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Notes on Design Thinking

I’m increasingly big on frameworks for structured thinking, and of course design thinking is very popular right now. So when the opportunity came to attend a design thinking workshop (thanks to the lovely ladies at Femme Palette), I was immediately sold.

This post is meant to be sort of a reminder/notes for myself, and a short intro for anybody else wanting to learn more about it.

Concerning the materials, I found a wonderful workshop kit that’s free to download over at Marvel, so you can download it, follow along or even organise your own workshop! The package contains all you’d need for participants and facilitators, so it’s a really comprehensive resource.

What is it?

Design is oftentimes mistaken for an aesthetic-focused field. On the contrary—while pleasing aesthetics is often a side product of good design, the main objective of design is to solve problems while putting users and experiences first.

Design thinking is a methodology used by designers to facilitate ideation and rapid prototype development by focusing on users and their needs. Although the name says design, you don’t need to be a designer to reap benefits from its usage. If you have a problem you want to solve with a clear user at the other end, design thinking is probably a good place to start.

The method boils down to 5 stages:

  • Emphatise

    Know the user you’re designing for—you want to know their needs.

  • Define

    Clearly define the problem you’re trying to solve.

  • Ideate

    Produce different ideas and solutions that might be useful. In this stage, there are no bad ideas!

  • Prototype

    Turn ideas into realistic mockups that you can use to test.

  • Test

    Gain feedback from the intended user.

The goal is to move at speed to generate ideas and produce a prototype that can be tested on the users. The upside for the user is their needs will (should) be met. The upside for you is you’ll have a testable product very quickly, so you won’t spend too much time on something nobody needs. Also, by keeping the user in mind during the production process, there will be less chance of this situation in the first place.

Let’s begin the workshop!

Timeframe: from 1 hour to 1 day

Agenda with rough time distribution

  • Empathise: 10% of the time
  • Define: 10%
  • Ideate: 10%
  • Prototype: 50%
  • Test: 20%

Theme: If you’re doing this in your company, this is probably the problem you’re trying to solve (new feature, app, store location, you name it). If it’s a general workshop, each team could have a different problem/theme.

1. Empathise

As the name suggests, you should get in the head of your end-user and try to think of their daily experience. This will be your guiding light during the other sections of the workshop. This should be as specific as you can get:

  • How old are they?
  • What do they eat?
  • What’s their occupation?
  • Where do they live?
  • Do they live alone or with someone? Their relationship status?
  • What’s their daily routine like?
  • What is their mission in life, i. e. what makes them tick?
  • What problems do they face day to day?

Here you can also think about their personality traits, likes/dislikes, goals, map out their typical schedule etc.

2. Define

The goal of this section should be to define a meaningful problem. The problem should be meaningful for the end-user, and describe a pain point in their (daily) experience. Try to be as clear and focused as possible, not to make the problem vague and thus hard to solve. Refer to the previous stage as often as needed not to lose track of the user’s needs. While doing so, think—why is this (and is it really) a problem for them and why is it so important to them?

3. Ideate

Time to let loose. The goal here is to generate as many ideas as possible. Nothing is off limits or too crazy to at least mention, as long as it’s routed in the original problem of our user.

Now we can get closer to the right idea by asking

Our user needs to be able to…

⇒

Our design needs these features…

This way we can root out unrealistic ideas.

After you pick an idea, think of a name for your product/feature and give it a catchy tagline!

4. Prototype

Now it’s time to make it real. A picture says a 1000 words, so the best way to really test a product is to make it and show it to people. While working on your prototypes, keep in mind:

  • don’t get hung up on visuals, the goal is to build
  • move fast, don’t spend too much time on one idea
  • design only what is essential for testing—everything else can be added later

In general, start with a flowchart of the user journey, i. e. how they will probably interact with your solution. For example, they open the home page, click the search button, enter search term, it takes them to the results page, etc.

Then, sketch out the screens of your product (desktop or mobile). If you have time, you can do an interactive prototype, but a simple sketch is enough for starters.

5. Test

Expose the potential user to your prototype. Let them interact with it and try not to interfere too much. Notice any setbacks and issues they experienced. At the end you should have a list of next steps—suggestions that could make your solution better. At the end of the test, you can ask some questions like: did you like the app, would you use it again, was something confusing for you (if yes, what and why), etc. Note down the feedback. Maybe there will be some positives you didn’t expect, or negatives you didn’t think of during the ideation process.

That’s it, you’re done! At this point, you should have a much clearer road ahead, so you can start on the development. When you get stuck or want to add additional features, you can go back to design thinking to facilitate the development process.