Point of View - Problem

Statement
When you want to create an actionable problem statement which is commonly known as the Point
of View (POV) in Designing Thinking you should always base your Point Of View on a deeper
understanding of your specific users, their needs and your most essential insights about them. In
the Design Thinking process, you will gain those insights from your research and fieldwork in the
Empathise mode.

Your Point of View is Your Guide

• Your Point of View (POV) defines the RIGHT challenge to address in the following mode in the
Design Thinking process, which is the Ideation mode.

• A good POV will allow you to ideate and solve your design challenge in a goal-oriented manner in
which you keep a focus on your users, their needs and your insights about them.

• Your POV should never contain any specific solution, nor should it contain any indication as to
how to fulfill your users’ needs in the service, experience, or product you’re designing. Instead,
your POV should provide a wide enough scope for you and your team to start thinking about
solutions which go beyond status quo. However, you should construct a fairly narrowly-focussed
problem statement or POV as this will generate a greater quantity and higher quality solutions
when you and your team start generating ideas during later Brainstorm, Brainwriting, SCAMPER
and other ideation sessions.

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How do you Define your Point Of View?
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1 User, Needs, Insights

• Define the type of person you are designing for – your user. For example, you could define
the user by developing one or more personas, by using affinity diagrams, empathy maps,
personas and other methods, which help you to understand and crystallise your research
results – observations, interviews, fieldwork, etc.

• Select the most essential needs, which are the most important to fulfill. Again, extract and
synthesise the needs you’ve found in your observations, research, fieldwork, and
interviews. Remember that needs should be verbs.

• Work to express the insights developed through the synthesis of your gathered
information. The insight should typically not be a reason for the need, but rather a
synthesised statement that you can leverage in your designing solution.

2 POV Template
Write your definitions into a Point Of View template like this one:

User Need Insight

An adult person who lives To use a car for 10-60 The user would not want
in a city minute trips 1-4 times per to own his own car as it
week would be too expensive
compared to his needs. He
would like to share a car
with others who have
similar needs, however,
there are no easy and
affordable solutions for
him. It’s important for the
user to think and live green
and to not own more than
he truly needs.

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[Continued from previous page]

2 POV Template
Your Point of View template:

User Need Insight

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[Continued from previous page]

3 POV Madlib
You can articulate a POV by combining these three elements – user, need, and insight – as
an actionable problem statement that will drive the rest of your design work. It’s surprisingly
easy when you insert your findings in the POV Madlib below. You can articulate your POV by
inserting your information about your user, the needs and your insights in the following
sentence:

[User . . . (descriptive)] needs [Need . . . (verb)] because [Insight . . . (compelling)]

needs to because .
[user] [user’s need] [insight]

Condense your Point Of View by using this POV Madlib.

Example: An adult person who lives in the city… needs access to a shared car 1-4 times for
10-60 minutes per week … because he would rather share a car with more people as this is
cheaper, more environmental friendly, however it should still be easy for more people to
share.

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[Continued from previous page]

4 Make Sure That Your Point Of View is One That:

• Provides a narrow focus.

• Frames the problem as a problem statement.

• Inspires your team.

• Guides your innovation efforts.

• Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas.

• Is sexy and captures people’s attention.

• Is valid, insightful, actionable, unique, narrow, meaningful, and exciting.

Yay! You’re now well-equipped to create a POV and it’s time understand how to start using your
POV which crystallises all of your previous work in the Empathise mode. You start using your POV
by reframing the POV into a question: Instead of saying, we need to design X or Y, Design Thinking
explores new ideas and solutions to a specific design challenge. It’s time to start using the Design
Thinking Method where you ask, “How Might We…?”

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Do you want to learn more?
Learn how to use this template to your best advantage in our online course Design Thinking: The
Beginner’s Guide. Sign up for it today and learn how to apply the Design Thinking process to your
project if you haven’t already started the course.

Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide

Beginner course
The world’s leading companies, such as Apple, Google and Samsung, are already using the design
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phases of this paradigm-shifting approach to problem-solving—empathize, define, ideate, prototype,
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techniques—such as brainstorming and using analogies—to ways of gathering feedback from your
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