How does design thinking help you find creative solutions?

The world’s top brands, such as Google, Apple, General Electric, and Samsung, have adopted the design thinking approach. This revolutionary method is being taught at world-leading universities, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. So what is design thinking, and is it really worth the stir?

Description of the method and the history of its appearance

The idea of ​​design thinking was formulated by Herbert Simon in 1969 in his book The Sciences of the Artificial. It was later developed by scientists at Stanford University and founded the Stanford Design Institute, or d.school, which promotes the idea of ​​design thinking.

This phenomenon was most succinctly described in the Interaction Design Foundation specialists:

Design thinking is an innovative, non-linear, process that can help teams to better understand the needs of their users, challenge ideas, define problems in more detail and come out with the out-of-the-box solutions. If you’ve faced the problem that is hard to define and yet unknown, 5 stages of design thinking would help you find a way out. Those 5 stages are known as the “Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test” concept.

Anyone who uses design thinking subordinates their research and work to the interests of the individual, not the interests of the company, boss, project manager, or bureaucracy.

The main goal of design thinking is to go beyond existing stereotypes and the usual ways of solving a problem. This is right what we used to call “thinking outside the box”.

Areas of use of design thinking

Design thinking is halfway between analytical thinking and intuitive thinking/ It finds its application in any area, for example: planning a tour of Europe, thinking over apartment renovations, sports, education and research to business, management, and design, design thinking is widely used by professionals around the globe.

Stages of work by the method of Design Thinking

The method of design thinking involves 5 stages: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Let’s consider each stage in detail.

Emphasise-research the client’s needs

At this stage, you need to gain an understanding of a problem you’re trying to solve. Empathy is crucial for design thinking as far as this is a human-centred design process. You need to put aside your own assumptions and prejudices and get a real insight into users and their needs. It’s easy to find a solution to a problem you are an expert in. If you’re a rapper, making a rapper landing page is not problematic. However, if you’re not into cars, you will have to delve into his business usually through user research, understand the processes and understand how he feels when communicating with people. 

Define- Point out your users’ needs and problems

Systemise the information you received on the stage of empathy, analyse observations and highlight the user’s key problems. These definitions are called problem statements. The purpose of this stage is to come up with a question to which you will be seeking an answer in the next step. F.e EssayTigers’ team can’t perform the task without defying the topic and volume of an essay.

Ideate- Create ideas to help solve the issues

Brainstorming is particularly useful here. Once you’ve identified the user’s problem, it’s time to come up with and work out non-standard solutions. Give up the critical thinking we are all so used to. Criticism can ruin a good idea. Write down everything, even the most delusional thoughts. When you run out of creativity, pick out viable ideas, and move on to the next stage.

Prototype- Start to generate solutions

This is an experimental phase. The task is to test the functionality of ideas in practice. It is enough to create a basic scaled-down version of the product that functions to help solve the indicated problem.

Prototyping is important because:

• if successful, you will find the right solution, notice the shortcomings, refine and create a product;
• In case of failure – it helps to refute the hypothesis, save time and money.

If the prototype is successful, proceed to the next step. If not, try to identify the problem again.

Testing-Check if the solutions work

Let evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Even though this is the final stage, design thinking is an iterative process: use test results to identify and solve other problems. This can be done through feedback from customers.

Common mistakes in working with design thinking

Good designers will always make it work

Design Thinking isn’t to make you creative. Some might say, design thinking will be blessed with the spirit of creativity. In fact, the design thinking process can’t replace the designer’s role inside the organization. 

Staying fixated on the first idea

Sometimes developers tend to put maximum efforts into the very first idea that comes to their heads. The reasons for doing that are multifarious-lack of time, or supervisor and management pressure. Anyway, most questions are too complex to solve on the first attempt so give it one more try. 

Spending too much time on explaining instead of developing 

A practical approach can explain things far better than theory alone. Thus, there is no point in putting too much focus on the theoretical aspect rather than the empirical.

Developing prototypes without a purpose 

Prototypes exist to test and validate certain assumptions and ideas. There is no point in developing the prototype that doesn’t fulfill the idea- simply for fun or etc.

Useful materials about design thinking

Here are some useful resources to help you raise more awareness about design thinking.

Resource #1

Turn to Design consultancy IDEO’s design kit to gain knowledge of Design Thinking tools and case studies.

Resource #2

To keep up with state-of-art updates in Design Thinking, make sure to explore the blog of a design thinking pioneer Tim Brown.

Resource #3

Stanford D.School provides an abundance of free resources for everyone who wants to learn about design thinking

Conclusion

Design thinking is an on-demand method of problem-solving widely adopted by top brands and the world’s best universities. Design thinking can be applied in any area of human activity from sports to business. Now when you’re aware of the 5 stages of design thinking, how, and where to use it, you can apply it for the betterment of your company.