Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a comprehensive customer-oriented innovation approach that aims to

generate and develop creative business ideas or entire business models. Essentially, Design
Thinking attempts to ,projecting a designers' approaches and methods onto business processes.
The approach is ultimately applicable to all kinds of business ideas – whether they have a product or
Service character. The first mouse for the Macintosh computer was created after a similar approach,
or the first toothbrush with a wider ergonomic shaft.

Phases of Design Thinking: Unicorns Often Paint Incredible Pictures Thoughtfully

Phase 1 “Understand” (Understanding the Problem):

In the first phase it is first about developing an understanding for the challenge/the
problem/the need or the requirement (problem understanding). It must be clarified who has to be
integrated into the process and, in particular, which technical perspective (process organization) is
necessary finally, it must be clarified how the question can best be formulated so that the customer
need/problem is defined in concrete terms.

Phase 2 “Observe“:
In this phase, detailed research and on-site observations are carried out on the customer's
Need/problem. Numerous methods can be used for this, such as interviews, written surveys, and
observations with recordings through photos or even videos. The results are the clarification of the
general conditions, the exact definition of the target group and a comprehensive understanding of the
customer and his needs and behavior.
(***Note ;- Phase1 + Phase 2 together forms Empathize )

Phase 3 “Point-of-View” (Define the problem):

After the observations, the findings should next be condensed to a single prototypical user
whose Problem / need is to be summarized in a clearly defined question.

Phase 4 “Ideate” (Finding and selecting ideas):

It is only in this phase that the actual brainstorming process takes place. Here the creativity
techniques mentioned in chapter 5.3 can be used. Strictly separated from this, the ideas can then be
Page 1 of 22
analyzed in a customer-oriented manner in order to identify weak points, and a selection decision can
be made on the basis of an idea evaluation.

Phase 5 “Prototype” (Develop the prototype):

In this very important phase, ideas should be visualized as quickly as possible, made tangible,
sketched, designed, modeled/simulated, etc. Following the technical field one can speak here of
"Rapid Prototyping", whereby the prototype development applies decidedly not only to products, but
also to services. A variety of methods for prototype development are available for this purpose.

Phase 6 “Test”:
In this final phase, the ideas are to be further developed and tested through further experiments and
customer feedback. In addition, important development, production and market issues have to be
clarified. In the process flow presented here, the actual implementation phase with the development
of the ideate a marketable product/service would only follow afterwards.

Page 2 of 22
Principles/ Tools/ Commandments of Design Thinking:

When carrying out the Design Thinking process described below, the following principles must be
observed,
"Ten Commandments of Design Thinking”:
1. Leave titles at the door!
There is no hierarchy during a Design Thinking workshop. Chef and other rolls are hung on
the coat hook.

2. Encourage wild ideas!

Let your imagination run wild. Any (supposedly) crazy idea and every idea should be treated
equally.

3. Go for quantity!
Quantity before quality. Selected, analyzed and evaluated later.

4. Build on Ideas of others!

There is no copyright. Ideas from others should be taken up, supplemented or changed.

5. Think human centered!

Design Thinking is first and foremost thinking about people and not about technology or
business goals.

6. Be visual and make it tangible!

Use drawings, illustrations, photos, videos, prototypes, etc.

7. Avoid criticism!
Idea generation and evaluation must be strictly separated.

8. Fail early and often!

Failure means learning. Often failure means that you have learned a lot.

9. Stay focused!
Set yourself limits, stick to the concrete tasks in the Design Thinking process.

10. Let`s have fun!

Developing new ideas in a team should be fun. Creativity needs this fun.

