DESIGN THINKING

Ashis K Pani
 Why do we need design thinking?

The short answer is that it brings everyone—

beyond designers and developers—into to product
design process.

This in turn helps entire organizations scale their

design processes to create better, human-centered
user experiences and disruptive products

© 2021, Dr. Arindra Mishra 2

Develop a new pencil
Your company Penraj pencil company makes 2 models of
pencils. As a project manager, you are asked to develop the
plan for a new pencil to expand the portfolio.

How will you go about this process?

➤ On a scale of 1 to 5, rate this process based on:

1. Complexity of problem
2. Number of factors to be considered
3. Ease of solving the problem
4. Stability of user requirements
5. Reliability and trust in the data
6. Completeness of problem definition
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 3
Develop a new people’s car
Your company Lata Motors is a renowned manufacturer of
commercial and passenger vehicles. You are asked to manage
the development of a new economical car with a strict
constraint on the retail price of the car.

How will you go about this process?

➤ On a scale of 1 to 5, rate this process based on:
1. Complexity of problem
2. Number of factors to be considered
3. Ease of solving the problem
4. Stability of user requirements
5. Reliability and trust in the data
6. Completeness of problem definition
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 4
Super villain of all problems
Handling the impact of covid-19 for countries, companies and
individuals. Whether you are the president of an African country
who wants to plan a lockdown or an individual in US who does
not know what to do if you don’t get access to toilet paper.

➤ How will you go about this process?

➤ On a scale of 1 to 5, rate this process based on:
1. Complexity of problem
2. Number of factors to be considered
3. Ease of solving the problem
4. Stability of user requirements
5. Reliability and trust in the data
6. Completeness of problem definition
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 5
Complexity

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 6

Uncertainty

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 7

 Wicked problems are problems with many interdependent factors making them seem impossible to solve.
Because the factors are often incomplete and difficult to define, solving wicked problems requires a deep
understanding of the stakeholders involved, and an innovative approach provided by design thinking

Examples: things like education design, financial crises, health

care, hunger, income disparity, obesity, poverty, terrorism, and
sustainability.
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 8
Problem centric thinking
Every person approaches a problem in a different way. Some focus on the problem or the reason
why a problem emerged (problem focused thinking).

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 9

Solution centric thinking
People prefer to think about possible solutions that help them to solve a problem (solution focused thinking).

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 10

Design Thinking
• Empathize with people's needs,
• Collaborate with others across disciplines, skill sets,
and perspectives,
• Include every idea in visible form for evaluation, and
• Repeat, iterating and testing solutions to perfect
them, always with human needs at the center.
A comparison

Traditional thinking Design Thinking

› Avoid any mistakes › Embrace mistakes and failure

› Sustain order › Take risks

› One way solution › Interactive solution

› Focus on meeting financial and technical › Driven by user’s problem, pain points
targets › Experiment to find a better answer
› Find the best answer › Iteratively doing, testing and redoing
› Planning things

12
 Design Thinking
Thinking about designing solutions to problems in
such a manner that we develop solutions that
understands and exceeds user’s expectations.

• A focus on user outcomes

• Primary criteria for success is not financial or

technical indicator but user satisfaction

• IBM calls it ‘restless reinvention’

Who are you designing for, and what do they need?

13
Why is design thinking so important?
It helps us observe and develop empathy 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 a human-centered approach to innovation-anchored

in understanding customer's needs, rapid prototyping, and generating
creative ideas—that will transform the way you develop products, services,
processes, and organizations.

The three most common innovation challenges in design thinking

are people desirability, business viability and technical feasibility.
People desirability concerns where there is a market, or desire, for the
product or service.
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 14
Four questions of Design Thinking
›  Prof Jeanne Liedtka from Darden Business School identifies
four stages: 

1. What is?,
2. What if?,
3. What wows?,
4. and What works?

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 15

Empathy
› Empathy is the ability to understand and share the feelings of
others.

