Design Thinking

Unit-1
By Prof. Shubham Aggarwal
What You'll Learn

• How to apply design thinking to your problems in order to generate innovative

and user-centric solutions

• How to make use of practical design thinking methods in every stage of your
problem, with the help of method templates

• How to initiate a new working culture based on a user-centric approach,

empathy, ideation, prototyping, and playful testing

• How to employ ethnographic and analysis methods, such as interviews, focus

groups, and surveys

• How to prototype early and fast, as well as test your prototypes so as to reduce
risks and accelerate organizational learning

1. Introduction
Design Thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in
literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call
it Design Thinking? What's special about Design Thinking is that designers' work
processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these
humancentered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way — in
our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, in our lives.

2. What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user,
challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative
strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of
understanding. At the same time, Design Thinking provides a solutionbased approach
to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-
on methods.

Design Thinking revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the

people for whom we're designing the products or services. It helps us observe and
develop understanding with the target user. Design Thinking helps us in the process of
questioning: questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions, and questioning
the implications. Design Thinking is extremely useful in tacklinq problems that are ill-

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defined or unknown. by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many
ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and
testing. Design Thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching,
prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.

3. Design Thinking's Phases

There are many variants of the Design Thinking process in use today, and they have
from three to seven phases, stages, or modes. However, all variants of Design Thinking
are very similar. All variants of Design Thinking embody the same principles, which
were first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the
Artificial in 1969. The five phases of Design Thinking, according to
d.school, are as follows:

1 . Empathise — with your users

2. Define — your users' needs, their problem, and your insights
3. Ideate — by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative
solutions
4. Prototype — to start creating solutions
5. Test — solutions
It is important to note that the five phases, stages, or modes are not always sequential.
They do not have to follow any specific order and can often occur in parallel and repeat
iteratively.

Source InteractionDesign & Thinking Foundation

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4. Innovation, Creativity & Invention
When working with clients, we often get a lot of questions about innovation, and
we've seen there's a lot of confusion on the terminology.
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Whether in technology, research, or even humanitarian organizations, the word
"Innovation" is often advertised and associated with growth, potential, and the
attitude to achieve more and do better. It, along with "invention" and "creativity," is
sometimes used as a buzzword, thrown around a lot but not properly understood.
While creating a company or product, is important to clarify and differentiate these
words from each other in order to focus the organization, get value from research and
development (and returns on money invested in it), and understand how to structure
individual roles within the company.

4.1. What aresimilarity and difference?

• Innovation is the process of turning a new concept into commercial success or
widespread use.
• Invention is the creation of a new idea or concept
• CL.e.atutYis the act Of turning new and imaginative ideas into reality.
Creativity, invention, and innovation are all interrelated and necessary for growth to
occur. We can follow any successful company and see an investment of time and effort
into these three concepts. Based on our experience and research conducted, we have
discovered these insights:

4.2. Creativity
Creativity is the act of channeling imagination into something concrete. It is the very
first stage of design, where ideas start to actually take form, and a plan can be
developed.

That most human of qualities, creativity evidences itself in our ability to solve
challenges or problems with novel solutions ideas. Shawn Hunter, author of Out Think:
How Innovative Leaders Drive Exceptional Outcomes (Wiley, 2013), defines creativity
as "the capability or act of conceiving something original or unusual. "

The key factor is that creativity remains an idea alone, not reality yet. Interestingly,
creativity is very specific to people; animals have no way to communicate ideas, and
much of what they do transfer is assumed by instinct or by example.

Examples of creativity:
in the case of Uber, creativity was necessary in producing the concept of ride sharing
and of making driving jobs accessible to any individual.
another example can be the Google Glass, which although were very creative at the
time (new, different in the market), were not necessarily innovative (monetary return
over investment made by the company).

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 4.3. Invention
Invention is the physical creation of a new concept or idea. Also, according to Nesta's
innovation policy tookit, it is defined as The creation of an idea to do or make
something without verification that it works, or is commercially valuable. Invention
cannot occur without creativity, but just creativity is not enough to properly develop
an idea.

Examples of invention:
• product designs, business models, or working prototypes.
• Uber channelled invention in creating a solid and working business model,
based upon the ideas they had formed in the creation stage.