OF TWITCH
T - Title
W- Wild Idea
I- Ideas of Others
T- Tangible
C- Criticism
H - Human Centered

Q- Quality
F x 3 - Fail Early , Focused , Fun

Page 3 of 22
Design thinking & value creation (innovation)

Desirable, feasible and viable are three important lenses for innovation through design thinking
Desirable (people want it), feasible (what can actually do it) and it has to be viable ( don’t go break)

Page 4 of 22
Design thinking resources:

In order for design thinking to succeed, the right ingredients need to be assembled. The
desirable workspace, the materials often used in design Thinking, and finally the needed integration
and cooperation between the design –thinker’s team and the organization.
The resources are 1.People 2. Place 3.Materials 4. Organization

People
• The individuals that are needed are those who are willing and able to adopt the design –
thinking mindset. So the people working on a design thinking are critical to its success
• These people are experts in system or field or area of the business. They are observant and
they listen
• They have the ability to frame problems and solve them.
• They can think strategically and execute tactically.
• They are both creative and analytical
• They are communicative and comfortable to flexibility
• The team that emerges from assembling these people should have a spirit of shared purpose,
flexibility, collaboration, and mutual support.

Place
• A space needs to be located that facilitates collaboration and imagination.
• Design thinking produces many physical artifacts. These artifacts are most useful when they
are accessible and visible.
• Design thinking requires the content under consideration be visible. This translates to the
need for stationary and mobile white boards, pin boards display screens, storage buddies and
large surfaces on which to hang
• Flexibility of furniture is essential.
• According to Lewrick he recommended that 5m2 per participant be used as sizing parameter
for good space
• Space, like money and time is often a scare resource
• The actual size of the space may become a limiting factor on how large the team and
collaborative activities can be.

Materials
Making and visual idea transfers are essential elements of design thinking, for that materials
are needed

Organizations:
Locating and accessing design thinking people may require the organization to permit the functional
structure to relent and allow enterprise benefit to supersede design thinking objectives.

Page 5 of 22
Application of Design thinking:
Design thinking is a problem solving that focus on users and their emotional needs while
experiencing products and services.
Design thinking approach is useful for Designers, Engineers, planners, Managers, strategists,
Economists, Teachers and many other Professions

Design thinking having wide range of

applications across different domains:

 Automobile

 Health care

 Architecture

 Software

 Education

 Digital

 Retail

 Art and culture

 strategy

Page 11 of 22
Business:
• Design thinking helps in business by optimizing the process of product creation, marketing, and
renewal of contracts.
• All these processes require a companywide focus on the customers and hence, design thinking helps
in these processes immensely.
• Design thinking helps the design thinkers to develop deep empathy for their customers and to create
solutions that match their needs exactly.

Information technology:
• The IT industry makes a lot of products that require trials and proof of concepts.
• The industry needs to empathize with its users and not simply deploy technologies.
• IT is not only about technology or products, but also it is process.
• The developers, analysts, consultants, and managers have to brain storms on possible ideas for
solving the problems of the clients. This is where design thinking helps a lot.

Education:

• The education sector can make the best use of design thinking by taking feedback from students on
their requirements, goals and challenges they are facing in the classroom.
• By working on their feedback, the instructors come up with solutions to address their challenges.

Health care:

• Design thinking helps in health care as well as the expenditure on healthcare. The cost of healthcare
facilities is growing day by day.
• Experts worldwide are concerned about how to bring quality healthcare to people at low cost
• Using design thinking, the efficiencies in the system and the perennial crises were addressed

Design thinking for Engineering:

Design thinking and Engineering systems thinking are two complementary approaches to
understanding cognition, organization, and other non-technical factors that influence the design and
performance of Engineering systems

Design thinking methods have been applied to industrial design and product development, while
engineering systems thinking is used in professional systems engineering practice and large-scale, complex
system design.

