THINKING, BEING AND DOING

Maximizing Your College Experience

Chapter 3

Design Thinking

Design Thinking is an innovation method used to solve human problems. Problems suitable for design thinking range from big problems like unemployment, traffic congestion and gun violence, to business problems like improving customer satisfaction and developing new products, to personal problems like choosing a major or becoming more fit. None of these challenges has one single correct solution, but they all benefit from the Design Thinking approach that, if used correctly, promises to reveal the optimal solution.

This page provides key concepts from the chapter and associated digital content on chapter topics including an Overview of Design Thinking, How Might We, and the basic stages: Empathy, Ideation, and Prototyping. It concludes with additional resources related to the chapter.

Overview

We’ve defined Design Thinking as having three primary stages: Empathy, Ideation, and Prototyping, with transitional stages in between Planning, Reframing, and Selecting.

Various organizations have different views of the stages and their names, but underlying all interpretations are the same fundamental principles and activities.

The following videos illustrate how two organizations view Design Thinking.

Hallmarks of Design Thinking

  1. Collaborating with others in a small team to benefit from different perspectives 

  2. Fully understanding the problem before jumping to solutions

  3. Setting aside bias and assumptions to approach a problem with an open mind

  4. Capturing all insights and ideas on sticky notes and consider each of them equally

  5. Continuously testing insights and ideas with stakeholders to stay on course

How Might We?

THE VALUE OF A BEAUTIFUL QUESTION

The Design Thinking process begins with a “How might we…” question - many call it the HMW. Great care should be taken to ask the question that gets at the heart of the problem.

The HMW should be broad enough in scope to allow designers to explore all relevant associations. It should not include any suggestion of a solution so that designers are free to consider all kinds of solutions.

HMW’s are revisited and often reframed after learning more about the problem in the Empathy Stage.

Warren Berger speaks on the value of asking the right question.

In his book, "A More Beautiful Question," Warren Berger defines a beautiful question as “an ambitious yet actionable question that can begin to shift the way we perceive or think about something—and that might serve as a catalyst to bring about change.”

Empathy

Understanding the problem

What is Empathy? Is it the same as sympathy? Dr. Brené Brown explains the difference in this delightful animated presentation.

This video from Smaply quickly explains what a persona is, how to create one and how they can be used in an organization.

Empathy is the foundation of Design Thinking. In order to develop effective solutions that people will embrace, we must first thoroughly understand how people feel about the problem.

Empathy research utilizes traditional ethnographic tools including interviewing, observation, focus groups, experiencing, surveys, and desk research.

Here are some useful videos for understanding empathy and tools for empathy.

How is empathy practiced in Design Thinking? Design Thinking guru, Tom Kelley shares a case study in empathy from his work at Ideo.

This video from Smaply quickly explains how to create a customer journey map, what steps to include in the journey mapping process and what basic lanes to consider.

How can we truly understand what our stakeholders are experiencing? The NNGroup share some techniques for qualitative research.

What is Affinity Diagramming? Why should you use it? When can you use it? Parsons Transdisciplinary Design students explain.

Refrain from engaging in problem solving and
solution generating until the Ideation stage!

Ideation

Exploring solutions

Why are Ideation and Brainstorming important to Design Thinking? Iconic innovators, Dave and Tim Kelley, hash it out and share their experiences.

Why are innovative ideas so hard to come up with? Destin explains how cognitive bias weighs down our ability to think in new ways using a backward bike to demonstrate.

Forms of solutions

As you explore possible solutions consider the most common forms:

  • a physical invention such as a parking space sensor or a grocery cart bar-code scanner

  • a service such as door-to-door laundry pick-up in student housing or coffee shop tutoring sessions

  • an app such as a parking space sharing app, workout buddy pairing app

  • a system such as a community co-op market for homegrown produce or textbook sharing

  • or a combination of the above such as sensors in chairs that inform students where there are open seats in library via an app.

Ideation is a process of coming up with ideas for solutions to your design problem - your HMW. It requires you to harness your creativity, and open your mind to new possibilities. It begins with getting every solution that you can think of out for consideration, and ends with techniques that allow you to consider ideas you would not normally think of.

How do you break free from the status quo to create radical solutions? John Bielenberg has some recipes for success beginning with thinking wrong.

Ideation and Creative Thinking Resources

Prototyping

Build and Test a Solution

Can Design Thinking solve every problem? Dave Evans from Stanford D-school talks about different “thinking” methodologies and prototyping.

This paper prototype walkthrough is part of the Mobile Application Design module as part of my MSc in Interation Design Media (I-MEDIA) at the University of Limerick.

In the prototyping stage we bring our solution out into the physical world for people to evaluate and critique. Beginning with quick, low-fidelity, crude prototypes that demonstrate the basic principles of an idea, we take user feedback and refine our idea repeatedly until our stakeholders are fully satisfied. Prototypes can take many forms: a storyboard, a drawing or diagram, a physical object, a paper prototype, drawings of screens of an app, digital prototypes, photos, or a video to name a few.

What is prototyping, and why is it useful? Google Design Researcher, Todd Hausman explains how Google uses prototyping to develop revolutionary new products.

Digital Prototyping with Proto.i

Storyboarding explained by Humour Class.

Additional Resources

Design Thinking Certifications

Design Thinking Miro Board

Make a copy of this Miro board to collaborate with your Design Thinking Team!

Videos

Web Resources

  • Open Ideo - open source design thinking projects

Books

Two of the most popular books on Design Thinking