› Sympathy: showing Compassion , sorrow, feelings or pity for

another person

› Empathy is putting yourself in customer shoes

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 16

What Is Design Thinking?
• Clarify: In this phase, the practitioner narrows down the focus of the
design thinking process.

• Ideate: In this phase, the practitioner generates ideas for solutions.

• Develop: In this phase, the practitioner experiments with the

solutions they conceived in the ideate phase.

• Implement:

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 17

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 18
Design Thinking Steps

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 20

Design Thinking Process

Problem Space Solution Space

Design Design
Challenge Solution
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 21
Design Thinking Process

Problem Space Solution Space

Design Design
Challenge Solution
© 2021, All Rights Reserved 22
Design Thinking could also look like this

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 23

Stanford D. School's framework for Design Thinking

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 24

© 2021, Dr. Arindra Mishra 25
The five stages of design thinking, according to the
d.school, are:

• Empathize: research your users' needs.

• Define: state your users' needs and problems.

• Ideate: challenge assumptions and create ideas.

• Prototype: start to create solutions.

• Test: try your solutions out.

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 26
Design Thinking Methods & Tools

Design Thinkers Group Empathize | (Re)frame | Ideate | Prototype | Test

Stanford d.school Empathize | Define | Ideate | Prototype | Test
Ideo Gather | Generate | Make | Share
Ideo v2.0 Inspiration | Ideation | Implementation
Luma Institute Looking | Understanding | Making
IBM Observe | Reflect | Make
FSU Innovation Hub Empathize | Ideate | Build
Design Thinking Process

Individually
Roll no 1-57 Roll No 58-114
How can the Air Travel experience be
How can the cycles be improved? improved?

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 28

Let’s look at the following HR processes and how Design Thinking can
each of them

Performance Management: Performance management aims at

recognizing the meaningful work that employees do and rewarding that
appropriately. Employees often complain about not being lauded for their
contribution and HR departments themselves often struggle with the ways
of gauging performance. Design Thinking can make this process more
effective by using tools of surveys to connect and empathise with the
employees and understand their concerns and expectations. Automated
performance management system (PMS) platforms can help managers stay 32
© 2021, All Rights Reserved
Let’s look at the following HR processes and how Design Thinking can
each of them

Compensation and Benefits: Compensation and benefits comprises a large part of what the
HR department handles. Right from the time a candidate joins a company, gets promoted to
the time he quits or retires, the HR department reviews and updates his/her compensation.
Design Thinking methods can help the HR team to understand the requirements and
expectations of the employees and the budgets of the employers and optimise the
compensation accordingly. Even while designing policies, an empathy driven approach can
help formulate policies that meet the needs of the employees and truly benefit them.

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 34

Examples of Design Thinking

The Microsoft Zune Spotify Tesla Slack

Although it had some Easy to use playlists Are you making an Enterprise
extra features like Electric Vehicle or a Car? communication solution.
wireless connectivity. It AI recommendation
failed to set itself apart engine that curates daily Software centric or Known for excellent
due to poor innovation. and ‘discover weekly’ digital first customer service,
playlists handled by experts.
Using iTunes store was Continuous, iterative
far easier than Zune Encourages sharing of improvements Very high focus on
store since Zune had playback, statistics and quickly absorbing
playlists Providing a medium for customer feedback and
point system. people to take part in coordinating it with the
going green development team

© 2021, All Rights Reserved 36

Problem Statement

How might you improve the grocery

shopping experience in a manner that
positively impacts people and the
environment?
 What is design thinking?

› An iterative process of finding solutions to problems

› Performs better for wicked problems
› Customer centric approach
› Focus on improving customer experience and satisfaction
Summary › Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test

How to use it?

› Understand the customer (Customer Journey Mapping,

Empathy mapping, etc)
› Innovate iteratively (MVP, Post MVP, Young Product,
Mature Product)
› Listen more, Do more, Learn more
38