Design thinking is an iterative, non-linear process that seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create prototyped, testable solutions.
Table of Contents
Why call it Design Thinking?
Design thinking helps us extract, teach, learn, and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems creatively and innovatively. Design Thinking is the framework UX designers use to tackle big, complicated, or unknown problems.
Design thinking aims to identify alternative strategies and solutions that aren’t immediately obvious. Design thinking began as a way to create innovative products. This methodology is now used worldwide for business and personal projects in the private and public sectors.
If you want to work or launch your career in design thinking, take the help of a recognized design thinking bootcamp.
Here’s a definition and explanation of this creative problem-solving technique.
Why is Design Thinking important?
Design thinking helps designers create user-friendly products that solve problems.
The design thinking phases aren’t linear. Different user journey stages may spark new ideas or reveal new findings, inspiring new iterations of completed steps.
Using the five stages of design thinking, creators constantly test new angles. Here’s how.
5 Stages of Design Thinking
Stage 1: Empathy
Designers sit down with actual people and listen to their thoughts and feelings without bias during this step of the design thinking technique.
Designers who don’t try to learn empathy face an uphill battle when trying to solve human-centric problems. This vital and required bridge between the target customer or audience and any product, project, or service produced is built via empathy in design thinking.
When it comes to designing, empathy is a critical step in the process since it enables designers to learn more about the people who will use their products. It is nearly impossible to truly solve a user’s problem if you don’t begin with empathy.
Stage 2: Define
In this stage of the design process, designers must concisely articulate the challenge or problem they are attempting to solve with their work.
After empathizing, a designer applies what they’ve learned from their studies to the topic and develops a clear explanation of the problem.
During this phase, designers will review and synthesize the insights they gained during the empathy stage. To keep the focus on the end-user, it’s critical to craft a clear, brief problem description during this stage. Design thinking’s definition step should therefore help define the problem in terms of what the user requires rather than what the firm might need to do.
Stage 3: Ideate
Inventing is the key to creativity. Designers ideate new solutions to the challenge after capturing the human experience through empathy. During this stage, designers frequently don’t worry about budget or scalability.
At this point, designers should understand their target group, so they can get creative and not focus on constraints.
Stage 4: Prototype
Without testing a new idea, designers can’t solve the problem thoroughly. At this level, a prototype is needed, but the ramifications are flexible. Sketches, models, or digital renderings can be prototypes.
Prototyping involves creating minor, affordable product versions. These can contain features to target individual problem-solution scenarios and set the stage for decision-making interactions.
In the prototype stage, the purpose is to grasp all product repercussions or barriers fully. Prototyping should also identify user experience concerns and give designers a clearer picture of user behaviors, reactions, and expectations.
Stage 5: Test
Testing requires real users to create accurate data. However, designers won’t stop at the final stage of design thought. Design thinking is iterative. Therefore, designers create several prototypes to test their ideas. User experiences and solutions can’t scale without thorough testing.
During testing, designers can expect revisions, adjustments, and refinements. It’s normal for the testing phase to “restart” other design thinking stages like ideation or testing, as new ideas may generate other potential solutions that require a fresh approach.
Let’s get into more details.
Let’s discuss why Design Thinking matters now that we know how it works.
Why use design thinking?
First, Design Thinking stimulates creativity and innovation. We use our knowledge and experiences to guide our actions.
So, design thinking allows us to think beyond the box and develop unique ideas. In design thinking, we accept the initial problem as a suggestion, not as a final declaration, and we think broadly about the real challenges.
Instead of focusing on the answer, design thinking encourages us to challenge the question, assumption, and fundamental cause of the problem, which leads to new perspectives and unique solutions.
As a result, it addresses the needs and requirements of users first. It guarantees that results are by objectives and the client’s expectations.
As previously discussed, designers must develop empathy with their target audience and learn about their wants, needs, and behaviors. Focus on concepts quickly developed into prototypes and tested on real consumers, then move on to the next step.
Getting feedback from clients early and often in the design process will allow designers to iterate on their idea and make any necessary adjustments before the product is built.
It has also been subjected to multiple rounds of testing and client/user feedback before it is launched so that we can finally publish the product and deliver one that is certain to suit the needs of our clients.
Designers benefit significantly from using Design Thinking, but it also develops a culture of creativity and user-centeredness at every company level.
Takeaway
The non-linear and iterative method known as design thinking offers a solution-oriented strategy for resolving the issue at hand.
The design thinking approach can make it possible to view the project from a distinct perspective, from the facts.
Rather than focusing on the solution, design thinking can enhance your ability to question the problem, the assumptions, and the implications leading to the issue in various ways.
In addition, as a further significant fact, design thinking encourages designers to engage in “out-of-the-box” thinking, which fosters designers to delve further into the issue to find original and inventive solutions.
Learn more about this subject with the help of the UMass Bootcamp, and take the next step in your professional development.