Design Thinking

Industry and Innovation

“There is no other organizational capability with such a gap between importance

and performance. In the 2015 BCG survey, 70% of executives replied that
innovation was either the company’s top priority or among the top three.

Other surveys by IESE, KPMG and The Conference Board confirm these numbers.

Executives consider innovation as the most critical capability for the future success
of their companies. But when asked about their satisfaction with the performance of
innovation, less than 20% of the executives was happy based on a survey of our
clients.”
—London School of Economics and Political Science, 2016

companies are accelerating efforts to change their cultures, foster innovation, and
serve customers more effectively.
Innovation or ‘design thinking’ is something truly important and enduring

Tim Brown of IDEO has written that design thinking is “a discipline that uses
the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is
technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into
customer value and market opportunity.”

Thinking like a designer can transform the way you develop products, services,
processes—and even strategy.

It is a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match

people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business
strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

- DT is a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation

activities with a human-centered design ethos.

- Designing products or services through direct observation, of what

people want and need in their lives and what they like or dislike about the way
particular products are made, packaged, marketed, sold, and supported
Step 1: Explore the problem space through fact finding and then
assemble a 360º view.

Step 2: Reduce the solution space through decisions that

balance desirability, viability, and feasibility.
• Does the solution • Is this affordable?
show empathy for • Does it make us
end-users? more profitable?
• Is this the simplest • Do we have the
solution that gets skills?
the job done? desirability viability • What is my ROI?
• Is it elegant? human needs business needs
• Is it useful?

feasibility
technical needs

• How quickly can I configure the solution to suit my needs?

• Is the solution easy to maintain?
• Is it consistent with my current system landscape?
• Can the solution be easily supported?
 Design principle
Phases:
0) Understand/observe
1) Visualize/Realize
2) Evaluating/Refining
3) Implement (detailed engineering)
4) Implement (manufacturing liason)
 Design Thinking Steps to Innovation

The five steps

 Stage 1: Empathize

What is empathizing?

It is putting aside ones learning, culture, knowledge, opinions, and

worldview purposefully in order to understand other peoples’ experiences
of things deeply and meaningfully.

It requires a strong sense of imagination to be able to see through another

person’s eyes.

Why to empathize? – for absorbing and understanding the raw information.

- Because we are trained — whether consciously in our schools or
workplaces, or subconsciously from our prior experiences — to form
judgements and opinions about others rather than absorbing and understanding
the raw data.
 How to be an Empathic Observer?

Abandon Ego: In order to empathize with others deeply one needs to tame and put aside
our egos.
Adopt Humility: Through humility one elevates the value of others above oneself, and in
turn becomes more empathic.
Be a Good Listener: One has to stop listening to ones inner conflicting voices and allow
others voice to resonate. We need to train ourselves to control our natural tendency to
formulate our own opinions and voice in order to listen which uncovers deeper meaning
and experience.
Hone Observation skills: For close reading of other’s behavior, subtle indications, their
non-verbal expressions, body language, and environments – to be able to experience the
full range of sensations of others within context and we can have a deeper and more
meaningful empathic experience. By this we can fill many of the gaps, leading to a deeper
understanding of someone else’s experience.
Care: One needs to overcome our own needs and wants and seek to understand others.
One must build a sense of care, a deep concern and desire to want to help, nurture, and
provide assistance.
Be Curious: Curiosity leads ourselves to naturally incline, dig into unexpected areas,
uncover new insights, and explore all aspects of people’s lives.
Be Sincere: Nothing kills empathy more than a lack of sincerity. When one approaches
people with a superficial agenda, superiority complex, or any mindset that may
undermine one’s sincere intention to understand their experience deeply, one is placing a
barrier between oneself and those one seeks to understand.
 How to Gain Empathic Understanding of People
Divide your observations into three categories What - How –Why

We can ask questions to ourselves about our observations based on these three
types of questions to understand people and derive deeper levels of
understanding. Note down details of all your observations in following
categories:E.g.
What (note down the How (describe how the Why (try to interpret the
details of what is person is doing what he or scene)
happening) she is doing)

What is the person Is the person putting in a great Why is she/he doing what
doing? deal of effort? she/he is doing?
What is happening in Is the person frowning or Why is she/he behaving so?
the background? smiling while doing the task?
What is the person Does the person use many ad- Why is she/holding or
holding? hoc tools to make the task using a particular tool?
easier? What is the driving factor
behind it?
 Stage 2: Define the Problem by Synthesizing Information

What is ‘Defining’?
Collection of information gathered in the ‘empathy phase’ followed by
analyzing and synthesizing the observation.
Analysis: Breaking down complex concepts and problems into smaller
and easy-to-understand elements.
Synthesis: Creatively putting together research output and analysis data
to construct whole ideas. Steps followed respectively are organizing,
interpreting and making sense of the data gathered to create a problem
statement.
Why it is needed?
In the ‘define phase’, a variety of methods are used to crytallalise the
essential findings from the ‘empathy phase’.
To create an innovative and significant result, one should define a
specific and captivating problem statement which will lead to a specific
desired solution.
It is essential to define a meaningful and actionable problem statement
and to bring clarity and focus into the design space to start ‘ideation’ in
the right direction.
 Stage 2: Define the Problem by Synthesizing Information

