Design thinking is a customer-focused, non-linear iterative approach to solving problems and finding creative solutions in the process of creating a human-centered intuitive design for a product. It involves cross-functional teams working together to study their users, address complex problems and think outside the box to drive innovation. Let's discuss the stages, principles and goals of this important process, as well as the positive impact it has on the design teams.
Stages of design thinking
Design thinking is a non-linear process, which means each team can organize it in the way most suitable for their current workflow. Nevertheless, experts define 5 stages that design thinking should include, not necessarily in the following order.
Research. User research is the number one way to peek into the users' minds and realize what exactly they expect and need from the product. It's important to use empathy here and set research data higher than your own points of view.
Defining problems. Having obtained the research information, the team analyzes it to define the problems. To keep the process customer-focused, the team can create user personas to refer to.
Brainstorming. When the problems are defined, it's time to brainstorm ideas to find the most useful, creative and innovative solutions.
Prototyping. Creating various prototypes of the product helps filter out all the solutions drafted at the brainstorming phase and identify the best ones that should be implemented.
Testing. Users are involved in testing the prototypes to get a real picture of whether the chosen solutions fulfill their expectations or not.
All these stages can be repeated an unlimited amount of time, in parallel or separately, depending on the circumstances of the given working process.
Goals of design thinking
Apart from the specific goals depending on each particular project, design thinking serves the following 3 general common goals:
User needs satisfaction. The primary goal of design thinking is to make the product as human-oriented and customer-focused as possible. User research and empathy are two main tools that help achieve that.
Technological feasibility. When brainstorming, teams can offer absolutely any types of solutions, the more creative and innovative, the better. Nevertheless, on the evaluation stage it is time to decide whether any given solution is financially and technically worthy and possible to implement. No matter how innovative in theory, no solution should slow down the product’s loading speed or make user experience worse in any other way. In some cases, the desire to implement a solution might serve as a push for the company to upgrade its machinery or human resources.
Profitability. Any product should bring profit to its creator company, whether it is a financial one or of any other sort (i.e. recognition,etc.). Even though design thinking puts the other two goals higher, all the solutions that have passed the user satisfaction and feasibility points should be also checked on whether they're profitable.
Principles of design thinking
Being a creative and non-linear process, design thinking can take various forms and doesn't have strict rules, but it still has a number of principles that should be followed to conduct it correctly.
Empathy. Empathy is a tool that helps team members put users' needs, expectations and vision above their own assumptions about how the product should look and function.
Collaboration. Design thinking sessions are effective only when conducted in teams, which leads to an outburst of creativity and ideas from different perspectives.
Confidence. One of the primary goals of design thinking is to boost creativity and push the limits, which is only possible to reach if the team is confident in what they're doing.
Flexibility. In design thinking, being flexible means being able to experiment and accept imperfections instead of expecting every solution to turn out to be successful. It also involves being able to look at any problem from different angles, moving away from familiar patterns and assumptions.
Diversity. The more diverse the team is, the more interesting and unique ideas might be brought to the table.
Clarity. For everyone to grasp each other's ideas correctly, it is vital to present them as clearly as possible. A great way to do that is to use sketching or other forms of visual representation other than just verbal.
Action. Any ideas, no matter how perfect in theory, must be tried out in action to evaluate their potential and usefulness.
Positive impact of design thinking on design teams
Apart from all the above‑mentioned goals, design thinking serves one more purpose that is less obvious but no less important: building stronger connections in the design team.
Finding common ground. Communication often becomes one of the main issues in design teams, especially when the team is full of professionals from different fields and they struggle to find a common ground when trying to share their vision with each other. Design thinking sessions involve a lot of brainstorming and doing exercises that involve a lot of discussion, which helps find common ground and develop a shared vocabulary.
Creating visuals. Another part of design thinking is constantly creating various maps, storyboards, presentations, etc. to help visualize ideas. Working together on creating common visuals makes team members feel more connected and provides a feeling of fruitful collaboration.
Equality. The majority of working processes often require a hierarchical approach, where the vision of team leaders carry more weight. Design thinking, on the contrary, gives everyone an opportunity to share their ideas equally. In some cases, ideas are being shared anonymously in a written form, which erases the boundaries even more.
How to launch design thinking session for a team
In order to facilitate design thinking in the team, you have to take a few preparational steps and make the team members familiar with the rules and peculiarities of the process.
Explain what design thinking is. Gather your team and give them a brief explanation of what designthinking is. You can use articles, presentations, books, or just tell in your own words. Mention the stages, rules and goals of this process.
Break the obstacles. The concept of design thinking might seem a bit chaotic for those who've never tried it, so there is a chance team members might greet this idea with mistrust. Here you should define which exactly obstacles need to be broken to start the process — maybe your team needs to learn more about its benefits or be reassured it won't slow down the whole working process.
Start with small creative exercises. To launch a design thinking session, start with small exercises to get your team into the creative mood. For example, you can practice group storytelling on any topic, or play games that train visualization skills. When the team starts feeling more confident in sharing their thoughts and expressing creativity, it's time to move on to an actual process.
Conclusion
Design thinking is an extremely useful method that can help solve complex problems related to the user experience of various products. It involves typical UX stages like user research, brainstorming, prototyping and testing, but without strict rules or a sequential order of actions. Its main goal is to break out of familiar patterns and find new solutions that are creative, useful and innovative. It also promotes putting aside any assumptions and looking at the product from users' perspective to make it as customer-oriented as possible.