Page 12 of 22
Role of Empathy in design thinking:

• As the starting point of the design process, Empathy allows a designer to understand the people who
will eventually use their product or service
• Empathy is a core value of design thinking .it is also the first step in the design thinking process.
• Empathy draws attention to the abilities of researchers and designers to see the world through other
people’s eyes, feel what they feel, and experience things as they do
• Empathy allows a designer to understand the user’s physical and emotional needs.
• The Oxford Dictionary defines Empathy as “the ability to understand and share the feeling of
another”.
• Empathy is the first step in design thinking because it is a skill that allows us to understand and
share the same feelings that others feel. Through empathy, designers are able to put ourselves in
other people's shoes and connect with how they might be feeling about their problem, circumstance,
or situation Some questions to consider:
o What is the person feeling?
o What actions or words indicate this feeling?
o Can you identify their feelings through words?
o What words would you use to describe their feelings?
• Empathy is the cornerstone of any successful design project. The extent to which you understand
and empathize with your users ultimately determines the outcome of your design
• This means observing and engaging with people in order to understand them on a psychological and
emotional level. During this phase, the designer seeks to set aside their assumptions and gather real
insights about the user.
• Design Thinking cannot begin without a deeper understanding of the people that designers are
designing for. In order to gain those insights, it is important for designer as a design thinker to
empathize with the people you are designing for so that you can understand their needs, thoughts,
emotions and motivations.
• Finally, empathy shows a designer how users think about the world and what is meaningful to users.

Why Empathy is so important?

• In a social context, empathy is often what drives us to take action

• If we see people suffering or struggling, and we are able to empathize with their situation, we are
compelled to help relieve them in some way.
• Designers need to build empathy for their users in order to take the right course of action
• It’s important to understand how the user feels when interacting with a certain product or interface;
does the layout of this website evoke feelings of frustration?
• In building empathy, designers can create products which truly please the user and make their lives
easier
• Without this empathy, the design process lacks that all-important user- centricity which often marks
the distinction between product success and failure

What is empathic design?

• One of the main objectives of empathize stage is to identify user needs and behaviors that are latent,
or unarticulated.

Page 13 of 22
 • As a designer, it’s important to distinguish between what people say they would do in a certain
situation, and what they actually do
• In reality, users may have habits or desires that they’re not aware of, so it’s essential for the
designer to observe the user in action
• Empathic research and design is not concerned with facts about the user, such as their age or
location. Rather, it focuses on their feelings towards a product and their motivations in certain
situations.
• Why do they behave in a certain way? Why do they prefer to do this instead of that? Why do they
click here rather than there when presented with a particular screen or page?
• These are the kinds of insights you will uncover during empathize phase, and they will help you to
create user experiences that cater to your audience.

Methods and tools of empathy:

Know the people:

• The concept of “user-centered” or “human-centered “design is not exactly new.
• In fact, most definitions of design include some reference to crafting things that people use.
• However, as an antidote to the one-size-fits all, mass production age of 19th and 20th century
design, it has become important to re- emphasize the centrality of users to the process
• Design That is sensitive to and based on people’s needs and patterns of behavior will be good
design.
• The mode of Know people, with its focus on Empathy, observation, personal engagements, and
problem solving, is an indispensable of the design process.
• Knowing people is about gaining an empathic understanding of thoughts, feelings, and needs by
listening, observing, interacting, and analyzing.
• Immersing yourself in people’s daily lives and keenly listening to their stories can reveal very
valuable insights, sometimes quite surprising and non-obvious.
• To get to such valuable insights we should focus on everything that people do, say, and think; we
should be in the mindset to deeply understand people’s activities, needs, motivations, and overall
experiences, just as well as we study our products when we do a product development project.
• Knowing people well can lead us to entirely new categories of products, services, or business
strategies that fundamentally address people’s needs and desires, create significant new value, and
are very hard to copy.

Methods of Empathy
• Observing Everything
• Building Empathy
• Immersing in daily life
• Listening openly
• Looking for problems and needs

Observing Everything:
o Observe everything in the context of study, not just the people or the products in use.

