Understanding Design Thinking

Course - Prelude
Welcome to the course on  Understanding Design Thinking. In this course, you
will learn the following topics:

 The definition of design thinking

 The different stages of design thinking
 Solving problems using design thinking
 Leading a design thinking team
 Developing ideas and prototypes
 Implementing data intelligence in design thinking
 Bringing about changes in the way organizations think and approach problems.

What is Design Thinking?

 Design Thinking is a methodology of solving business problems, developing
products or developing experiences that are user-centered. In this method of
problem-solving, the user or the customer is given the utmost importance while
trying to solve the problem and come up with a solution.
 Design thinking is putting yourself in the shoes of the user and understanding
the needs of the user to come up with a solution that fulfills users requirements.

Note: Design thinking is a mindset rather than a linear process.

Design Thinking
Let's watch this video to understand the design thinking process.

Five Steps in Design Thinking

Five stages are usually associated with Design Thinking. These stages serve
more as guidelines than as steps or a process for design thinking.

The five stages are:

 Empathizing with the user (human empathy)

 Defining the problem
 Thinking about the solution (ideation)
 Building prototypes
 Testing the solution
Human Empathy

Human Empathy is the first and probably the most crucial stage during Design
thinking. In this stage, the problem is viewed through users perspective, and a
solution is developed based on the empathic understanding of the users' needs.
This process allows the designer and the team to set aside their views and
assumptions while developing a solution.

Defining the Problem

 In this stage, the problem is divided into several parts, and each part of
the problem is clearly defined by synthesizing and analyzing the data and
information collected during the empathizing stage.
  This helps in understanding every part of the problem and developing
solutions.

 This stage helps in deciding the functionalities to be developed.

Ideation

This is the stage where the Designers start developing the solutions to the
problems defined by collecting and analyzing the data during the empathizing
period. In this stage, unusual ideas are welcomed, questions are asked that
lead to other questions that help in addressing the core of the problem.

The commonly used techniques used in idea generation are:

 Brainstorming, and

 Worst Possible Idea.

Prototyping

 In this stage, the team does the experimentation. They build the
prototypes based on the solutions developed during the ideation stage.

 In this stage, the team builds prototypes in quick iterations, based on the
ideas available.

 Teams usually apply the fail fast technique in prototyping. In this

technique, the results and the data collected from the failures of a
prototype are used to build the next until a successful prototype is built.

Testing
  In this stage, the designers rigorously test the product using the best
solutions developed during the prototyping stage. This is the final stage
in Design Thinking.

 However, as design thinking is not a linear process, the results of the

testing stage are often used to redefine a problem or to get a better
understanding of the present problem.

 Even during this stage, changes and refinements are made to rule out
faulty solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product and
its users as possible.

The Team

 Design thinking is a collaborative and multi-disciplinary approach to

problem-solving. Therefore, it needs people with different skills to solve a
 problem, such as researchers, analysts, engineers, developers, and
business owners to come together to solve a problem.

 In Design thinking, the different roles of the team members are viewed as
a perspective they bring in problem-solving.

For example: A developer is someone who codes, but in design

thinking, he puts forward a perspective of what technology can be used
and whether the idea is feasible or not.

 Sometimes teams come up with great ideas, but there are two things that
they forget to take into consideration. First is socializing with the
stakeholders and explaining the idea so that it can be turned into a
business and the second is the ground reality of delivery. i.e., the
overheads of actually manufacturing and delivering it to the user.

Tangibilty
Tangibility allows visualizing your complex ideas and make them
understand to the world.

 Direct interaction among different people trying to solve complex problems

helps them share ideas and increase productivity.
 In design thinking, much of the knowledge is in the form of ideas inside a
designers head
 Presenting ideas in physical spaces like whiteboards makes them accessible to
other team members and also helps users and stakeholders to get involved in
the design thinking process.
 There are many ways to makes ideas tangible, but they fall broadly into two
categories.
o Quick Prototypes
o Visual Representation
 The key to making your ideas tangible is building your whiteboarding and
sketching skills.