4.4. Innovation
Innovation ties everything together in business. According to British Standards,
Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas. It involves turning an invention
into a commercial success and encouraging its widespread use. This is the stage where
bold ideas, once properly developed, are brought to the public eye. This is what Uber
has achieved, now that its product is in use all over the world and benefits people
everywhere.

According to Hunter "Innovation is the implementation or creation of something new

that has realized value to others." Innovation is realized most vividly in the form of a
tool, physical benefit, or aid that solves a problem or creates an advantage.
Examples of innovation:

• successful products and services like Care of, Amazon Scout, Impossible
Food, Google's self-driving taxis,
• successful process innovations like Amazon predictive orders, or additive
manufacturing processes.

Once again, Innovation cannot happen without creativity or invention, and neither
creativity nor invention is useful in business if not properly executed.

5. Importance of innovation and creativity

Innovation is the process of creating and implementing a new idea. It is the process of
taking useful ideas and converting them into useful products; services or processes or
methods of operation. These useful ideas are the result of creativity, which is the
prerequisite for innovation. Creativity in the ability to combine ideas in a unique way
or to make useful association among ideas. Creativity provides new ideas for quality
improvement in organizations and innovation puts these ideas into action.

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Change and innovation are closely related, even though they are not the same. Change
often involves new and better ideas. The new idea may be the creation of a new
product or process or it can be an idea about how to change completely the way
business is carried out. Successful organisations understand that both innovation and
change are required to satisfy their most important stake holders.

5.1. Strategic Importance of Innovation

For both established organisations as well as new organisations, innovation and
change become important in a dynamic, changing environment. When a company fails
to innovate and change as needed, its customers, employees and the community at
large can all suffer. The ability to manage innovation and change is an essential part of
a manager's competencies.

5.1.1 . Types of Innovation

Three basic types of innovation are:
Technical,
(ii) Process and
(iii) Administrative.
Technical innovation involves creation of new goods and services. Many technical
innovations occur through research and development efforts intended to satisfy
demanding customers who are always seeking, new, better, faster and/or cheaper
products.

Process innovation involves creating a new way of producing, selling or distributing an

existing good or service.

Administrative innovation occurs when creation of a new organisation design better

supports the creation, production and delivery of goods and services.

The various types of innovation often go hand in hand. For example, the rapid
development of business to business e-commerce represents process innovation. But
this new process requires many technical innovations in computer hardware and
software. Also as firms began to use business to business e-commerce, administrative
innovation soon followed. Further, implementation of process innovations
necessitated organisational change. "Doing something new means doing something
differently". Thus, innovation and organisational change go hand in hand.

5.2. Importance of Creativity

Creativity goes hand in hand with innovation. And there is no innovation without
creativity. While creativity is the ability to produce new and unique ideas, innovation
is the implementation of that creativity - that's the introduction of a new idea, solution,
process, or product. Creativity is the driving force behind innovation and the

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incorporation of looking at things from a different perspective and freedom of
restrictions by rules and written or unwritten norms.

Creativity can help a company manage tasks, improve staff performance and create
quality products. It is also vital in fostering a likeable and aspirational company image.
With consumers now able to get a snapshot of what company life is like, businesses
need to be able to depict their inner culture in a way that makes it seem appealing.

As new technologies continue to develop and become available, companies have to

be flexible and able to keep up to date. Creativity allows them to easily identify new
ways in which technology can be applied to help their businesses. Likewise, with social
media and other interactive forms of marketing now available, it's never been more
important for companies to be able to be creative.

Allowing employees to be more creative can inspire them to come up with more
interesting ideas as well as improve their overall output. Many of the world's leading
companies have started to adopt unorthodox methods of encouraging maximum
creativity from their employees, such as sleeping pods and flexible working areas.

5.2.1 . Why is creativity important in business?

Creativity and innovation within a well-run companies have always been recognized
as a sure path to success. Stimulating creativity and exploring completely new and
unknown before territories lead as result to increasing the productivity of the
organisation. Encouraging the employees to think outside of the box and giving them
time and resources to explore new areas for innovative ideas is the key to costeffective
business solutions.

Creativity improves the process of solving problems. It doesn't matter if we're talking
about developing a new strategy or an innovative way to stay ahead of the
competition. Creative problem solving gives that competitive edge that any business
is striving to achieve.
Creative ideas and innovative approaches can come from almost anywhere- from your
partners, customers, target groups, employees. They can bring you fresh perspectives
and ideas, so show them that you're listening and open to their feedback. That's why
it is important an open exchange of ideas to be supported and encouraged by the
company.