Page 14 of 22
 o Notice places notice other people, notice inconsistencies between what people say and what they
do.
o Be prepared to consider innovations that address these seemingly external factors. Even more
importantly, look at who and what is not in the field of study

Building Empathy:
o Is it possible to go beyond just knowing about people’s experiences and feelings, to the point of
sharing them? e.g Spend a day with a busy mom as she struggles to organize the family’s day,
share, and identify with her daily experiences, frustrations, and challenges
o make a deep, direct emotional connection with end users’ needs, we will be in a far better position
to develop new ideas in tune with the customer

Immersing in Daily Life

o Spending time with people in their everyday lives can be eye opening. Use the ethnographer’s
approach to live with and learn about the behaviors, practices, and motivations that form the context
in which people will use the tools, artifacts, messages, and services that you intend to create
o Spending a day in the life of people for whom you are designing will be revealing.

Listening Openly:
o We should not just prepare and follow a script for our interaction with research participants. We
should let them guide the discussion toward what is important to them; we must be students, not
teachers.
o We ought to think of open-ended questions, suggest general solution alternatives, and be prepared
to hear things

Looking for Problems and Needs:

o What is not working well in the current situation and why? How are people facing challenges in
their daily lives? How are they working around the problems? Or are they just giving up since there
is nothing that can support their needs?
o These are great questions that we should ask to reveal opportunities for new products or services

Page 15 of 22
Define phase:

• As a Design Thinker it need to cover all the points and answers that got in the Empathize Phase.
• This is where the process of synthesis comes into picture.
• Clubbing all the answers together and convert them into a coherent single statement Called
Problem statement nothing but Define Phase.
• The first step towards defining a problem is to find who the user is, what is his/her/their needs and
then develop insights from the answers
• Think of ‘How might we?’ questions
• For example, ‘how might we motivate the employees in DT?’, ‘How might to reduce the cost of
knowledge transfer program without compromising its quality and the mandatory pre-requisite
resources?’

The following guidelines will help a design thinker to come up with ‘how might we’ questions.
Amplify the good: A design thinker must think how to amplify the positive aspects of the customers’
needs
Eliminate the bad: Design thinkers need to remove all the bad elements observed in the problem
Explore the opposite: Design thinkers need to brainstorm on how to convert the problem into an
opportunity
Question the Assumptions: This step involves questioning the assumption at hand
Identify the Unexpected Resources: Design thinkers should try to find whether some other resources
not mentioned by the customer can be leveraged
Create an Analogy: Design thinking also involves, among many other things, how to create
connections between the problem at hand and unrelated images
Break the Problem into Pieces: This is where again analysis comes into picture for a short while
before the problem definition can be synthesized

• Mycoskie navigated the transition from the Empathize stage of design thinking to the Define
stage
• The transition between the Empathize and Define stages hinges on the concept of unpacking
• unpacking tells the talking to, observing and learning about customers and creating a system for
turning those insights into something actionable
• Unpacking insights from the Empathize stage does not have to be a complicated process
• The tasks involved in synthesizing empathy and definition can be as simple as breaking out a
stack of sticky notes.

Page 16 of 22
 • The primary goal of the unpacking stage is sharing what that learned with other designers and
the rest of team members.
• It is important that everyone on the team is on the same page about the information gathered in
the Empathize stage.
• Having a complete understanding of the customer and his or her needs will help you form a
problem statement, which is a written expression of customer’s or end user’s problem

The Point of View (POV) and its purpose:

Point of view, or POV, in design thinking is a written, actionable statement that expresses the
problem that the design team is trying to address. This is also often called a problem statement.
It is, an expression of the problem (or problems that customers identified the Empathize stage
In fact, crafting a POV statement is the central purpose of the Define stage of design thinking. It provides a
framework for designers to use in later brainstorming sessions
“If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and five minutes
thinking about solutions.” – Albert Einstein
User need statements, also often called problem statements or point-of- view statements, are the
primary tool in the second stage of design thinking the define stage
A user need statement is an actionable problem statement used to summarize who a user is, the user’s
need, and why the need is important to that user. It defines what you want to solve before you move on to
generating potential solutions, in order to
1) Condense your perspective on the problem, and
2) Provide a metric for success to be used throughout the design thinking process.

