Innovation

Design thinking

Design thinking is an approach to innovation that blends traditional rational analysis with intuitive originality

Design thinking is an inventive process that blends analytical thinking with intuitive intuition. Rather than focusing on creating great new technology or waiting for a "eureka" moment, design thinking includes iterating between these two methods of thinking. It is defined by experimentation and rapid prototyping rather than detailed strategic preparation.

When to use it

● To develop innovative goods and services.
● To create a more experimental and inventive culture in your company.
● To understand how innovations emerge in a corporate setting.

Origins

Over the last decade, the concept of design thinking has exploded in popularity in the business sector. It stems from two distinct pieces of study. One example is Nobel Laureate Herbert Simon's groundbreaking work on 'artificial intelligence.' 'Engineering, medicine, business, architecture, and painting are concerned not with the required but with the contingent – not with how things are but how they may be — in short, with design,' he said in his 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial. The other is the field of industrial design and design engineering, where designers strove to combine form and function in buildings, town plans, and goods.

Design thinking became popular in the business world in the 1990s. IDEO, a California-based industrial design firm run by David Kelley, was one of the first proponents of this approach. Kelley later became the dean of Stanford's 'D School' (design school). More recently, the concept has been codified and popularized by Tim Brown, the current CEO of IDEO, and Roger Martin, the former Dean of the Rotman School of Business.

Design thinking is built on a foundation of well-known management approaches such as brainstorming, user-centered innovation, and rapid prototyping. It allows you to combine these various tools in one place.

What it is

Design thinking is a method of thinking about innovation that balances people's needs with technological feasibility and business plan viability. It's a problem-solving approach to innovation that focuses on accomplishing a wider goal rather than addressing a specific issue.

In various ways, design thinking differs from traditional thinking. The analytical scientific method, for example, begins by defining all of the parameters of an issue in order to find a solution, whereas design thinking starts with a point of view on a potential solution. Critical thinking is about 'breaking down' ideas, while design thinking is about 'building up' ideas. Furthermore, rather than traditional inductive or deductive reasoning, design thinking is typically associated with abductive reasoning. This is a way of guessing on what might be rather than focusing on what is.

Design thinking differs from traditional innovation approaches in terms of methodology (as described below). It also demands a distinct personality. Designers must have the ability to:

● empathetic - seeing the world through other people's eyes;

● optimistic - believing that a better solution is always available;

● experimenting - wanting to try out new ideas and seeing a lot of them fail;

● collaborating - to enjoy working with others and not take credit for their accomplishments.

How to use it

A four-step process can be used to apply design thinking: 1 Define the issue: This may appear straightforward, but it usually takes a lot of effort to arrive at a clear definition of the problem that has to be addressed. If you work at a university and receive feedback that the lectures are terrible, you might conclude that the issue is either (a) poor quality lecturers who need to be trained, or (b) the lecture rooms are poorly built and need to be remodeled. A design-led approach to this challenge, on the other hand, would look at the broad picture and question what the lectures' goal is in the first place. This shifts the focus of the analysis to providing high-quality education to students, which may include less traditional lectures. More online learning, for example, or small group tutorials may be required.

To describe the problem, you may need to set aside your preconceived notions about what is required and instead take an anthropological approach, such as observing users of your products or services and recognizing the challenges or concerns they face. Another strategy is to question relentlessly, as if you were a tiny child, by repeatedly asking "why?" until the simplistic answers fade away and the real difficulties emerge.
● Create and consider a variety of options: Even the most creative teams can fall into habitual thought habits, which can lead to a hasty decision. Shortcuts are discouraged in design thinking. Regardless of how obvious the solution appears, multiple solutions must be developed for evaluation. This could entail working in small groups of competitive teams or purposefully assembling a diverse team.
● Prototype, test, and refine: At the end of this process, you should have a few intriguing possibilities. These concepts should be advanced as rapidly as possible, frequently through primitive prototyping approaches, so that people may see how they might work in practice. This process normally involves numerous iterations as you switch back and forth between what is possible and what your users require. This method may occasionally expose weaknesses in the problem's initial formulation, in which case you must restart from the beginning.
● Choose a winner and carry it out: You should be confident enough in the idea at this time to invest the enormous resources required to put it into action. At this point, you should have established that the concept is both commercially and technologically viable.

Top practical tip

Design thinking is a somewhat different method of looking at the world than standard thinking. Because the process described above may not sound drastically different from what people are used to, reminding participants in a design-led project of the key differences can be difficult. This entails first investing a significant amount of time perfecting the problem definition and, second, being willing to go through several iterations to arrive at a solution.

Top pitfall

A design-led approach to innovation can sometimes result in exquisite 'designs' that are highly welcomed by users and technologically possible but fail to pass the commercial viability test. These are the most hardest situations to handle. It is sometimes possible to redesign them sufficiently to make them commercially viable, but if this is not possible, you must abandon them.