an intuitive and aesthetically pleasing smartphone.

Naturally, design thinking is integral to UX/UI design. For instance, in creating a website, following design thinking practices can help create an intuitive interface and an engaging user experience.

How did the concept of design thinking originate and evolve to its current state?

• 1970s-1980s: Influential writings by Ken Garland's First Things First Manifesto and Victor Papanek's Design for the Real World emphasized the need for design to address real-world problems.
• 1978: IDEO began practicing human-centered design with a focus on empathy, optimism, iteration, and creative confidence. Even before this, works like Don Koberg's The Universal Traveler (1971) and George Nelson's How to See (1977) set the stage for this mode of thought.
• 1992: Richard Buchanan introduced the challenge of applying design to "wicked problems," or complex and ambiguous challenges, shaping the ongoing evolution of design thinking.
• Early 2000s: Design thinking gained recognition as a problem-solving approach, with IDEO adopting the term to describe its principles.
• 21st century: Design thinking expanded into various industries, becoming a widely recognized problem-solving approach requiring ongoing refinement to maintain its integrity.^[1]

Design thinking offers unique benefits compared to traditional thinking by prioritizing desirability, customer needs, and creativity. In comparison to traditional methods that often prioritize viability and feasibility, design thinking begins with desirability — putting customer needs at the forefront.

For example, when developing a new mobile app, a traditional approach might focus on technical feasibility and market viability. In contrast, design thinking would start by deeply understanding user preferences, ensuring the final product not only meets functional requirements but also resonates with users, leading to a more user-centric and innovative solution.

This emphasis on desirability enhances the likelihood of creating products or services that truly meet the needs and preferences of the end-users.

In its essence, design thinking can be condensed into 5 principles:

• Idea generation: The process kicks off by generating a plethora of ideas, and fostering a creative environment to discover the most viable solution.
• Collaboration: Design thinking thrives on diverse collaboration, bringing together varied perspectives and ideas to spark innovation.
• Experiments: It involves implementing ideas on a small scale, testing their viability, and refining them based on visible flaws until the desired result is achieved.
• Process awareness: A conscious and attentive approach to the project's stages is vital for developing a holistic vision, helping to determine the ultimate goal.
• Call to action: Design thinking is practical. It involves less speculation and more concrete steps, such as field research and focus group communication, ensuring ideas and prototypes are tested in real conditions to minimize the risk of future failures.

Despite its proven effectiveness, design thinking faces these common misconceptions:

• Measurement myth: It's a myth that design thinking's impact can't be measured. Metrics like user satisfaction, prototype success, time-to-market, and innovation rates provide clear, measurable insights.
• Results myth: Some say design thinking doesn't deliver. That's not true. Its iterative nature drives creative solutions, meets user needs, and continually improves products, leading to tangible success.
• Growth myth: Contrary to some beliefs, design thinking significantly drives growth. It boosts customer satisfaction, sparks innovation, and elevates user experiences, fueling business expansion.
• Risk myth: While design thinking involves experimentation, it's not overly risky. Its step-by-step approach, with constant refining and testing, effectively manages and minimizes risks.^[2]

In the initial empathy step of design thinking, designers really get to know users by interviewing them, watching how they act, or studying their online behavior. This deep dive helps them find out what users need and want, even things users might not say directly.

Take Netflix, for example. They were great at understanding their users. They saw how people were tired of going to DVD rental stores, so they started a home delivery service. Then, seeing how people's habits were changing, they switched to streaming movies and shows online. They keep making changes, like adding their own shows and improving their website, showing they still pay close attention to what users want.

Simply put, being empathetic in design thinking means really understanding what users are thinking and feeling, so you can make products that truly fit into their lives and keep getting better as their needs change.

In the define stage of design thinking, the goal is to articulate the problem clearly based on the insights gained from the empathy stage. This involves synthesizing information, identifying patterns, and framing the problem in a way that sets the direction for creative solutions.

For a healthcare app design project, the empathize stage may reveal that patients find it challenging to navigate through a hospital app’s complex UI. In the define stage, this issue is articulated as the main problem: "Improving the navigational experience for patients within the hospital app." This well-defined problem statement serves as a guide for the subsequent stages of ideation, prototyping, and testing.

During the Ideation stage, diverse ideas are generated to address the defined problem in a creative and collaborative manner. The aim is to think broadly and encourage a wide range of potential solutions, involving activities such as brainstorming sessions and ideation workshops to spark creativity.

Most importantly, this stage welcomes all ideas, even unconventional ones, fostering a relaxed atmosphere that values creativity over judgment. Participants are encouraged to share freely, creating an environment where innovative and unexpected solutions can emerge by exploring a wide range of possibilities without constraint.

In the prototype stage, rough representations of selected ideas are created to visualize and test potential solutions. These can range from low-fidelity sketches to more refined models or digital mock-ups. Prototyping allows designers to gather feedback and iterate on solutions before investing significant resources. They can be tested within the team or with a small pilot group of users. Based on their feedback, the final list of solutions can be arrived at.

In the testing stage, the prototyped ideas are tested with a broader user audience. Feedback from users during this stage informs any final adjustments and ensures that the end product aligns with user needs and expectations. This is when we start turning the design into something real and see how it works in real life.

Even though we talk about these stages one by one, remember that design thinking is a non-linear process. The iterative approach allows designers to go back and change things based on new feedback or ideas. This flexibility ensures continuous improvement and innovation throughout the design journey.