How to Create POV:

• A good POV will allow you to ideate and solve your challenge in a goal- oriented manner – keeping
the focus on your users, their needs and your insights about them
• May come up with multiple POVs depending on the insights gained in interviews.

Point of View statement

(User)__________________Needs___________________ Because__________________

Page 17 of 22
Steps for creating POV:

Step 1: Identify Users, Needs & Insights

There are three key components that make up the POV statement:
User: Defines the type of specific user whom writing POV about.
Need: Identifies the users’ essential needs/goals.
Surprising Insight: Synthesizes the gathered information into a key takeaway. This statement can be used
to design a solution

Step 2: Create your chart

Place your scenario into a template like the example below. This creates a guide for structuring your POV
statement

Step 3: Form Your POV Statement

This is the fun part where you combine your user, needs and insight into a concise POV statement. If
necessary, condense your statements to create a good story.

More Tips for Your POV Statements

i) Keep the focus narrow.
ii) Frame the challenge as a problem statement.
iii) Use them to evaluate competing ideas.
iv) Make them actionable.
Remember, these statements will guide your innovation efforts and provide inspiration for your team

Note: Since feelings, thoughts, and beliefs cannot be directly observed, infer those by carefully paying
attention to clues

Write down needs. “Needs” are emotional or physical necessities. They are activities and desires, not
solutions. Identify needs from traits or from contradictions – such as disconnect between what he/she says
and does. Write them down on the side of your empathy map

Write down insights. An “insight” is a remarkable realization that you could leverage to better respond to
a challenge. Insights often grow from contradictions between two user attributes (either within a quadrant
or from two different quadrants) or from asking yourself “Why?” when you notice strange behavior. Write
down potential insights on the side of your map. Capture tensions and contradictions as you work.

Page 18 of 22
What is the Define stage of Design Thinking?
Imagine your team meets together to solve the biggest marketing issue. However, someone has
neglected to define what the biggest issue is, so your marketing team arrives with solutions to email
marketing processes, social media marketing concept problems, and ways to fix the quality of coffee in the
break room.
The Define stage of Design Thinking first identifies the problem designers are trying to solve. This
keeps everyone oriented to the same solution. This stage also helps to define the problem in the most
beneficial way: it should be broad but not too obscure and narrow but not too limiting. It’s best if you can
distill your problem into a single statement.

Fundamental questions for the Define stage

Examining the problem from multiple angles is the best way to understand the core issue at play.
But that’s also a daunting task that can feel too obscure to be helpful. Luckily, there are guideposts to help
you get started. By answering a few fundamental questions, you can formulate a better definition of your
problem.

1) Who’s having the problem? This is your core user. Start by defining your target user, their desires
and motivations, and how they interact with your product. Without knowing who you’re trying to
help, you’ll be unable to actually deliver value to their life.

2) What problem is your user actually having? If you’re designing a car buying platform, you may
think the problem you’re trying to solve is how to offer a greater array of car buying options. But
your core user may not actually be suffering from options, but rather from indecision. Examine the
pain points you identified during the Empathize stage and determine what the user really needs.
Then you can also brainstorm different ways to solve this problem.

3) Where is the issue? This is important to UX designers because the issue may only be in one
specific area (i.e. the mobile app or the desktop version or within one portion of the product). This
is a great step because it allows you to hone in your focus on one specific space. Or, if the problem
presents in multiple spaces, you’ll better understand the contexts in which it must be remedied.

4) Why? This question is perhaps the most profound of all four fundamental questions. It asks what it
would mean to your user if the problem were solved. What value would be gained to the user? On a
larger scale, how would solving the user’s problem impact the entire business?

