Design Thinking is the process through which you try to understand a user, reconsider assumptions, and

reformulate problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions to address the problem(s). It is an
iterative process.

At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems.

The main objective of design thinking is to help people design better products, processes, services,
spaces, strategies, architecture, and experiences. It helps you and your team develop innovative and
practical solutions for your problems. It is a human-centric, prototype-driven, innovative design process.

Design process can be said to comprise of 7 stages:

1 Define

2 Research

3 Ideate

4 Prototype

5 Select

6 Implement

7 Learn

In this course, you will be familiarized with some of the industry-grade design thinking methodologies,
and these are:

 4D UX Methodology

 Double Diamond Model

 Bootcamp Bootleg

In any design process, this is the first stage and almost always involves creating or receiving a design
brief. The design brief presents the client’s requirements for a task.

If the design brief provided by the client is not robust enough, you may need to rewrite and rework with
the client.

The five W's

The design brief gives the team an idea of what is to be achieved. The Five Ws will provide answers that
are required to define a design job adequately. The Five Ws of design thinking are: Who, What, When,
Where and Why.

 Who is the client and target audience? (size, culture, characteristics)

 What design solution is the client thinking of? (print, web, video)

 When will the design be needed and for how long? (project timescales)

 Where will the design be used? (media, location, country)

Research process

 Once the brief has been defined and agreed upon, a designer starts to search for relevant
information that can be fed into the design process at the ideate stage.

 This research can be either quantitative or qualitative. Quantitative information would typically
have hard statistical numbers about the size and composition of target user groups.

Qualitative research would have information about what a user group buys or consumes and what their
lifestyle is.

Research Modes

There are two modes of research - Primary and Secondary.

 Primary research involves getting direct feedback from clients/users.

 Secondary research is the information you obtain from general secondary sources like consumer
market research reports.

Ideate process

During the ideate stage, the research gathered and the constraints established during the define stage
becomes the foundation for the design team. This information is used to create ideas to tackle the
design brief.

During the ideate stage, it will become clear whether there are any misunderstandings or gaps in the
definition stage. It will also give an idea if sufficient levels of research were carried out.

Prototype process

The ideate stage is where a variety of potential solutions to the design brief is generated.

Before selecting your solution, you would need to analyze and identify the most promising of the
available solutions. This will allow particular facets to be tested and will provide a better basis for
comparison at the selection stage. In such circumstances, you can create a prototype.

 A prototype helps the design team and client to visualize and handle a design concept, and also
to get an idea of its physical presence and tactile qualities.

 A prototype must be developed with all aspects of a design solution so that it can be effectively
evaluated.
Select process

The select stage is the point at which, out of many proposed design solutions, you choose one of the
design solutions for development. The selected design is typically the one which closely meets the
design brief, or a significant part of it and also adheres to budget and timescale.

At the end of the selection process, the client will sign off the choice, thus initiating the next stage in the
design process.

Implement process

During this stage, the designer transfers the design artwork and format specifications to those who will
be supplying the final product. The design team will be actively involved in project management during
this stage, in order to ensure that the final results meet the design expectations, and is well within the
project budget and on time.

This stage ends with the final delivery of the product to the client.

Learn process

This stage is a continuous process and involves learning from what has happened throughout the design
process.

This is a feedback stage during which the client and design firm introspect as to what worked well and
identify places where there is room for improvement.

Continuous learning from each stage will boost the development of design thinking, and will help to
generate successful designs.

4D UX Methodology

4D comprises of four phases: Discover, Design, Develop and Deliver. 4D is a user-centric and an iterative
process. In digital design and development, it addresses almost all facets including identifying the target
users, benchmarking, defining requirements, project management, user experience design, development
and quality assurance, as well as non-development tasks such as software and technology selection,
systems and content strategy.

The phases are:

 Discover – understanding the problem(s) and developing insights

 Design – the area to focus upon

 Develop – potential solutions to the problem(s)

 Deliver - solutions that work

This is the phase where we do extensive research on our target users, understanding their pain points,
observing the environment in which they work and developing insights.

Here's an illustration of how the discover phase takes place in a web design process

 Requirements and Specifications: The complete set of specifications and functionality of the
project is captured here. Once we have the specs clear, we may proceed to further steps.

 Sitemap: A sitemap is a high level diagram portraying the general structure and architecture of
the website. The objective for a sitemap is to be able to clearly identify the pages, various
sections and navigation items that will make up the site.

Design Phase

This is the phase where we start to design page by page. Here, we design interactions, interface
elements and also the visual aesthetics of the pages.

Here's an illustration of how the design phase takes place in a web design process

 Wireframe: Here, we begin by sketching out the general layout of a page, which could also be in
the form of paper sketches. A wireframe is simply a black and white model showing the overall
placement of the elements on the page. This is the step that decides where the main navigation
will go, where the logo will be placed as well as all images, text and media elements.

 Visual Design: At this stage, we implement our creative ideas, and we begin to design the look
and feel of the website. During this phase, we should be able to capture the essence of the
client's business; its culture as well as the products and services.

Develop Phase

At this stage, we develop content and bring the website to life.

Here's an illustration of how the develop phase takes place in a web design process

 Content: We develop/improve content. Typically, content production begins right after the
sitemap has been approved.

 Front End Development: This is where we take the finalized design and turn it into the internet’s
language, HTML.

 Back-end Development: The back-end is the brains of the website. Here is where the site is
brought to life by programming all the functionality, creating the database and implementing the
site’s logic.

