The Fundamentals of Design Thinking
Design thinking is an approach taken to make innovation more user-centric and useful. It’s a process in which we seek to understand the user challenges, pain point, redefine problems, brainstorm on ideas towards the creation of possible-solution.
Every thought and idea is a potential solution to a certain problem out-there. Most times our environment influences us in terms of thinking and coming up with ideas. All products surrounding us contain designs in some way which is the basis of identifying them.
Design thinking can be applied to many contexts, it’s not limited to designing digital product alone or technology industry, most innovative companies are embracing the process, because is a “solution-based” technique that solve a problem.
The goal of design thinking is all about building empathy with the people, that is having a proper understanding of who you are designing for, what their needs are, and helping to innovate based on their needs. Design thinking encourages creative problem-solving; it pushes you to redefine the problem space and seek out the challenge or problem that’s worth solving.
FIVE STAGES OF DESIGN THINKING
Design thinking can be broken down into series of stages, that are carried out repeatedly to achieve a goal.
1. Empathize
The first thing to do during this stage is to focus on the user, set aside assumptions, and gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Asking open-ended question either through conducting a survey, interview, or observation session will help you engage and get a clear picture and understand the user’s needs, their expectations concerning the product you’re designing, and pain points they face within this context.
2. Define
The goal of this stage is to analyze and synthesize all information gathered, during the empathize stage. This phase helps the researcher to have a clear understanding of the problem stated, which will serve as a guide throughout the design process. This problem statements aids in generating ideas, on how to add or improve existing features, functions, and other elements that help solve the user’s problem.
3. Ideate
This step involves generating ideas to find potential solutions to the user’s problem. This is where creativity happens within a team, that is thinking outside the box and exploring new angles regardless of whether they’re feasible. There are different types of ideation techniques that can be used, from brainstorming, role-play scenarios, or the worst possible idea. The selection of the best ideas is done after brainstorming within the team, towards the end of the ideation phase.
4. Prototype
This stage helps in turning ideas into something tangible which can be tested on real users. A prototype is an inexpensive, scaled-down version of a product or feature. Based on what you are testing, prototypes can take various forms — from a simple paper model to a more interactive digital representation. This is an experimental phase, and the aim is identifying and putting each potential solution to test. Depending on how users behave, interact, think and feel when using the product, the design team will have a better idea of the proposed solution if it’s accepted, rejected, or needs to be redesigned entirely or improved based on the flaws.
5. Test
This is an iterative phase, the aim is to identify how the prototype works. The testing phase highlights any design flaws or constraints that need to be addressed. Based on the feedback and observation gathered on how users behave, think, and feel when interacting with the product, the design team will have a better idea of how to make changes and improvements before spending time and money developing or implementing the proposed solution. This process can be repeated several times until the desired result is obtained.
Conclusion
Design thinking has many benefits and can be used in a different context- be it in a business, educational, personal, or social context. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating a solution for.
Thanks for reading!
Want to learn more about me? I’m Bukunmi a User Experience Designer. Feel free to recommend this post, and also share it.
