Well, it’s a big topic but let me get you started. Let us start with the basics. What is design? And, of course, what is thinking?
One by one. Ok. Design is defined as how something is planned, made, or created. Design also means inventing, scheming, or developing something for a particular purpose. As the father of lateral thinking, Edward De Bono, says: “Design the way forward when a solution cannot be found using traditional ways of thinking.”
“Design is not what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs.
Design is to bring something to life which doesn’t exist yet. It may or may not be there in your mind as a seed, a tiny idea, or something fresh altogether. Design involves creativity and going beyond the boundaries of traditional thinking—jumping out of the barriers of routine thinking.
Now, let us learn what is thinking. Thinking is a process unique to humans in which you deliberately think about something. Sitting down or even while moving, you intentionally put your inside your mind.
“I want to think on this before making a decision,” you might say.
Thinking comes in various flavors: lateral thinking, parallel thinking, creative thinking (as invented and pioneered by thought scientist and Oxford scholar Dr. Edward De Bono), traditional thinking, and critical thinking.
“Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so,” as observed by the master of literature, Shakespeare. That’s true since you can quickly get your emotions mixed up in thinking, behaving, or thinking emotionally.
With these basic definitions out of the way now, we could try and define design thinking. Design thinking is “applying thinking to design something,” “thinking in terms of design and visuals,” or “combining the powers of thinking and design to create something.”
Design thinking has been around since the 1950s and is used in various industries. It’s been applied to Finance, Education, Retail, Technology, Insurance, Manufacturing, Healthcare, and much more. The process of Design Thinking goes by various other names:
- User Research
- User-Centered Design
- Concepting
- Story mapping
- Usability Testing
Design thinking—more than a process, is a mindset to develop or improvise products and services. It involves a lot of creative thinking, designs (maps/prototypes/samples/visuals), and collecting input from end users at every stage.
The process is followed in a variety of ways, but here is a high-level breakdown: You could easily remember it with the acronym: EDIPT
Empathy: (For whom do you want to solve which problem?)
Define: (What do you want to solve or create?)
Ideate: (Which ideas could solve the problem at hand?)
Prototype: (What exactly could be the solution?)
Test: (What do users think about your solution?)
“Creativity is seeing what others see and thinking what no one else ever thought.” — Albert Einstein.
Now that we know what design is and what thinking is, let us look at a couple of benefits of the design thinking process:
- Tackle and foresee wicked problems
- Reduce time to market
- Save development and operation costs
- Great ROI on products
- Improve customer retention and loyalty
- Increased productivity, participation, and peer feedback
- Foster creativity and innovation
- Faster feature development
- Prioritise value-based deliveries
- Data-driven decision-making
- Reduce meeting times
These are only some key benefits of adopting a design thinking mindset and process in your organization. Lastly, we now know that design thinking is an iterative, collaborative, multidisciplinary, and human-centric approach to solving problems visually. It helps to design and think your way out of complex real-world problems and deliver meaningful experiences. And it solves the correct problems for the right people.
So, are you a design thinker yet?
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