DESIGN THINKING

STRATEGIES FOR
INNOVATION AND
BUSINESS SUCCESS
KEY WORDS

•Design thinking
•Innovation
•Business Success
WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?
• Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to
understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create
innovative solutions to prototype and test.
• Design Thinking (DT) is a way of solving complex business problems using
empathy, ideation, and experimentation.
• Its methodology has helped businesses ranging from startups to larger
organizations tap into their target markets by acting on changes in our
behavior and environment.
• It is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or unknown.
INVENTION
VS
INNOVATION
BUSINESS SUCCESS ??

• Business success is generally defined in terms of economic or financial terms

which includes Return on Capital employed / Return on Investment, creation
of assets, sales, profits, valuation of the company, Share holders return, etc
• Unicorn companies are those companies that have a valuation of over one
billion dollars in the early years. These are private companies that are not
listed on the stock exchange.
WHO INVENTED DESIGN THINKING ?

Cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate

Herbert A. Simon first mentioned design
thinking in his 1969 book, The Sciences of the
Artificial, and then contributed many ideas to
its principles.
WHY DESIGN THINKING IS SO POPULAR AND
EFFECTIVE?
• Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and
General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach.
• Design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world,
including Stanford, Harvard, and MIT.
• Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers—all great innovators in
literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it.
• Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative
solutions for your problems.
• It is a human-focused, prototype-driven, innovative design process.
THE 5 STAGES IN THE DESIGN THINKING PROCESS
STAGE 1: EMPATHIZE—RESEARCH YOUR USERS' NEEDS

• Here, you should gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re

trying to solve, typically through user research.
• 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.
STAGE 2: DEFINE—STATE YOUR USERS' NEEDS AND
PROBLEMS

• It’s time to accumulate the information gathered during

the Empathize 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.
STAGE 3: IDEATE—CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS AND CREATE
IDEAS

• Now, you’re ready to generate ideas.

• The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means you 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..
STAGE 4: PROTOTYPE—START TO CREATE SOLUTIONS

• This is an experimental phase. A prototype is a preliminary or first model of

something.
• 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.
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.
HOW DESIGN THINKING IS USED FOR INNOVATION?

• Design thinking minimises the uncertainty and risk of innovation by

engaging customers or users through a series of prototypes to learn, test, and
refine concepts. Design thinkers rely on customer insights gained from real-
world experiments, not just historical data or market research.
• 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.
WHY IS DESIGN THINKING SO IMPORTANT?

• In user experience (UX) design, it’s crucial to develop and refine

skills to understand and address rapid changes in users’
environments and behaviors.
• Twenty-first-century organizations from a wide range of industries
find design thinking a valuable means to problem-solve for the
users of their products and services.
• Design teams use design thinking to tackle
ill-defined/unknown problems because they can reframe these
in human-centric ways and focus on what’s most important for
users.
• Of all design processes, design thinking is almost certainly the best for
“thinking outside the box”.
• With it, teams can do better UX research, prototyping and usability testing to
uncover new ways to meet users’ needs.
• Design thinking’s value as a world-improving, driving force in business
(global heavyweights such as Google, Apple and Airbnb have wielded it to
notable effect) matches its status as a popular subject at leading international
universities.
• With design thinking, teams have the freedom to generate ground-
breaking solutions.
• Using it, your team can get behind hard-to-access insights and apply a
collection of hands-on methods to help find innovative answers.
FOUR CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS WHEN IMPLEMENTING
DESIGN THINKING:

• 1. Leadership: Link design thinking initiatives to your strategic goals.

