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WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?
Basic Concepts - Pipefy Communication
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Table of Contents:
1. Concept of Design Thinking
2. Complex problems demand complex solutions
3. Focus on the customer
4. Multidisciplinary approach
5. The Design Thinking Process
6. How to use Design Thinking
7. Use Design Thinking with Pipefy
Concept of Design Thinking:
The first thing you need to know about design thinking is: it's customer centric - instead of looking from the outside in, it works the other way around.
Stanford University Professor and founder of design firm IDEO, David Kelley defined Design Thinking as:
A human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.
Concept of Design Thinking:
Design is a concept often used to describe a product, object or end result.
Design thinking is about offering a protocol for solving existing problems and uncovering new opportunities.
Definitions, tools and methods used to apply it may vary but one thing never changes: design thinking can create a steady foundation for skyrocketing a business.
Complex problems demand complex solutions:
Today's organizations face much more complex problems because of the increasingly complexity of business models.
The modern market offers a lot of advantages but along with unique opportunities come unique challenges.
These challenges are not as common as the ones companies faced and demand more complex, muiltidimensional solutions.
Complex problems demand complex solutions:
Staying relevant demands innovation and disruption - that’s the only way of achieving growth and achieving higher profit.
This scenario is where design thinking comes into the picture: it offers businesses with a simple framework, that allows them to tackle everyday challenges as well as gain a competitive edge.
Complex problems demand complex solutions:
Design thinking is a process of creating and testing innovative ideas to improve anything (a product, a service, a process) or solve existing problems.
Design thinking provides a “generic” framework that's applicable to all areas of expertise of your company and on the market.
Complex problems demand complex solutions:
Design thinking processes can have varied outcomes: new and improved products or services as well as improved management processes to boost internal productivity.
For not being constrained to one are area, design thinking can be a path for transforming your entire business.
Focus on the costumer:
According to David Kelley’s definition of design thinking we presented on the beginning of this article, we can extract the three main elements of a product or solution:
• people
• technology
• business
These three aspects must revolve - and evolve - around the customer.
Focus on the costumer:
The customer is the driving force that moves the present and future of every business.
Products or services, focused on internal or external customers, they must all create unique value while focused on specific business needs.
None of this is possible unless the customer is involved as an integral part of the entire product/service lifecycle instead of just considered a commercial goal.
Focus on the costumer:
It has been proved by numerous researches that companies, teams or projects that don’t drive their efforts focused on their target customer are bound to fail.
With design thinking, the customer is on the spotlight for any solution.
It seems logical to focus on pleasing your targeted users but many companies make this simple mistake and don't consider their customer a part of the equation.
Multidisciplinary approach:
Design thinking is about consistently applying the values embraced by this concept: empathy, diversity and ambiguity.
This reinforces the necessity of having multidisciplinary teams in order to look at the customer’s needs from every angle.
These values reflect ideas derived from well-known principles or best practices.
What design thinking does is incorporate all of them into a concise, coherent and repeatable process.
The Design Thinking Process:
The design thinking process, whether used to innovate or solve a problem, whether applied to a product or service, consists mainly in four actions:
• What’s the problem?
• Two options are better than one
• Define and refine
• Put words into action
What’s the problem?
As usual, the first step is the most important.
Defining a problem may sound simple but doing it right is key for a successful design thinking process.
This phase is less about explaining a problem and more about defining the right problem to solve.
In the design thinking process, observing the situation and the existing scenarios is mandatory.
What’s the problem?
Observation is essential to help form solid ideas and perspectives of the reality.
It is one thing being told what people do, it’s a completely different thing to observe them do it and take note of all the details they may don’t even realize.
Observation allows you to think outside the box by experiencing the product, service or process you wish to improve.
What’s the problem?
The problem definition phase of design thinking requires observation from multiple perspectives as well as constant and sometimes relentless questioning.
Remember when you were a kid and just couldn’t stop asking questions wanting to know all the “whys”?
