Design Thinking Simplified !

The intention of this post is to make people get a flavor of Design Thinking and more importantly not to get overwhelmed by it. Also wanted to compare Design Thinking with User Centered Design Process to see where it differentiates itself from UCD to create Innovative Products or Services.

First the good news... you don't need a PhD or Masters to do Design Thinking. If you have a good aptitude, empathy (for linkedIn readers sake i am not describing this word) and can be passionate about what you do, that is all it takes! 

Alright, what is design thinking?

It’s not a radical human engineering like producing cat eyed humans, at its core it is “human centered design”

I like this definition i read in an HBR article,

“Design Thinking is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity”

To simplify it further,

It is a way of thinking that harnesses the power of collaboration and iterative design towards a defined future state that adds value to the customer with a viable product or service.

An important characteristic of design thinking is to involve the “design thinkers” from the very beginning and create prototypes as early as first week. The goal of these prototypes is to generate useful feedback, help evolve an idea, to determine the merits / demerits of the idea and to explore possible new directions.

This early inclusion of design thinkers and prototyping helps to explore more ideas more quickly, essentially the right direction in short time. The key is to generate ideas that includes wild ideas as well based on the opportunities identified for solving a challenge, evolve the ideas into a realistic product.

Here is a case study if you are interested, Design Thinking in Action: Embrace Global

Now if you are drawn too much into this, check this out, http://www.designthinkingforeducators.com/

Over a period of time, people have defined 5 or 7 step process to Design Thinking, i hate to call Design Thinking as a process, anyways the steps are pretty similar to UCD Process. There are tons of resources available to teach Design Thinking, so am not getting into those details. 

Often times UCD is focussed on interfaces relating to Digital touch points, whereas Design Thinking takes a broader sense.

While following UCD, practitioners do conduct User Research using various techniques and depending on the nature of the problem, a quick field study to immersive ethnographic studies which is very similar to Design Thinking. You learn from the users, identify any patterns that can be explored further.

The Creative Genius

In a more practical sense, at least in the services industry, i don't see much of “Idea Generation” and “Collaboration” amongst the UCD practitioners as they design / re-design systems. Due to limited time, most projects assign a UX Designer, he or she will determine the User Experience based on his/her studies and their personal experience - the creative genius!

Design Thinking does not advocate one creative genius. The idea generation and collaborative aspects of Design Thinking makes remarkable difference and this results in innovative products.

Can we not do this with UCD?

Yes, if the designer is open minded, feels free to develop on someone’s idea

Yes, if the designer gets involved right from the beginning

Yes, if the designer buys in time to brainstorm different ideas with the stakeholders

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Holistic Approach

Design Thinking promotes holistic approach and can be applied across products, services and business design.

With the UCD process too, the UX designer is in a position to define a holistic solution, however seldom they are asked to do so. Read somewhere that there are frameworks based on Activity Theory for holistic design solutions, however they are not utilized that much.

Even if the designer is willing and talented, they are not allowed to deal with business processes. At least in my personal experience, I have faced challenges from business consultants or business analysts suggesting that process analysis is not my core expertise. Other major problem is that we are always pressed for time in the services industry.

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Other aspects like prototyping, testing and analyzing the feedback to refine the design is pretty similar in Design Thinking and UCD process.

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To conclude, if you are like me, who does not care for the label, Design Thinking or Innovation Thinking or whatever thinking you call it, if we are able to achieve even an incremental innovation, that methodology is working for you!

References

https://hbr.org/

http://www.campdni.com/

http://designthinking.ideo.com/

forbes.com

uxmatters.com

Please do share what you think!