5.3. Importance of Innovation

Innovation is important because it's the only way that you can differentiate your
products and services from those of your competitors. For customers and clients to
choose your business, your offer needs to be distinctive and valuable, and the only
way to achieve this is through innovation.
It can be tempting to let your rivals do all the heavy lifting of creativity and innovation,
with all the investment, experimentation and risks that this entails. Then, when they

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come up with a dazzling new product or improvement, you can simply copy what
they've done at a fraction of the effort. However, there are several pitfalls to this
approach.

Most importantly, you'll always be playing catch-up. However quickly you get your
version to market, your rivals will always have the lead on you and they'll already be
planning their next move. This means customers will go to your rivals first, who will
maintain a reputation for leading the pack. Your business won't stand out because
there'll always be someone else who's already met the needs and desires of your
customers. You'll harm your own brand, and could also risk infringing on your
competitor's intellectual property rights.

However, innovation doesn't have to be focused on changing a product or service. If

you can find an innovative new process that enables you to create a product more
efficiently without compromising on quality, you'll be able to stand out from your rivals
by undercutting their prices. Similarly, your innovation could come in the form of a
new distribution system, enabling you to stand out by offering the fastest delivery to
customers.

6. Difference Between Creativity and Innovation

There's a lot of confusion for creativity and innovation. In Creative types of working it
is claimed that creativity and innovation can't be measured while Performance
demands measurement. In a changing world that changes every second, it's essential
that companies figure out the difference between creativity and innovation.

6.1. Creativity vs. Innovation

• Creativity is the capability or act of conceiving something original or unusual
while Innovation is the implementation of something new.

• The main difference between creativity and innovation is the focus. Creativity
is about releasing the potential of the mind to visualize new ideas. Those
concepts could manifest themselves in any number of ways, but most often,
they become something we can see, hear, smell, touch, or taste. However,
creative ideas can also be thought experiments within one person's mind.

• Creativity is subjective, making it hard to measure, as our creative friends

assert.

• Innovation, on the other hand, is completely measurable. Innovation is about

introducing changes into relatively stable systems. It's also concerned with the
work required to make an idea feasible. By identifying an unrecognized and
unmet need, an organization can use innovation to apply its creative resources
to design an appropriate solution and reap a return on its investment.

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 • Invention is the creation of something that has never been made before and is
recognized as the product of some unique insight.

• If you have a brainstorm meeting and dream up dozens of new ideas then you
have displayed creativity but there is no innovation until something gets
implemented. Somebody has to take a risk and deliver something for a creative
idea to be turned into an innovation. An invention might be a product or device
or method that has never existed before.

• Organizations often chase creativity, but what they really need to pursue is
innovation. Theodore Levitt puts it best: "What is often lacking is not creativity
in the idea-creating sense but innovation in the action-producing sense, i.e.
putting ideas to work."

7. Need for Innovation and Creativity for an

Organization
Innovation is a new technique or idea encompassing product/services, processes,
managerial styles, and even organizational structures. It may be technology push or
demand-pull or even a combination of both. Research and development (R&D)
activities of an organization are examples of such innovation. In any organization, the
need for innovation is primarily felt to keep pace with the competition.

It has to be essentially customer focused as this backward linkage facilitates process-

centred innovative changes. Whether it is just-in-time (JIT) inventory control, supply
chain management (SCM), business process outsourcing (BPO), flexible manufacturing
systems (FMS), product/service customization, strategic backward or forward
integration, synergy through merger or acquisition, alliances or collaboration,
organizational re-engineering through TCM or Six Sigma practices, new work culture
as facilitator of organizational change, or any R&D initiative for value addition, which
broadly encompasses innovation, it all stems from the customers' explicit or implicit
needs. Mapping customers' needs and aligning the innovation initiative to customers'
needs, is what we need in this competitive world. Innovation is enabled by proactive
organizational behaviour practices.

It calls for creating a work environment that recognizes creativity, inter-organizational

co-operation (rather than competition and working as cross-functional teams),
productive meetings for innovative results, introduction of formal innovation
programmes, and finally the organization's receptivity to new ideas and perspectives.
Fostering innovation requires a structured approach. It has to be broadly in the given
context, leadership, values, and culture. Contextual analysis helps in building the
required innovation teams. Leaders facilitate the teams. Values enable adoption of
principles, which foster innovation, and finally the culture provides the playing field.