You could look up the Video on Seven Elements of Graphic Facilitation to learn

more about sketching.

Leading Design Thinking

There are many types of leaders, some guide the team, some lead the
team through putting efforts, and some are good at making things
happen. A good Leader in a Design thinking team should have the
following four qualities.

 The first quality is the ability to frame a problem based on the inputs available.
  The second quality is to allow experimentation. While experimenting and
prototyping, priority should be given to the hardest functionalities or features
and fail fast methodology must be applied.
 The third quality is communicating ideas. A good leader must welcome different
ideas generated by different members in a team and communicate them with
the other members of the team to develop them.
 The fourth quality is collaborating with the team. It is important that the leader
should work with the team to solve the problems. A good leader must make
himself available for the team.

Skills of a Design Thinking Leader

This video helps you understand the qualities and skills of a design thinking
leader.

Building the Team

A good leader must know the type of skills required to complete a team.

Often the team is so busy focusing on the needs and wants of the users, the
problem and finding the solution that they forget the most important part of the
team. i.e., knowing the team members and knowing the needs of each team
member and their expectations from the team.
Team Leap Activity

 Team leap is a team activity to build the team trust and empathy.

 The length of team leap activity is about an hour. It is an activity where

you focus on individual goals, working styles, pet peeves, etc.

 This activity is generally conducted during the beginning of the project

when a new initiative starts in an already existing team when new
members are added to a team to discuss the project objectives and know
the working styles within a team.

 This helps in setting up norms in the workplace that the team is

comfortable with.

The Common Goal

 There are different types of people in a team with different skills working on the
different aspects of the problem.
 It is the Team Leader who has to set a common goal that every individual in the
group should focus on.
 This helps in keeping track of the bigger picture and not deviating away from it.
 The team should agree on the problem statement and the reasons for solving
the problem. This sets the stage for a successful design thinking collaboration.
 Mission Countdown is a technique of aligning the team in which rather than
discussing the long documents the team meets up and summarizes the
problem statement in four words, what, why, how and for whom.
 The team then builds a critical statement that works as a guide in every step of
problem-solving, and every team member must remember this statement.
Human-Centered Design Approach
This video explains the Human-Centered Approach of Design Thinking.

What is Customer Experience?

The Customer Experience of an organization or CX is a summary of all the

interactions a customer has over time with the organization through
different touchpoints like websites, mobile applications, customer
services, and stores.

The Customer experience describes the relationship a customer has with a

brand or organization. The more indulging and impactful the interaction the
higher are the chances for the customer to remain loyal to the brand.

Components of Customer Experience

To understand Customer Experience, you have to understand the four
components of a good Customer Experience (CX).
Four Components of CX

 Archetypes
 Activities
 Interactions
 Principles

Archetypes
Archetypes describe patterns of behaviors, attitudes, and motivations
shared between people towards a brand or product.

 Traditionally, it was used by businesses to associate a symbol or trait with a

brand or product.
 For example, Apple is usually associated with creativity and Nike with the hero.
 Archetypes help businesses to empathize with customers when designing
Customer Experiences (CX).
 While creating archetypes, businesses should focus on higher order needs like
affiliation, sense of belonging, and self-fulfillment. This helps in building trust
and long-term relationship with customers.
  Lower order needs like the convenience and time-saving are also important but
do not contribute much in building strong customer relations.

Activities
Activities capture the actions and goals of a customer across their
end-to-end experience, from their perspective.

 The key to designing a great customer experience is to have a perspective and

to understand the customer holistically.
 For example, a person visiting a theme park makes a bunch of decisions before
they even enter the park. Companies like Disney and Universal studios should
include travel logistics in their activities while creating a journey map.
 For the organizations to design a good customer experience, they should get rid
of any previous knowledge and presumptions, and put themselves in the
customer's shoes.

Interactions and Principles

Interactions are the meaningful engagements and communications that an

organization has with its customers.