The method of relentlessly questioning makes it a lot easier to observe all variables and reveal the true issues.
What’s the problem?
Take into consideration that the choice of words for defining a problem is very, very important.
What you mean won’t necessarily be what people understand unless you say it in a way they can understand it.
Words are tricky, they can be your best friend or your worst enemy.
It’s essential that you present the problem in a way to invite innovative and disruptive solutions.
Two options are better than one:
It’s easy to fall into a cycle and always try to solve a problem the same way. What’s insane, though, is to try the same thing every time and expect different results.
When an existing easy solution presents successful results within a reduced time frame, people tend to stick to what they know is safe instead of innovating -That goes entirely against the purpose of design thinking.
Two options are better than one:
No matter how easy or obvious a solution might seem, many alternatives must be created for consideration.
Adopting different perspectives of observing a problem helps a lot when trying to develop innovative ideas to solve it.
We’re frequently unaware of the constraints we face when presenting answers to problems.
Having multiple perspectives from a multidisciplinary team are crucial to recognize all the opportunities to solve a problem.
Two options are better than one:
Always remember this results proven by multiple design thinking researches: it’s a lot more likely to gather good ideas from five different people working together for a day than from one person working at this same idea with a single point of view for 5 days.
Define and Refine:
Even the strongest of new ideas can be fragile if it’s not embraced and nurtured until it’s applicable.
If an idea is not given a chance to grow protected from its nemesis, the previous experience, it can fall before it even has a chance to stand up.
Design thinking exists to let opportunities grow to their full potential!
Define and Refine:
It’s essential that your work philosophy stimulates out of the ordinary results. That’s the only way you’ll be able to think outside the box and be as bold as necessary.
The design thinking process is not linear: it’s perfectly fine if you realize you need to go back to looking for options if the ones you’ve been working on aren’t exactly what you need.
Put words into action:
After creating and nurturing your winner idea, it’s time to put it into action and see how well it works in real life.
Figure out all the resources you’ll need in order to operationalize the idea and get to working.
The road to success in design thinking consists on a combination between a great idea and a great execution.
Prototyping a solution and considering all possible scenarios is key in this stage so you’re sure all your basis are covered.
How to use Design Thinking?
Design thinking experts may describe the process differently, breaking it down into three, four or even seven stages.
Herbert A. Simon’s phases of the process (define, research, ideate, prototype, choose, implement and learn) were the ones we’ve used as basis for our Design Thinking Template.
At the end of the day, though, it doesn’t matter how you choose to break it, the process all comes down to different views of a same process.
How to use Design Thinking?
World renowned designer Charles Eames once said:
Design depends largely on constraints.
For the design thinking process, that’s specially true: in order to think outside the box you need to first define the restrictions presented by the box.
That way you can “force” yourself to be creative and disruptive.
Design thinking is not just a way of innovating, it’s a defined, repeatable process proven to deliver consistent results.
How to use Design Thinking?
Extraordinary results demand extraordinary thinking.
That’s one of the main reasons why design thinking is such an important methodology a growing number of businesses are embracing to improve themselves and gain competitive edges.
Use Design Thinking with Pipefy!
As mentioned more than once, design thinking is a defined, repeatable process and, for that reason, we’ve built a comprehensive, widely adaptable process template.
It provides companies worldwide with the wireframe to start thinking outside the box and creating extraordinary solutions.
Pipefy’s Design Thinking Template is ideal for creating innovative strategies, understanding your customers and solving day-to-day problems in a dynamic way.
Use Design Thinking with Pipefy!
Design thinking is a human-centered process and using this template you will be able to centralise all the process’ information and won’t lose any data!
It’s divided into 6 phases (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test and reflection) to help your company go through all the stages of the design thinking process and produce outstanding innovative results.
Start innovating with Design Thinking and Pipefy!Enjoy the 30-day free trial and start creating innovative, disruptive ideas.
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