At this stage, it is pertinent to define creativity because innovation and creativity are
often used interchangeably in the work place. The Webster Dictionary has defined

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creativity as 'the ability or power to create, to bring into existence, to invest with a
new form, to produce through imaginative skill, to make or bring into existence
something new. Creativity is, therefore, the core competency.
It is the talent of the employees of an organization. Competitors can replicate the
strategies of an organization but not the creative talents of its employees. To
encourage creativity, an organization first creates the right environment where
employees feel safe even to come up with 'dumb' or 'crazy' ideas.

Creativity is often punished in organizations, as creative people spend more time in

getting ready for action. They are also more difficult to manage. Organizations,
therefore, often see them as major time and money wasters, and inhibit their creative
thoughts.

A review of creativity literature helps us to capture creative patterns in the

following ways:
1. A creative process is a balance of imagination and analysis. It involves idea
generation, analysis and evaluation.
2. Creativity does not stem from subconscious process, as traditionally believed
by the classical school of thoughts. It is a purposeful or directed attempt to generate
new ideas under a controlled situation to help an organization to leapfrog in
competition.

Paul E. Plsek (1997) used the term more appropriately as 'Directed Creativity'. It is a
purposeful generation of creative ideas with seriousness of its implementation,
whenever it matches with organizational requirements. Non-implementation of at
least some ideas (that fit the purpose) will inhibit creativity.

Innovation is the implementation of creative ideas. Therefore, creativity is the sub-set

of innovation. Innovation being a holistic concept, here we prefer to use the term
interchangeably. Competencies, on the other hand, are sets of behaviours, which
encompass skills, knowledge, abilities, and attributes.

Competencies are measurable and they change over time. Hamel and Prahalad (1990)
attributed business success only on innovative creativity, knowledge resources, and
the expertise, which together create the critical potential of an organization, that is,
the core competencies.

Other proponents of core competencies such as Quinn (1992), Drucker (1992), Porter
(1995), Waterman (1983), Peter (1988), Nonaka and Takeuchi (1955), and Senge
(1990), also showed that developing the core competencies helps an organization to
build its strategic power. The core competencies are difficult to duplicate by the
competitors because of their distinctiveness. Core competencies are, therefore,
critical success factors for any organization.
Although there exists, widespread differences regarding constituents of core
competencies and its relation with knowledge, skill, abilities, and attributes of
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employees, there is agreement among the proponents about how these are created
by linking the organization's goals, structures, and cultures.

Innovation and creativity help to develop the core competencies, supplementing

knowledge and skill base for the employees. In this respect, directed creativity, that is,
purposeful generation of new ideas matching the organizational requirements is more
relevant.

8. 10 Strategies for Increasing your Creativity and

Innovation
Now that you understand the various levels of creativity, you can implement some
strategies that will boost your company's ability to create and innovate.
1 . Truly creative people have developed their ability to observe and to use all of
their senses, which can get dull over time. Take time to "sharpen the blade" and
take everything in.
2. Innovation is based on knowledge. Therefore, you need to continually expand
your knowledge base. Read things you don't normally read.
3. Your perceptions may limit your reasoning. Be careful about how you're
perceiving things. In other words, defer judgment.
4. Practice guided imagery so you can "see" a concept come to life.
5. Let your ideas "incubate" by taking a break from them. For example, when I'm
working on a big business project, one of the best things I can do to take a break
from it is play my guitar or the flute for a few minutes, or take a ride on my
motorcycle. It shifts my brain into another place and helps me be more
innovative and creative.

6. Experience as much as you can. Exposure puts more ideas into your
subconscious. Actively seek out new experiences to broaden your
experience portfolio.
7. Treat patterns as part of the problem. Recognizing a new pattern is very useful,
but be careful not to become part of it.
8. Redefine the problem completely. One of the lines I've been sharing for the
past few decades is: "Your problem is not the problem; there is another
problem. When you define the real problem, you can solve it and move on."
After all, if you had correctly defined the real problem, you would have solved
it long ago because all problems have solutions.
9. Look where others aren't looking to see what others aren't seeing.
10. Come up with ideas at the beginning of the innovation process and then stop.
Many times we come up with several ideas and start innovating, and then we
come up with more ideas and never get a single idea done. At some point you
have to turn off the idea generation part of the process and really work on the
innovation and execution part in order to bring a project to life.