 With the numerous ways of interactions that have developed with the rise in
technology, it is important to maintain a consistent interaction with the
customers through experience principles.
 If the interactions are inconsistent, the organization may lose the brand image
and the loyal customer base.

Experience Principles are criteria built from the customer needs that
help in customer interactions and enable the organization to build a
good customer experience.

 Experience principles are built from the higher order needs of the customers
like affiliations, sense of belonging, and self-fulfillment.

Strengthening Customer Relationship

Customer relationship strength is measured by the quality and amount of
Interaction with the customer. Relationship Framework is a tool used to
measure customer relationship. This tool finds ways for customer relationship
improvement through three key points: breadth, depth, and consistency.
  Breadth refers to how frequently the organization interacts with the
Customers. The more a company interacts, the more is the breadth.
While considering the breadth of relationship, care must be taken to
avoid unnecessary interaction, and instead look for opportunities to have
meaningful interactions that enhance customer experience.
 Depth refers to how deep and meaningful the interactions are and how
they serve the emotional, higher-order needs and desires of a customer.
Depth helps in building archetypes.
 Consistency refers to the quality of interaction with the customer. No
different than a human relationship, customers are displeased by
inconsistent interactions. They expect brands to provide the same
assistance each time regardless of the problem or place.

Hypothesis Generation
This video describes the importance of hypothesis generation.

Journey Maps
 A journey map describes the journey of describing the needs of the
customer to delivering the final solution. The journey map highlights the
critical opportunities along that time frame, which can be the seeds for
concept generation.
 It's a powerful tool for the team to keep the users' long view in mind as
they design a product or service.
 To make a customer journey map, it is usually organized around some
generalized stages of engagement on a left-to-right axis. The stages tend
to vary by industry, but generally go from either low engagement to high
engagement or back in time to now.

Synthesis
Synthesis is the act of making sense of all the data collected. This video
explains more about synthesis and the techniques used for synthesis in Design
Thinking.
Concepting

In synthesis, the team will have identified promising opportunity areas that
represent a human need and an opportunity for the business. However, fresh,
new ideas are hard to come by through everyday thinking and conversation,
and people need ways to generate new ideas. So, Edward de Bono, a famous
psychologist suggested some methods to think out of the box. These are lateral
thinking and Six Thinking Hats methods.

Things to consider while concepting:

1. Delay Judgment: Don't jump into conclusions based on a single idea, let the
ideas come from different sources.
2. Supportive culture: Support the different members of the team and help them
build ideas and solutions.
3. Visualizing and making things tangible: The concepts should be visualized
using white-boards, sticky-notes, and simple sketches. This helps in making
things tangible.

Data Intelligence
This video discusses how data intelligence helps the Design Thinking process.

Data Intelligence in Concepting

After collecting all the data, during the process of idea generation and concept
creation, ask these four questions to implement data intelligence to the
concepts.
  Do you need more clarity?
 Do you need more time?
 Do you need more knowledge?
 Do you need more guidance?

If the concept answers any of these questions, then pivot it to the concept using
data intelligence methods like worksheets. They are the general analog method
for recording data.

What is Prototyping?

Prototyping is bringing your ideas and concepts into life.

 The ideas and concepts you generate as an individual or as a team can be

understood only by you or your team.
 To make the stakeholders and users experience that concept, you have to build
that concept. This is called Prototyping.
 Prototyping is experiencing the idea or the concept in the real world and making
inferences based on it.

Prototyping
This video explains the process of prototyping.

Types of Prototyping
Prototyping is of many kinds, but the two widely used terms are:
 Low Fidelity Prototyping:
In low fidelity prototyping, prototypes are built using papers, stickers or
any materials that are readily available, and these prototypes are not
necessarily working. They are made in quick iterations. Low fidelity
prototypes usually do not have user interactions
 High Fidelity Prototyping:
In high fidelity prototyping, the prototypes are made using computer
graphic tools, and real working prototypes are created. High Fidelity
prototypes have user interactions.

