Design Thinking
Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It
is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods. Design
Thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by re-
framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming
sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. ( RF Dam and
TY Siang, 2020).
Design Thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box’ thinking, as
designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the
dominant or more common problem-solving methods. At the heart of Design Thinking is
the intention to improve products by analyzing and understanding how users interact
with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate. Once we have
questioned and investigated the conditions of a problem, the solution-generation
process will help us produce ideas that reflect the genuine constraints and facets of that
particular problem. Design Thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper; it helps
us to do the right kind of research and to prototype and test our products and services
so as to uncover new ways of improving the product, service or design. (Don Norman,
2013)
According to Tim Brown (2009) in his revised and updated edition of Change By
Design, reintroduces design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s
sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs with what is
technically feasible and a viable business strategy.
Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs
Here, you should gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re
trying to solve, typically through user research. Empathy is crucial to a
human-centered design process such as design thinking because it allows you
to set aside your own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into
users and their needs.
(Brown 2009) and (Vianna et al. 2021) identified a key element of design as having
empathy and understanding for those affected by the problem. To tackle complex
challenges, designers must identify, understand, reflect upon, challenge and possibly
change their frame of reference, and habits of thinking.
Define—State Your Users' Needs and Problems
It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during the Empathize stage.
You then analyze your observations and synthesize them to define the core
problems you and your team have identified. These definitions are
called problem statements. You can create personas to help keep your efforts
human-centered before proceeding to ideation.
Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas
Now, you’re ready to generate ideas. The solid background of knowledge from
the first two phases means you can start to “think outside the box”, look for
alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the
problem statement you’ve created. Brainstorming is particularly useful here..
Prototype—Start to Create Solutions
This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution
for each problem found. Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-
down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to
investigate the ideas you’ve generated. This could involve simply paper
prototyping.
Test—Try Your Solutions Out
Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final phase,
design thinking is iterative: Teams often use the results to redefine one
or more further problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make
further iterations, alterations and refinements – to find or rule out alternative
solutions.
