Design Thinking for Not-Designers
You don’t have to be a designer, but you do have to be a thinker
It’s been around for decades, and has recently enjoyed a resurgence. But if you’re not a frequent wearer of black turtlenecks, this process may still be new to you. Design Thinking is a ‘solutions-based’ approach to… creating solutions. There are five simple steps, and you can apply it to pretty much anything. You don’t even need an Adobe license to do it.
Our five stages are:
- Empathise with your end-users
- Frame what those users need
- Ideate Come up with ideas to get them what they need
- Create “prototypes” of your ideas
- Test the prototypes. Learn, improve. Repeat.
PLEASE NOTE: we begin to ‘solve’ the problem at the midpoint of the process, and only after ‘framing’ it – it’s fundamental to know who you’re solving for, and being clear on what a solution needs to achieve. These early steps are the most important and if you skip ‘em, it ain’t Design Thinking.
What you want to end up with, at the ‘end’ of this process, is insights and learning to take back to the beginning. Collect $200, pass Go, and we’re off again. The final step phase feeds back into stage 3 too, where we can resurrect old ideas, or head back to the drawing board. Time is a flat circle, and Design Thinking goes around and around.
Step 1: Empathy unlocking intuition
What: Understanding the end-user as fully as possible
Why: To give the rest of the process a solid grounding
How it helps: Points us toward a true solution, which may not be obvious at first
Ego and empathy are natural enemies. Start this step – this entire process – by saying ‘I don’t know what’s going on here’. Then go looking for information about your user/consumer/customer/recipient. Please don’t go looking for articles that support what you want to do anyway. Get as close to the source as you can and marinate in it. This can be checking the data, listening to interviews, trawling reddit… challenge your preconceptions, because they’re going to trip you up. Douse yourself in information and your brain will connect those dots. “Think about it a lot, and then don’t think about it at all”
STEP 2: Frame the edges of your solution
What: Define the problem, without leaping to a solution
Why: To ensure the team is working in the right direction together
How it helps: Helps us identify what our solution will need to achieve.
We’re not here to think outside the box – we get to define ‘the box’. If you make the box, and still need to think outside it, you made the wrong box. In this second step we define the problem for our end users. It’s important that we’re not defining the solution in any concrete way – we don’t know exactly what success looks like, but we DO know what success will mean for the end user. That’s what we need for the next stage. “I don’t know what I’m looking for, but I’ll know it when I see it!”
STEP 3: Make ideas that solve user problems
What: Create several concepts that address the defined problem
Why: Considering several directions allows for testing and learning
How it helps: Conceiving several (informed) ideas allows us to test to find the best.
This is the easy/hard part. It’s the time to revisit all the half ideas, sparks and lost-in-thought concepts, and hammer them into something that addresses the problem/s. A sign of doing stages 1 and 2 thoroughly is when you have to throw out the very first idea you had. This means that you’ve empathised, and changed how you’re thinking about the user. Be brutal in the pursuit of the user’s best interest, champion it with each concept. You’re their only hope.
STEP 4: Bring your ideas to life… quickly.
What: Knock your ideas into working examples
Why: Testing several ideas against our idea of success gives us a good view on what works
How it helps: Multiple attempts at the solution mean we learn faster
Pick the best ideas, and make a prototype. You should have a few. A ‘prototype’ should be detailed enough to succeed, and nothing more. This is not a last ditch attempt, it’s not HD product video spec. We’re going to throw a few things up, keep what works, remove what doesn’t. Perfect is the enemy of done, and the arch-nemesis of solving a problem. So pick your favourites, knock something together, and get it out.
STEP 5: Test and assess
What: Put your ideas to the test in the real world, or real world conditions
Why: No more guessing or assuming or hoping – this way we’ll know for sure
How it helps: Definite confirmation or denial of efficacy is how we’ll improve next time.
Test with real users, in real situations, in real time. This could be product testing with a sample group or it could be a campaign delivered to a small audience. Approach the results with an open mind. Your ideas will… kinda work. If they fail completely, you messed up the first step. If they nail it the first time, that’s kinda suspicious. Design Thinking recognises solving problems is hard, especially when the problems keep changing. To expect to solve it the first go is a bit much. We end this stage with important first-hand learnings to cycle through the process again. When do you get to disembark from this merry-go-round of constant improvement? That’s up to you – you’ll know it when you see it.
So, Design Thinking isn’t just for designers. It’s for anyone that wants to actually solve a problem, by beginning with the end user. It is a process that manifests ‘creativity’, ‘innovation’, ‘out of the box thinking’. If what you need is a bolt from the blue, Design Thinking is your lightning rod – and it comes in black.