Types of Prototyping
Prototyping is of many kinds, but the two widely used terms are:
 Low Fidelity Prototyping:
 In low fidelity prototyping, prototypes are built using papers, stickers or
any materials that are readily available, and these prototypes are not
necessarily working. They are made in quick iterations. Low fidelity
prototypes usually do not have user interactions
 High Fidelity Prototyping:
In high fidelity prototyping, the prototypes are made using computer
graphic tools, and real working prototypes are created. High Fidelity
prototypes have user interactions.

Prototyping Guidelines
Several guidelines can be followed while developing a prototype.

 Start building: The first guideline is to start building the prototype from
whatever ideas you have conceptualized without thinking about the outcome.
 Don't spend Much time: Prototypes are built for experiencing the concepts
and not for developing a fully functional product. So much time should not be
wasted in building them. prototypes
 Fail Fast: Prototypes must be built in quick successions and fail agile
methodology must be implemented in which each prototype is built by learning
from the previous failure.
 Remember the concept: The concept on which the prototype is being built
must be remembered, and care must be taken not to deviate from it.
 Keep the user in mind: The whole design thinking concept is user-centered,
so the prototypes built must be user-centered too. The high fidelity prototypes
that provide user interaction must design the prototypes by keeping the users in
mind.

Prototyping Social Enterprise

This video explains prototyping social enterprises.
Prototyping with Data

With a large amount of data collected using all these modern

technologies, prototyping may be challenging. However, with the team of
capable designers, data analysts and data scientists, prototyping is quite
easy. There are two ways in which prototyping can be done using data
intelligence.

 Data-driven prototyping
 Data Prototyping

Data Prototyping
 Data prototyping is a technique where raw data from different sources
is developed into a dataset and how those datasets can be transformed
into useful concepts and prototypes for the end users.
 Data prototyping is generally used in places where Data Migration is
needed. Data integration is required and where applications are
developed.
  Data prototyping is similar to Design Prototyping where mock-ups are
created to explain the concepts created using data intelligence.

Data Driven Prototyping

 In data-driven prototyping, you put the actual data collected into your web or
mobile application prototypes and build charts, menus, and drop-down boxes
just like in the real application.
 In data-driven prototyping, the designers and data scientists must work
collaboratively to build prototypes based on real-time data and can decide upon
which prototyping tools to use.
 Some of the famous tools used in Data-driven Prototyping
are JustinMind, InVision, and Axure RP.

Culture Change
This video explains the various ways  Design Thinking is being adopted in
organizations to spread a culture of innovation.

Productive Analysis in Design Thinking

With the rise in Technologies like data science, machine learning and
Artificial intelligence it has become inevitable for the Design Thinking
process to evolve.
Designers are likely already working with data intelligence in some way. So it
comes as no surprise that you want to know how to learn and do more with the
data and the technologies you have. In this new world as designers, you are
responsible for creating a safe and natural interaction with these machines.
Interaction designers should deepen their knowledge on Human Interactions
with machines. For UX/CX and UI designers, there are opportunities to evolve
how you design the experience and how the user interfaces can best support
design intelligence.

Design Thinking Evolution

 Design Thinking has always been a part of the business, but recently the
principles of design thinking have been changing.
 During the industrial revolutions, designs were made, and prototypes were built,
but those prototypes like those machines were slow to build, they were not cost
effective to build so the prototyping process was not iterative.
 The New Design Thinking process is more iterative and rapid compared to the
old waterfall model processes. Now with the advent of Data Science large
amounts of data is available and the design thinking process is rapidly evolving
with it.
The Summary

Finally, you have arrived at the end of the course. In this course, you have
learned the following topics:

 The definition of design thinking

 The different stages of design thinking
 Solving problems using design thinking
 Leading a design thinking team
 Developing ideas and prototypes
 Implementing data intelligence in design thinking
 Bringing about changes in the way organizations think and approach problems.

What's Next?
This course was an introduction to what design thinking is, and there is
so much more to learn about it. In the next courses, you will learn the
following topics:

 Implementing design thinking

 The different techniques and tools to enhance Customer Experiences.
 The science of developing prototypes and the tools required for prototyping.