What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is “a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity (Brown, 2008).” This view is echoed by IDEO, which considers design thinking to bring together “what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable,” as articulated in the diagram below.

In this essay, I would like to share 3 thoughts about design thinking.

Design thinking is a discipline.

An often-articulated lament regarding design thinking is that it is too ‘fluffy’ and too ‘airy-fairy’. Many appear to struggle to pin down this concept, which is hardly surprising given that design thinking has been expressed in so many different forms, as a framework, as processes and as a protocol. But I think discipline best encapsulates what design thinking is all about.

While design thinking is practice-oriented, it has in recent years become a subject of study, i.e. an academic discipline, at universities, and not limited to design students enrolled in design schools. Design thinking has also been applied and studied in the context of innovation, organisational redesign as well as business development. Increasing it is also being studied and applied in relation to education, healthcare and other social sectors.

The practice of design thinking, while far from uniform, is less diverse than imagined. Built upon principles of human-centeredness, bias toward action and radical collaboration, design thinking presupposes certain behaviours and processes, which make its application almost rule-based. This makes it important to understand the underlying principles of design thinking so as not to fall into the trap of reducing design thinking into a checklist of activities or a series of steps to be completed.

Design thinking is both intuitive and analytical.

Following the idea that design thinking is a discipline, Martin (2009) advocates, “[a] person or organization instilled with that discipline is constantly seeking a fruitful balance between reliability and validity, between art and science, between intuition and analytics, and between exploration and exploitation.” In other words, Design thinking demands that we engage both our intuitive and analytical minds.

My experience with design thinking testifies the importance of intuition, that of following a hunch. However, this does not presuppose that my analytical faculties lay dormant as I do that. Before pursuing a lead guided by intuition, it would be foolish not to make sense of the immediate environment, stakeholders and larger context by applying analytical thinking processes. Furthermore, while engaging intuition, my analytical self will continue to work in the background to affirm or challenge the hunch. As such it has always been my experience that intuition and analytics work hand in glove.

It is a fallacy to assume that intuition and analytics are mutually exclusive, especially in the context of decision-making. My experience thus far reveals that the best outcomes are generated when our both our intuitive and analytical selves are engaged, suggesting that intuition and analytics are more complimentary than we previously assumed. This corroborates with Martin (2009), which states:“New ideas arose when a thinker observed data (or even a single data point) that didn’t fit with the existing model or models. The thinker sought to make sense of the observation by making what Peirce called an “inference to the best explanation.” The true first step of reasoning, he concluded, was not observation but wondering.”

Design thinking is a human process.

Design thinking is an approach that “takes inspiration from real people, works within market and technological constraints, and considers every product touch-point as an opportunity to surprise, delight and deliver benefits to users (Thomsen, 2013).” At the heart of every problem or challenge is the question that begs to be asked, what do the person need? Once we arrive at this answer, we are then able to generate meaningful solutions to meet this need. Too often, we create solutions that we think are needed only to realize, after delivering the solution, that the need is imagined and not real.

Design thinking demands that prior to problem identification, we are to identify who owns the problem, who is paying the price of this problem, and who truly desires a solution to this problem. Design thinkers ask a lot of questions before they even attempt to answer any, and many of these questions are WHO questions.

To answer these questions, design thinkers spend much time and effort on fieldwork, so as to understand the people involved, the people affected and why would anyone care. A lead user is very often identified from such empathy fieldwork, which will in turn aid the definition of a clearer problem statement and move the project forward. We can see from this that, the starting point of any project for the design thinker is always a person, which is logical because ultimately, whatever solution created will have to be adopted and implemented by someone.

Concluding Comments

With no intention to complicate matters further, I would like to propose that design thinking is first and foremost an attitude, that of putting humans at the centre of every problem, project or situation, putting our ideas to test as quickly as possible, letting go of ideas so that we can welcome and work with better ideas, and taking a learner stance to observe and listen each time we find in our hands a problem to solve.

A lot of people that I talked with voiced the opinion that design thinking is nothing more than common sense with fresh packaging, and many have dismissed it for being too simple. I do agree that most professionals have the skills required to apply design thinking. However, based on my limited observations thus far, few have the disposition and the right attitude to reap the benefits of design thinking in creating solutions that are desirable, feasible and viable. There is a stark difference between going through the process of design thinking, what I call ‘going through the motion’, and sincerely putting human needs at the centre of our design and thinking processes.

References

1. Brown, T. (2008). Design Thinking. Harvard Business Review, June 2008 Issue. Retrieved from https://hbr.org/2008/06/design-thinking

2. IDEO. (2005). Our Approach: Design Thinking. Retrieved from http://www.ideo.com/about/

3. Martin, R. (2009). What is Design Thinking Anyway? Retrieved from http://designobserver.com/feature/what-is-design-thinking-anyway/11097/

4. Thomsen, D. (2013). Why Human-Centered Design Matters. Wired.