Recently, I took a deep dive in learning more about the design thinking process and now I am going to explain it to those who do not know what it is.
What is Design Thinking?
In its fundamentals, design thinking is a system used to create projects and products whilst mainly keeping the user's needs in mind.
It relies on an experimental and non-linear system. This means that prototypes are quickly built to test ideas and learn from the faliures. This process is also not a strict sequence and most of the time you will find yourself jumping between the steps rather than going in a defined order.
Thought the design thinking process, the user's needs are kept forefront of the mind and deeply understanding their wants, need, behaviours and pain points.
There are two main phases.
The first is finding the problem(empathy, define).
And the second is solving it(ideate, prototype, test).
Design thinking also involves 'How might we...?' questions. Some examples of these include:
How might we better evaluate and measure employee output other than time?
How might we help employees feel connected to the mission and goals of the organization?
How might we increase collabration accross teams?
How might we redesign our space to better fit the needs of the various unique indivituals at our company?
How might we redesign the meeting experience to make it feel like the most productive time of the day?
While these examples mainly center around company and work related topics, design thinking can be applied to any field, aspect or theme.
Mindset
Before starting to get into design thinking, you must first need to get into the mindset of a design thinker.
Many designers have assumptions which need to be let go in order to shift perspective and understand the user's sight on things. One way to do this is to write an 'Assumption Storm', a bit like a brainstorm exept you are writing every assumption you have about the user and what you think will benefit them. This helps you create an open mind for new opportunities and ideas. You would also want to put yourself in the shoes of the user and think like a child, questioning the norms.
If you are working in a team or as a manager some things that you could do are provide more tools for clearer and faster communication, if possible have the teams in person or in a single group, create a platform of teams so that teams are aware of the other teams and what skillsets the have to offer and encorage teams to use this platform as well as have third party aid in case of disagreement between teams.
This will ensure smooth sailing and effective communication between teams to progress on your project. It can also help teams reach out to eachother for their skills or aid.
Now, with all that aside, let's get into the first step of design thinking.
Empathy
Before you come up with a 'How might we...?' question to solve or any ideas, you first need to figure out what exactly the user wants in the first place. You also want to make sure that you do this without any judgement, bias fallasies or assumptions and make sure to keep an open mind with curiosity and respect.
Empathy is all about understanding the user; their wants, needs, background, emotions, pain points and more. This can be done in many ways, both by meeting and interviewing the user in person or conduction online surveys and rearch.
You would want to reach out to those with different perspectives whilst making sure that your own assumptions and bias do not get in the way. By interviewing and engaging with users you can start to undestand their needs. Afterwards, by putting ourselves into the space where our users are and what our design is going to adapt(eg. office or library) we can understand how they interact on a more detailed and nuacnced level. And then we can put ourselves in the users shoes to see exactly what can we improve.
Now what was mentioned was more of an in-person guide but the same thing can be applied online though interactions with the users and detailed reaserch.
A Basic Interview Guide
Icebreaker - a general question to warm up the user and get them going towards the directon you want whilst still maintaining general talk
Grand Tour - ask the user to walk us though their experience so that we can get an overall idea
Dig deeper - figure out more of the emotional aspect and the story
Magic Wand - "If they could wave a magic wand at (subject) then what would they change?" and also ask if they were to co-design with us, what would they do/design/implement
A great question to ask is 'why' ask it can help you understand the underlying reason.
After you have understood the user, you would want to design an empathy map or a persona.
What this involves is drawing the name of the user(real or made up) and four sections around it. One section is what the users says, another is what the user thinks, what the user does and what the user feels. In each section you would want to compile all that you have learned from the users and reasearch. By brainstorming and compiling a lot of ideas in all of the catagories you will have a clear understanding on who the user is.
Next steps - define, ideate, prototype, & test
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