Page 19 of 22
Best practices for the Define stage

Just as there are questions to help you complete the Define stage, there are also several best
practices you should follow as you embrace this step of Design Thinking.

Use a Point of View (POV) statement

This single statement is the summation of your work. It defines who your user is, what their needs
are, and any surprising elements or insights you’ve gathered from your research. This point of statement
can follow a formula: (user) needs to (verb) because (surprising element or insight)
So, in our car scenario above, the point of view statement could look like this: “Brian, the Indecisive Car
Buyer, needs to be shown the perfect car for him because lacks the confidence to make a large purchase.”
Keep your POV statement centered on the user.

Ask “how might we?” (HMW)

Once you have your POV statement, you can determine opportunities for solving the user’s problem
within design. Examine your POV statement and brainstorm topics that stem from the problem. Then turn
those subtopics and issues into a question by adding “How might we…” before them. For instance, using
the above POV statement, a few “How might we” questions could be:

How might we determine the car Brian actually wants?

How might we boost Brian’s confidence?
How might we best present financing options?

Your “How might we” statements should allow you to come up with many possible solutions,
including solutions that seem outlandish or not feasible. The point here is to generate a pool of solutions so
that you can pick solutions that seem especially valid and prioritize them.

Use the 5 Whys

The 5 Whys technique was developed by Toyota as part of its problem-solving training to get to the
root cause of a problem. It involves asking an initial question and then asking “why” for each subsequent
answer. So, with our Brian example, it could look like this:
Why does Brian lack confidence about buying a new car?
Because he’s overwhelmed by the options.
Why do the options seem overwhelming to him?
Because he doesn’t think he knows enough about cars to make a good decision.
Why does he think he doesn’t know enough about cars?
Page 20 of 22
Because when he goes car shopping, he doesn’t know what questions to ask.
Why doesn’t he know what questions to ask? Because he doesn’t know what’s most important to him in a
car.
Why doesn’t he know what’s most important to him in a car?
Because he’s never been forced to think about it.
So, the root issue of Brian’s lack of confidence for purchasing a new car could be that he doesn’t know
what he actually wants. One solution could be a quiz in your product that helps Brian determine his top
priorities in a car.
Why/how laddering
This technique is used to discover a variety of user needs and actions that can be taken to meet those needs.
The ladder begins by asking a fundamental question, then asking why several times until a more abstract
statement emerges with core feelings from the user. Then start with to work back down that abstract
statement by asking “how” about each statement. You should end up with a hierarchy of your user’s needs
that can help you better formulate a variety of solutions.

Collect and unpack user stories

By unpacking user stories in a user story map, you can better determine which tasks and activities
hold the most discomfort for your user, and then formulate solutions to that discomfort.
If you know, for instance, that Brian hates logging into websites; you can consider alternative
solutions to creating a password and username. Visualizing a user story map will help you see where
opportunities lie.

Page 21 of 22
 Question Bank:

Q.No. Question
1 What do you mean by Discovery, Invention and Innovation?
2 Define Design Thinking?
3 List 5 stages of Design thinking?
4 What are the 3 key elements of Design Thinking & value creation?
5 List 4 resources of Design Thinking?
6 Give any 4 applications of Design Thinking?
7 List 5 methods of Empathy?
8 What do you mean by POV (Point of View)?
9 List 3 steps involved in PV (Point of View)?
10 What is the meaning of HMW?

Q.No. Question

Explain the stage of “Empathize” in Design Thinking? Apply the

1
“E m p a t h i z e “stage to any One real life product or service?

2 What are the 10 principles/ tools/ commandments of Design Thinking?

Apply Design Thinking to identify the problem and

3
Propose a solution to any 2 real life applications?

4 Explain the role of Empathy in Design Thinking?

5 Why Empathy is so important in Design thinking?

Explain how to write point of view statement in define phase of design thinking with
6
Example.

7 Explain 4 fundamental questions of Define stage?

Page 22 of 22