The design thinking process encourages you to focus on the end-user that you’re designing for. Considering how difficult it is for companies, products, and services to stand out from the rest of the competitors, implementing design thinking will give you an upper hand. A primary element of the design thinking process is testing assumptions and then ideating on those assumptions and data to see if your service or product will meet a customer’s needs.
Why is Design Thinking Important?
So to begin with, why is design thinking important? Consider this: how many times have you gotten together with a team to solve a problem, but left feeling nothing productive was accomplished? How many services or products have you encountered that missed the mark because it didn’t solve the user’s problem? This is where we can answer the question “why is design thinking important?” and truly appreciate it’s importance.
What is a Design Thinking Approach?
Design thinking begins with a series of questions that get to the heart of the problem, the UX assumptions, and the implications, so that you can understand your end user’s needs, thoughts, emotions, and motivations. Each stage of the design thinking process is all about re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, thinking outside of the box, and adopting a hands-on approach.
- capture the specific mindset and needs of your end-user
- identify and define the problem to form solutions around
- create opportunities based on the needs of your end-user
- find innovative solutions starting with quick, low-fidelity experiments
- provide insight into your end-users’ biggest challenges
Design Thinking Assumptions
By asking a series of questions and following a solution-based approach, the design thinking process aims to identify UX assumptions and use data to assess the likelihood and viability of the assumptions. Typically, the design thinking assumptions gathered are first tested through thought experiments, then by field experiments.
- what you know
- what you don’t know and can’t know
- what you don’t know, but could know
Design Thinking Tools
The key is to increase the potential, uniqueness, and effectiveness of your solution. There are tons of design thinking tools and methods that can help you achieve your desired outcome; rapid prototyping, storytelling, assumption testing, learning launches, mind mapping, visualization, journey mapping, etc.
Rapid prototyping
One of the best ways to test your design thinking assumptions is with prototypes. Prototypes are intended to quickly test design solutions. Prototypes are typically the best way to quickly test design thinking assumptions in the early development stages. Since it is the first time designers experience how users behave with the prototype, and learn whether or not the implemented solutions have been successful, it doesn’t make sense to produce a finished product for the users.
Build
Building quick prototypes is a great way to explore problems, ideas, and opportunities within a specific area of focus. Be cautious of falling into the pitfall of becoming discouraged and feeling like prototypes are a waste of time if they fail. Reframe the idea of failure into a learning mentality . That will also help you remain objective, eliminate becoming too emotionally attached, and just build the prototype without hesitation or worry. When you view prototypes and tests as learning opportunities, the results will provide you with more informed feedback that you can use to improve the next prototype.
Measure
Make sure you have a central purpose and then keep that in mind when you build your prototype. It’s important not to lose sight of the purpose, but it’s also important to maintain an open mind. By balancing these two forces, you will build prototypes that are designed to solve a specific problem, but remain open to other lessons and insights it may bring to light.
Learn and ideate
The results generated from a design thinking test are crucial. Prototypes are the tangible results based on the data you’ve collected from observing your end-user. They are meant to help you avoid costly mistakes, eliminate weak ideas or solutions early on, and narrow in on solving your end-user challenges in an applicable and appropriate way.
Simplify Your Design Thinking Process With Zight (formerly CloudApp)
Zight (formerly CloudApp) is a great tool for instantly sharing your ideas and prototypes with others and getting invaluable insight based on direct input and real user interaction. Plus, it can easily be integrated into your favorite apps, including Sketch, Slack, Asana, WordPress, Google Docs, and more, for a seamless workflow.