When sitting down trying to solve a problem, where do you start? This is a dilemma many struggle with, including business leaders, inventors, and engineers. With the introduction of Design Thinking in the 1990s, the messy process of designing was given a structure with clearly defined steps and objectives. Instead of guessing as solutions, people now study, collaborate, ideate to produce products that help society. The success of Design Thinking has taken off and has now become a popular business term.
After immersing myself in a crash course, researching, even applying it to my career (thank you, Designing Your Life), I have found Design Thinking to provide several benefits to finding excellent solutions to difficult problems. The basic strategy behind Design Thinking is to focus on the needs of the user. “Companies are asking [designers] to create ideas that better meet consumers’ needs and desires….[this] leads to dramatic new forms of value.” Here are the main benefits I have found:
- Deep Thinking: With a human-centered approach, you are encouraged to observe, ask questions, study to gain a deep understanding of the user and their issue.
- Structure: Researching, brainstorming, and prototyping are all messy processes. Yes, there will be papers, tools, supplies all over the place, but with the structure Design Thinking provides, there is an end goal. Once you meet the phase objective, you can organize your findings, clean up and move to the next step.
- Constant Communication: I believe one of the significant success factors of Design thinking is that you are continuously circling back to the end-user for feedback. After each phase, you know if you can keep moving forward or if you need to go back a step and provide different solutions.
- Collaboration: Design Thinking stresses the importance of working with various groups of people with all different backgrounds. It’s the only way to get a diverse set of ideas.
- Unique Outcome: when you go through all of the Design Thinking phases, the solution will undoubtedly be more thoughtful and custom to the end-user.
In a logical way, Design Thinking makes sense to me. When trying to create something entirely out of the ordinary, the person who is targeted to use the product should be at the forefront. An excellent example of Design Thinking was recently published on the Humans Of New York website. Brandon Stanton interviewed a Pakastani woman named Sidra, who started her own shoe company. Her product was hand-crafted, made from the finest material, but the formal shoe did not sell.
With her strong desire to succeed, she began to interview shoe store owners and customers and research style trends. She found Americans were more interested in a comfortable, casual shoe that can be worn every day and not used only for special occasions. After prototyping and testing, she landed on a great product and created a new line of shoes, named Atoms. Sales began to take off. Sidra’s company is a true “rags to riches” story; she gained success by going through each step of the Design Thinking process.
Resources
Brown, T. (2008). Design thinking. Harvard Business Review, , 85-92. Retrieved from hbr.org
Waloszek, G. (2012). Introduction to desing thinking. Retrieved from https://experience.sap.com/skillup/introduction-to-design-thinking/
