Design Thinking is an innovation tool. It helps us think outside of the status quo against human biases and behavioral norms to solve problems. Being a structured tool it helps managers to innovate in an organized manner.  We’ll look into the methodology of how this tool operates. Furthermore, we’ll delve into its implementation through various tools.

Why design thinking works?

Design Thinking allows its users to challenge assumptions and tackle unknown problems. A framework with clearly defined stages helps us achieve this. The entire process is human-centric with special focus on the stakeholders. The human centricity of the process makes it increasingly relevant among designers.

The tools and the thought process required for problem-solving through design thinking is well researched and learnable. They are used to tackle wicked problems, restructuring of thought processes, and solution-focused thinking. This enables the further evolution of the problem-solving process in our brains generating better ideas.

Diversity of thoughts is essential in the business world. Our brains are caught up in the conventional ways offering little or no leeway for innovation and subsequently, growth is affected. Managers and designers can leverage the hands-on tools available through regular practice and implementation of problem-solving through design thinking.

The methods employed in design thinking have been evolving continuously for the past 70 years. Industry implementations have given us ways for both incremental innovations through higher performance and radical innovation through novel functionality. Most forward-thinking and leading firms have created design thinking workplaces. They aim to solve the intractable problems and design solutions using the innovation tools at their disposal.

The model of Design Thinking

Design thinking offers a series of tools, stages, or phases to tackle problems. These stages have multiple variants of 3 to 7 steps depending on the organization. These steps essentially built on the principles as proposed by Noble Laureate Herbert Simon who first proposed the idea in 1969. Further elaboration of the process is a result of extensive research into design thinking. Here we describe all the 7 stages in order to offer a detailed understanding:

1. Business Hypothesis: In this first step, we understand where the problem lies and what are the current solutions. We further explore the business implications and how this is affecting our business. We further implore all factors around the hypothesis to get a holistic view of our problem statement.
2. Customer perspective: This is an important step to empathize with our customer who is the major stakeholder. We understand our customers and identify their key problems and create personas. Additionally, we map our hypothesis and see how it fits the user problems. Identification of the right customers and asking the right questions is important here.
3. Design Challenge: Here we target to get to the bottom of the problem through the insights gathered through the previous stages. Identification of the root cause of the problem and prioritizing them is done. We make sure that the problems are relevant for the customers and for the business goals’ fulfillment.
4. Ideation: In ideation, we think of multiple solutions and prioritize them. We need to understand the complexity of the solution and the difficulty to implement them. We get to the best solution which would help us in tackling our business hypothesis.
5. Prototyping: Here, we bring the solution to life in order for the customer to experience it. Understanding the tools required for implementation and how we’ll accomplish that is important. Generally, scaled-down versions using MVPS, wireframes, and other prototyping tools could be used.
6. Testing: Testing involves putting the prototypes created in the previous step to test. Probable ways to improve the product are figured out and we analyze how our solution is faring. We gather insights (through defined metrics) and see if our experiment can help us achieve a validated product. We make all alterations and refinements in this step.
7. Impact delivery: The final step is pivotal wherein we ensure proper implementation of the solution with the future impact in mind. We look at varied perspectives on how our new solution implementation affects the current product and its ecosystem. Further, the team plans the achievement of future goals and maintenance.

Impact of Design Thinking and applications

The above methodology makes design thinking a highly recommended tool for all business spheres and creative centers. It has found applications in tackling problems for poor and vulnerable communities, education systems globally, software applications, advanced technologies like Artificial Intelligence and machine learning, and healthcare. Moreover, it has found utility in various effective management techniques.

Design thinking can help build innovation within workplace cultures, citizen-centeredness, and customer empathy. For this, implementation and practice is the key. At ProductRound, we aim to help you acquire the necessary skillset through advanced toolkits so that you can apply design thinking and tackle all problems from personal efficiency to professional brilliance through design thinking.

Learn more about Design Thinking (out links):

• New applications of design thinking from IDEO. https://designthinking.ideo.com/new-applications
• History of design thinking: https://designthinking.ideo.com/history
• Why design thinking works: https://hbr.org/2018/09/why-design-thinking-works