Design thinking is a solution-based approach that focuses on the human that you’re designing for. Now that we’ve asked, “who is the human behind it and what’s the human need?”, and observed our users in stage 1 of design thinking empathy, it’s time for stage 2, the design thinking define stage.
The Design Thinking Process
Design thinking is an undeniably powerful tool when properly applied. As we know from our first article in the design thinking series, Design Thinking: How to Execute Exceptional Designs & Think Outside the Box and Design Thinking: How Designers Solve Problems design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that focuses on solutions, not problems. A primary element of the design thinking process is thinking and ideating on meeting the needs of the end-user. With it, you are pulling together the most desirable solution from a human point of view. By combining creative and critical thinking, information and ideas are organized in a way that ensures decisions are made, situations are improved, and problems are solved from a human-centric approach.
Stage 2: The Design Thinking Define Stage
This stage of collating the data collected from the design thinking empathy stage is referred to as the design thinking define stage.
From analyze to synthesize
With your results and findings from the empathize phase, group, cluster and present everything into one place, to create a collage of experiences, thoughts, insights, and stories.
- Said: Word choice and what the user says
- Did: behaviors and actions observed
- Thought: consider what they’re thinking based on beliefs, motivations, goals, needs, and desires
- Felt: Emotional responses based on subtle body cues and word choice
- Share what you observed and found with other designers.
- Capture the important parts visually
- Record all the information into one place, such as a board or wall, so you can analyze it as a whole.
- Begin noting connections, patterns, and themes.
The Define Phase Begins With Understanding The Data
Typically speaking, body language is one of the most reliable ways of detecting any hesitation, doubt, resistance and other behaviors that become the basis for developing new and deeper insights into the challenges your user faces. Note any contrasts, contradictions, tensions and any patterns, connections, or themes that emerge.
How To Define a Problem Statement or POV
Understanding the data will help you establish an actionable problem statement. Your problem statement, or Point of View, goes beyond just defining the problem. This is the unique perspective or vision based on your discoveries during the empathy phase. The key to a successful design thinking process is truly understanding the human challenges and leveraging those insights to create a concrete, innovative solution specific to your end-user.
Focus on the end-user
As we know from stage one of the process, empathy is the crux of understanding your user, everything they will see, and everything they will experience when they see a design. Anything designed with them in mind tends to attract the most positive reactions. So with that in mind, your problem statement should be about the people the team is trying to help. With that being said, frame your problem statement according to specific users from data gathered during the empathize phase. Define your user by developing one or more personas. This will help narrow down your findings from your observations, interviews, fieldwork, etc. With this information, synthesize the needs using verbs to make it actionable. The intention here is to create a theory and actionable idea that you can leverage in your designing solution.
Manageable scope
There is a fine line between being too broad, and being too narrow. A good problem statement can be defined as having just enough guidance and constraints to make the project manageable. You don’t want it to become too narrowly focused on a specific method or restricted to specific requirements, such as technical elements, but not so broad that it feels like there are infinite possibilities. There should be enough space to explore areas that can lead to unexpected value and insight to the project. We recommend beginning the problem statement with a verb, such as “define”, “adapt”, “design”, etc. This will help steer the problem statement into an actionable plan.
Design Thinking Define Stage Example
To drive the point home, consider this design thinking define example. Imagine you are creating an app the provides healthy pre-made meal service to seniors. Rather than stating that you want to increase food sales to seniors by 5%, the problem can be defined as seniors require meal delivery in order to have access to nutritional meal options.