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 9. Stages of Design Thinking
The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (known as the d.school) describes
design thinking as a five-stage process. These stages are not always sequential, and
teams often run them in parallel, out of order and repeat them in an iterative
fashion.

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright

terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

9.1. Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs

In first stage of Design Thinking process you should gain an empathetic understanding
of the problem you're trying to solve, typically through user research. This involves
consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through observing,
engaging and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and
motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment so you can gain
a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved.Empathy is crucial to a human-
centered design process such as design thinking because it allows you to set aside your
own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and their needs.
9.2. Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and
Problems
During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and
gathered during the Empathise stage. You then analyze your observations and
synthesize them to define the core problems you and your team have identified. These
definitions are called problem statements. You can create personas to help keep your
efforts human-centered before proceeding to ideation.
The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish
features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems
or, at the very least, allow users to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of
difficulty. In the Define stage you will start to progress to the third stage, Ideate.

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 9.3. Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and
Create Ideas
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start
generating ideas. You've grown to understand your users and their needs in the
Empathise stage, and you've analysed and synthesised your observations in the Define
stage, and ended up with a human-centered problem statement. With this solid
backgroundnow you and your team members can start to "think outside the box", look
for alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the
problem statement you've created. Brainstorming is particularly useful here.lt is
important to get as many ideas or problem solutions as possible at the beginning of
the Ideation phase.

9.4. Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each
problem found. Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of
the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the ideas
you've generated. This could involve simply paper prototyping.
Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments, or
on a small group of people outside the design team. This is an experimental phase. The
solutions are implemented within the prototypes, and, one by one, they are
investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected on the basis
of the users' experiences. By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better
idea of the constraints inherent to the product and the problems that are present, and
have a clearer view of how real users would behave, think, and feel when interacting
with the end product.

9.5. Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

Evaluators rigorously test the prototypes. Although this is the final phase, design
thinking is iterative: Teams often use the results to redefine one or more further
problems. So, you can return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations
and refinements — to find or rule out alternative solutions.
Overall, you should understand that these stages are different modes which
contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps. Your goal
throughout is to gain the deepest understanding of the users and what their ideal
solution/product would be.

10. Implementing the process in driving innovation

Innovation is essential for the growth of any company. But that's a very generic way of
describing innovation. To successfully implement innovation, you need to know
exactly what makes an innovative organization as well as how it contributes to its
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growth.Given the growing interest in innovation, it's no surprise that organizations are
looking for clear guidelines on how to implement it. Every innovation is unique. Even
so, certain strategies and skills are useful across a range of projects and at all levels of
an organization:

10.1. Spot opportunities for innovation. As innovation expert Greg Satell puts it,
"No matter what form innovation takes—short, agile sprints or long-term,
grand-challenge investments—innovation is fundamentally about solving
problems." As you think about your organization, what problems need
solving? Where do opportunities lie? Once you land on some promising
ideas, continue to explore them from different angles. By doing so, you may
discover even more exciting possibilities.

10.2. Prioritize opportunities. You don't have infinite time and resources, so
prioritize potential innovations depending on where you think you'll get the
most bang for your buck. Narrow in on the two or three ideas you think are
most worth digging into, testing, and refining. Then express them as
hypotheses you can test through targeted experiments.

10.3. Test your potential innovations. Keep your experiments modest in scope,
especially when you're starting out. You may want to begin with "paper
prototypes," or simple drawings of the new product or process that your
end users can interact with to see what works and what doesn't. They are
quick and inexpensive, and they help you figure out where you need to
tweak your concept. With each round of testing, move to progressively
more complex experiments involving more users.

10.4. Build support for your innovations. Don't be shy. Make sure the time is right
and tell your story to all your stakeholders, including those whose resource
backing you need and those who'll directly benefit from your innovation.
You'll want to tailor your approach based on what's important to each
person and what you need from them.

10.5. Learn from your innovation efforts. You've probably heard the mantra "fail
fast, learn fast." After each innovation, list what you would do again and
what you wouldn't. And don't overthink failure; the key is learn from it and
apply those lessons to your next innovation.

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