Provide direction, resources, and commitment.
• 2. People: Enable champions to lead the change through successful
lighthouse projects. Build up an internal design thinking community where
best practices are shared.
• 3. Process: Use the generic design thinking framework, but evolve the
method and tools so they support your company’s objectives.
• 4. Environment: Develop and create collaborative workspaces for your
workforce. Use to co-innovate with your customers and partners.
10 BENEFITS OF USING
THE PRINCIPLES OF
DESIGN THINKING
1. INCREASED INNOVATION OUTPUT

• The design thinking process is user-centric that allows you to build

innovative solutions.
• The principles of design thinking give you the ability to create products that
add value to your users’ lives.
• This not only permits you to have happy customers but also experience
improved revenue, increased sales, and referral rates.
• Through design thinking, you can also iterate on your existing products and
improve them to meet your customers’ needs.
2. IMPROVED UNDERSTANDING OF CUSTOMERS
• The principles of design thinking compel you to understand your customer’s
behavior deeply.
• That includes knowing their daily habits, fears, pain points, and motivation,
allowing you to have empathy for those who will use your product.
• As a result, you can create innovative products that actually cater to your
customers’ demands.
3. ELIMINATION OF COGNITIVE FIXEDNESS

• Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind that consciously or unconsciously

creates an interpretation of a given situation.
• The principles of design thinking help you overcome cognitive fixedness.
• You get a new and more rational perspective to see your product.
• Likewise, it lets you explore more creative and much better ways to find
solutions.
4. ENHANCED PRODUCT USABILITY AND ACCEPTANCE RATE

• One of the benefits of design thinking is increased product usability.

• It enables you to build products that customers love to use.
• And since you hit the core needs through your product, it automatically
attracts more users and converts prospects.
5. MORE FOCUSED ON EXPERIMENTATION AND CREATIVITY

• The principles of design thinking revolve around design, testing, and iteration.
When these three factors are combined, they allow you to build winning
products. Why so? It is because the design thinking approach helps you create
numerous prototypes in a minimum time period.
• You are able to receive fast feedback from real users and continue
experimenting until the solution matches users’ demands. Moreover, design
thinking also helps you decide what features to add, exclude, or modify in your
current idea to make it more user-centric.
6. OFFERS SOLUTIONS TO CUSTOMERS’ PROBLEMS

• The design thinking process is human-centered.

• It permits you to identify and solve problems for all industries at all levels.
• At the same time, design thinking principles help your business provide a
way out of the most challenging obstacles once they are discovered.
7. EXPANDED DESIGN THINKERS’ VISION

• Assuming to build a problem-solving product without design thinkers on

your side, no way! Design thinkers are people who are exposed to a wide
range of problems and know possible solutions. So what makes them so
hawkeyed? It is the knowledge of the principles of design thinking.
• These principles allow them to visualize situations through an observational
approach, letting them know what consumers look for in products. In fact,
they can see solutions which may not be visible even to users.
8. OVERCOMING WICKED PROBLEMS

• A “wicked problem” refers to a situation where teams cannot clearly

point out issues that prevent them from proposing a way out. It slows the
product-building process and kills time. So, if you come across this big rock,
you can use the principles of design thinking to climb over it. Indeed, design
thinking removes the veil from the missing puzzles and permits you to find
possible solutions through constant testing.
9. RESOURCE CUT DOWN

• Design thinking streamlines the entire innovation process. It makes your

daily operations more efficient and purposeful. Mistakes and failures are
expected during product iteration and idea testing, but design thinking
principles give you actionable next steps. Thus, allowing you to save time
and money as you don’t repeat the development cycle from the initial phase.
10. LEADING TEAM TOWARDS TANGIBLE RESULTS

• Paired with high technical expertise, the principles of design thinking enable
teams to build successful products. When you adopt design thinking for team
building, it empowers teams to create products which ensure user retention
and fruitful results.
DESIGN THINKING & INNOVATION

• Why is design thinking needed? Innovation is defined as a product, process,

service, or business model featuring two critical characteristics: novel and
useful. Yet, there’s no use in creating something new and novel if people
won’t use it. Design thinking offers innovation the upgrade it needs to inspire
meaningful and impactful solutions.
DESIGN THINKING & BUSINESS SUCCESS

• Business success is generally defined in terms of economic or financial terms

which includes Return on Capital employed / Return on Investment, creation
of assets, sales, profits, valuation of the company, Share holders return, etc
• Design thinking helps get higher ROCE / ROI, Sales, Profits, etc, through
development of right product and reduce cost of production, wastage, etc.
THANK YOU