USING DESIGN

THINKING
CHAPTER 6
LEARNING OUTCOMES

• Define design thinking

• Understand the history on design thinking
• Explain the building blocks of design thinking
• Apply the strategies and tools for incorporating design-thinking into
your creative process
What is design thinking?

• Design thinking has been written about and defined in many ways by
many people – but at its heart, what is it?
• What sets it apart from the design work of your parents and
grandparents – or even the design techniques you learned in school –
can be broken down into three major categories:
a. Focus
b. Speed
c. Process
Focus on Human-Centeredness

• Human-centered design is exactly what it sounds like – design that

takes extra care to anticipate and meet the needs of its audience. Of
course, on a basic level, this is what all designs seek to do. However,
design thinking disrupts old ideas about what it means to create a
human-centered product by recognizing a few things:
• Designers should look at the project from the perspective of the end
user
• The people who know the project best may have developed biases
about it
• The key to creating effective designs is empathy
 Emphasis on Rapid Iteration

• It’s not likely that you’ll create the perfect design on the first try,
which is why revision is such an important part of any design process.
In design thinking, iterating through many different versions of an
idea is essential to figuring out what is working well in a design and
what is not. To do this, design thinkers use strategies like:
• Relying on quick prototypes/drafts to communicate ideas
• Creating prototypes/drafts that can easily be adjusted
• Producing a high-resolution prototype only after several rounds of
low-resolution prototyping
 Increasingly Collaborative Process

• Avoiding your own personal biases and opinions is absolutely

essential if you want to create a product that truly meets the needs
of your audience. But how can you tell whether your idea will be a
good solution? Design thinkers check their own personal biases
through collaboration in several ways:
1. Seeking out and incorporating feedback from stakeholders
2. Seeking out and incorporating advice from experts when
necessary
3. Brainstorming with a team of designers to come up with
an
appropriate solution
Where did design thinking come from?
-the roots of design thinking can actually be traced back more than 50 years. In this
section, we’ll give a brief overview of the people and movements that have influenced
design thinking since the 1960s
A Creative Revolution: 1960-1980

• The 1960s and 1970s were revolutionary in many ways – people were
creating music, art, and change in ways the world had never seen
before. These two decades had a profound impact on design as well.
• The emergence of design science and ergonomics, as well as design
strategies such as cooperative design, set the stage for what would
later become design thinking and human-centered design.
Understanding Creators: 1980-1990

• With the foundation of design thinking already laid, the world

became increasingly interested in something else – what exactly
makes a creative person creative, and what sets that person apart
from everybody else?
• During this era, psychologists and sociologists took a keen interest in
how designers work, both on their own and in teams. We began to
piece together what conditions and processes helped creative
people, well… create. This helped give structure and strategy to the
creative processes developed in the previous two decades.
Creativity as a Service: 1990-2010

• The strategies of design thinking aren’t just helpful to designers – in

fact, they can be applied to virtually every field out there. People
began using design thinking to tackle problems that weren’t
obviously design-related – instead of using design thinking to create a
better chair, they began to experiment with using design thinking to
improve workflows and interpersonal interactions.
• Another important development of the 1990s and 2000-aughts is
that designers began creating new design tools, which could be used
by designers and non-designers alike. This allowed an unprecedented
number of people to begin experimenting with design and the core
ideas of design thinking.
Design Thinking Today: 2010-
Present

• Today, design thinking is finally beginning to gain broad recognition as

an essential strategy in traditional design disciplines as well as a
variety of other fields, like business. Design thinking is transforming
workflows for everyone from amateur designers to corporate design
professionals, setting us up for a brighter future.
What are the building blocks of
design thinking?

• Luckily, design thinking is based on skills that anyone can develop at

any time. To improve design thinking ability, really hone in on these
skills:
1. Observation
2. Ideation
3. Prototyping
4. Testing
 Observation

• Whether you’re designing a building, a menu, a workflow, or

something else entirely, one thing is for certain – before you can
create a solution, you have to understand the problem.
• In order to produce a design that delivers a functional and
meaningful experience to the end user, you have to start at the
beginning.
• If possible, start out with end users. Talk to stakeholders, organize a
focus group, schedule interviews, or observe users interacting with
previous versions of the product.
 Ideation

• For most designers, this is the fun part and the part that comes
most naturally – generating creative ideas. To promote creativity,
increase human-centeredness, and eliminate biases, use
strategies such as:
1. Collaboration. Work with a team to ideate. If 2 heads
are better than 1, imagine how many solutions you can
generate with 3, or 4, or…
2. Sticky note ideation. This is a strategy that lets all
members of your team quickly get all of their thoughts
out on the table by giving every idea – the good, the bad, and the
ugly – its own sticky note.
3. Pretotyping. No, that isn’t a typo. Before you pick a
solution and prototype it, create an even faster, lower
resolution prototype known as a pretotype to help you work
out early design kinks and compare different ideas.
 Prototyping

• After ideating, select a solution that seems to hold a great deal of

promise. This isn’t the time to create a full-blown, high-resolution
product – you want a prototype that you can manipulate and adjust
throughout the testing process if need be. Your goal is to convey the
look, feel, and functionality of your design as quickly and easily as
possible.
• Consider prototyping in the form of:
1. Mockups
2. Simulations
3. Process sketches
 Testing

• This is where the human-centered magic happens. Testing should be

a participatory experience involving end users.
• Encourage participants to interact playfully with your prototype and
give genuine feedback.
• Observe carefully. Once you have gathered all of the information you
possibly can, it’s back to the drawing board for another iteration.
How to Boost Your Creative
Effectiveness with Design Thinking

1. Take advantage of tools for brainstorming and content

collaboration
2. Encourage new voices to join the conversation
3. Don’t think of failures as failures
 Take advantage of tools for brainstorming
and content collaboration

• Collaboration is the key to eliminating bias and generating truly

human-centered designs. To make the process easier, take advantage
of online tools like this brainstorming template from Dropbox. You
won’t have to mess around with formatting your brainstorming
document because this template for Dropbox Paper gives you
everything you need to:
• Capture thoughts quickly
• Invite collaborators to share their ideas
• Co-create in real time with your team
 Encourage new voices to join the
conversation

• Remember when we mentioned that collaboration is the key to

eliminating bias and creating effective designs? We’re saying it again
because it’s super important, and it’s also a really easy way you can
adjust your creative process to benefit from design thinking.
• If you aren’t already working with a team, simply invite stakeholders
or colleagues to work with you at key stages in the design process:
• Brainstorming solutions
• Testing prototypes
• Making decisions about the next iteration of your design
Don’t think of failures as failures

• Design thinkers believe in rapid iteration. Another way to phrase

that? Fail fast, fail often.
• Maybe that’s a little bit surprising – after all, nobody wants to mess
up. However, it’s important to remember that design thinking is all
about constant learning and improving. A failure isn’t really a failure
– it’s a valuable piece of information about your design.