Deliver Phase
Post development, we perform a quality analysis just to ensure that what we had designed has come out
to pixel perfection when developed.

Here's an illustration of how the deliver phase takes place in a web design process

 Testing: Since users will access the website from screens with different resolutions, different
browsers, phones etc, consistency must be ensured across all platforms.

 Launch: Once the site is complete, it is launched as beta version for testing and feedback.
Relevant iterations are made and the revamped website will be rolled out.

Double Diamond

Created by The British Design Council, the Double Diamond model portrays modes of thinking that
designers use. This approach brings the 'thinking mechanism' aspect into the process.

It describes significant robust design, before going on to producing a final solution. Here, the solutions
are generally fine-tuned before it is released. This is done because, once a product has been shipped, it
becomes expensive to make changes.

The phases

It is divided into four distinct phases – Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver.

Unlike 4 D process, stages in this process are either diverging or converging. In a diverging phase, you try
to open up as much as possible without limiting yourself and thinking aloud. Whereas in a converging
phase, you focus on condensing your findings and narrowing down your ideas.

Discover phase

The first quarter of the Double Diamond model marks the beginning of the project. Designers try to
gather insights by looking at the world from a different perspective and notice new ideas in their
environment.

 Rip the brief (your initial challenge) — Try to question the brief or the requirement document by
confronting every part of it and evaluating the focus areas. List as many elements as you can,
find traits, define areas of interest and extremes. Think of anything that can be related and
explored and list them. This could be places, people (personas) and experiences.

 Before you dig deeper into your research, to get an overview you might need to group your
findings into topics and limit your scope of research.

 Dive into your research work. You can apply primary (field) and secondary (desk) research
methods.

Define phase

The second quarter highlights the definition stage, in which designers try to gauge all the possibilities
identified in the discover phase. The goal here is to develop a precise creative brief that addresses the
fundamental design challenge. Here’s where designers converge their thoughts to zero-in on the right
problems
  Summarize your raw findings and share them with your team

 Cluster knowledge and similarities to themes.

 Find insights (insights are the indications about the consumer’s motivations, wishes or
frustrations regarding a specific topic or a task)

Develop phase

The third quarter indicates a period of development where concepts or solutions are created, discussed
and evaluated. This process of trial and error aids designers in improving and refining their ideas.

The core activities done at this stage are:

 Ideation

 Evaluation

Ideation

 This is the most interesting part of the process and is part of the diverging phase. Here, you
should not limit yourself and approach ideation with an open mind. You should not make any
judgments during ideation.

 Apply a “yes, and…” rather than a “no…” or “yes, but…” mentality. Be flexible with your thinking
process and build upon each other’s ideas.

Evaluation

 As we approach the end of an ideation phase, your ideas should be evaluated and out of these,
you may select your favorite ones.

 There are two tools that can come handy- dot-votings (each team member votes for ideas) or
impact/feasibility matrices (a matrix that puts feasibility in relation to a potential impact of an
idea).

Deliver phase

 In the final quarter of the double diamond model, the final idea(s) is assessed and it is at this
stage that the resulting project (a product, service or environment, for example) is finalized,
produced and launched.

 An agile approach consisting of the following three steps may be used:

o Build/Prototype

o Test/Analyze

o Iterate/Repeat

 Always aim for MVPs — Minimum Viable Products/Prototypes that offer enough tangibility to
find out whether they solve the initial problem or answer the initial question.
Proposed by Stanford d. school, this methodology is one of the wholly defined methodologies that is
very complete and recommended for complex design works.

Empathy is the key here in this five stage process. These are

 Empathize

 Define

 Ideate

 Prototype

 Test

Empathize with the User

Here, the focus is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve by putting
yourself in the shoes of the end user. This involves:

 Consulting with experts to find out more about the area of concern.

 Observing and engaging with people to understand their experiences and motivations.

 Engrossing yourself in the physical environment to have a deeper personal understanding of the
issues involved.

Empathy is crucial in design thinking. It helps design thinkers cast aside their assumptions and gain
insights about the user and their needs.

Define the Design Challenge

At this stage, you aggregate the information you have created and gathered during the Empathize stage.

You can then evaluate your observations and synthesize them to define your core problems identified
until now.

You should seek to re-define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centric manner.

To illustrate, instead of describing the problem as a requirement or the company's need, “you will need
to increase the cereal product market share among children by 5%.” A better way to re-define the
problem would be, “Children need to consume cereal food to stay healthy and disease-free .”

Ideate Prospective Solutions

It is at this stage of the Design Thinking process that designers start generating ideas.
By this time, you would have matured enough to understand your users and their needs that was done
at the Empathize stage. You must have also analyzed and synthesized your observations in the Define
stage, and come up with a human-centered problem statement.

With this solid background, you can start thinking outside the box and identify new solutions for the
problem statement in hand. You can also look for other possible ways of viewing the problem.

Prototype Solutions

Now, the design team will create a number of economical, scaled down versions of the product or
definite features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem in solutions generated in
the previous stage.

You can demonstrate and test prototypes within your team, or with a small group of people from a
different team.

The aim here is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first
three stages and being an experimental phase, continuous iterations may take place.

Towards the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea of :

 The constraints deep-rooted within the product

 The problems to be handled

 How end users would think, feel and behave when interacting with the end product.

Testing the Product

Testing the Product

This is an iterative process and the final stage of the five stage-model. The insights developed during the
testing phase are often used to redefine the problems.

Designers or evaluators meticulously test the complete product using the best solutions identified during
the prototyping phase.