Understanding Design Thinking

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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.

Five Steps in Design Thinking

Empathy
Define
ideate
Prototyping
Testing

1. 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.

2.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.

3.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.

4.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.

5.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.
Quick Prototypes
Visual Representation
The key to making your ideas tangible is building your whiteboarding and sketching
skills.

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.

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.

1. Design thinking is a linear and traditional method of Problem Solving?

False
2. Which of these is not a stage in design thinking process?
Production
3. Which is technique used to quickly align the team on a common goal
Mission Countdown
4. What are the two things that teams generally forget while idea generation?
socializing, delivery
5. Design Thinking is a_______ centered way of Solving Problem.
Human

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.
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.

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:

Delay Judgment: Don't jump into conclusions based on a single idea, let the ideas
come from different sources.
Supportive culture: Support the different members of the team and help them build
ideas and solutions.
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 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.

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 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 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.

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.

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.

6. Which of the following is not a Data driven prototyping tool?

UiPath
7. What is a journey map?
Customers interaction journey
8. Customer Experience is applied to only IT organizations?
False
9. Data Prototyping is similar to Design Prototyping?
True
10. What are two methods suggested by Edward De Bono for thinking out of the box?
Lateral Thinking, Six thinking hats
11. Which of the following best describes prototyping?
Designing Products --wrong
12. Which tool is used to measure Customer relationship?
Relationship Framework
13. What are touch points?
Different forms of interaction between Consumers and Organization

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.

14. What are two techniques of prototyping using data intelligence?

Data prototyping, Data driven prototyping
15. JustinMind is a tool for which type of prototyping?
Data driven
16. Knowing the needs of the team members is the responsibility of _______?
Team Leader
17. ______ describes the journey of describing the needs of the customer to
delivering the final solution.
Journey Map
18. which type of prototypes have user interactions?
High fidelity
19. What are the three key points in Relationship Framework?
breadth, depth, consistency
20. Design thinking is a linear process?
False
21. Designers should design a solution based on their own views and assumptions.
False
22. Breadth, depth, and consistency are the key points of measurement in ________?
Relationship Framework
23. Who sets the common goal for the team?
Team Leader