How it is done?
Analysis Synthesis

There is a lot of effective methods which helps to analyze and

synthesis all the gathered data. Some of those are as follows:
Telling the most significant and surprising user stories
Mapping all the gathered data brought out open to the fellow team
members
Developing empathy map and personas based on research
Immersing your personas in stories and flesh out the scenarios in
which user find themselves
Point of view, a bold problem statement after understanding the full
scope of user’s world
 Stage 3: Ideate

What is ideation?

This stage brings out the best of ideas for solving a defined problem, through
Brainstorming and Worst Possible Idea activities.
Creativity and Innovation are two driving forces behind developing solutions.

Why ideation?
To ask the right questions and innovate.
To step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation
potential of your solution.
To bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
To uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
To create volume and variety in your innovation options.
To get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond
them.
 Steps to Ideate
Ideation sessions demand a lot of preparation and team member concentration
in order to be fruitful. People need guidance, inspiration and activities, in a
physical and cognitive manner, in order to get the process started.
How to ideate? Steps.
1. Active Facilitation: Provide an environment that facilitates free, open, and
is non-judgmental for involved people.
2. Idea Generation Techniques: E.g. Brainstorming, follow certain rules for
particular technique:
a. Set a time limit
b. Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a
plan, or a goal and stay focused on the topic
c. Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal
d. Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas
e. Aim for quantity (number of ideas)
f. Build on each others' ideas
g. Be visual
h. One conversation at a time
 Steps to Ideate (This slide is not included in exam)

3. Select the ideas:

Use following methods to select the ideas brainstormed:
a. Post-it Voting or Dot Voting.
b. Four Categories Method
c. Bingo Selection
d. Idea Affinity Maps
e. Now Wow How Matrix
f. Six Thinking Hats
g. Lean Startup Machine Idea Validation Board
h. Idea Selection Criteria
 Stage 4: Prototype

What is prototype?
An early, inexpensive, and scaled down version of a product.
It offers developers the opportunity to bring their ideas to life, test the
practicability of the current design, and to potentially investigate how a
sample of users think and feel about a product.
Types of Prototyping
Low-Fidelity Prototyping: It involves the use of basic models or examples
of the product being tested. It may be incomplete and uses a few features of
the final intended design. It may be made of different material rather than
the selected material in design.
Example: Card sorting, Storyboarding etc.
a. Quick and inexpensive.
b. Possible to make instant changes and test new iterations.
c. Disposable/throw-away.
d. Enables the designer to gain an overall view of the product using minimal time and
effort, as opposed to focusing on the finer details over the course of slow, incremental
changes.
e. Encourages and fosters design thinking.
f. An inherent lack of realism.
g. Such prototypes often remove control from the user
 Stage 4: Prototype

2. High-Fidelity Prototyping: A prototypes that look and operate closer to the

finished product.
Engaging: the stakeholders can instantly see their vision realised and will
be able to judge how well it meets their expectations, wants and needs.
Testing will allow the evaluators to gather information with a high level of
validity and applicability. By doing so, the confidence the design team will
have in how people will respond to, interact with and perceive the design.
It takes much longer time to develop than to develop a low-fi prototype.
Testing is more inclined to focus and comment on superficial
characteristics.
Change in design takes longer time.
Guidelines for Prototyping
Just start building
Don’t spend too much time
Remember what you’re testing for
Build with the user in mind
Step 3: Create relevant prototypes quickly and iteratively.

PROTOTYPES:

• Must evoke an emotional response

• Must be technically relevant
• Fail early, fail cheaply
• Communicate the vision
• Become a model for realization

• Prototypes are effective for communicating intent & feedback

with everyone.
 Stage 5: Test

What is Testing?

Testing in design thinking means getting feedbacks from the users about
the developed prototype. These feedbacks helps to understand the users
more deeply.

Why Testing?

Getting feedback is crucial in design thinking, with out understanding the

needs of the user the iterative process will fail. If the users facing any
problem in the present solution then the design team must rethink and
develop some alternative solution.
 Testing Methodology
How to perform Testing?
Testing can be undertaken throughout the progress of a Design Thinking
project, although normally it is done concurrently with the prototype stage. Get
users to be using the prototype as they would in real life, as much as possible.
Improve Your Test Results by:
a. Testing your prototype not the user.
b. Recreating the scenario in which they will be using your prototype.
c. Explaining about your prototype-testing and not the prototype
development to the users.
d. Obtaining the feedback of the prototype such that interaction between the
user and the prototype is not hampered.
Guidelines when Planning a Test:
a. Let your users compare alternatives
b. Show, don’t tell: let your users experience the prototype
c. Ask users to talk through their experience
d. Observe
e. Ask follow up questions