What is Design Thinking?
An iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding
Motivation behind Design Thinking
- Knowing deeply your user
- By observing and developing empathy with the user
- Through the process of questioning
Design Thinking Phases
- Empathise – with your users
- Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights
- Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions
- Prototype – to start creating solutions
- Test – solutions
Design Thinking Phases - Empathise
- Gain an empathic understanding of the problem (observing and interacting with people to understand the problem).
- Depending on time constraints, a considerable amount of time should be spent in this phase
Design Thinking Phases - Define (the problem)
- Gather the data collected from previous phase
- Aim at defining the problem statement
- Team should produce ideas for the functions that will solve the problem
- Try to respond to questions framed like: “how could/might we …?
Design Thinking Phases - Ideate
- Start to generate ideas
- Summing up: you started by understanding users and their needs in Empathise Phase, then you gathered, analysed the data in Define Phase, ended up with a human-centred problem definition
- Now it is time to think out of the box!
Techniques: Brainstorm, Brainwrite, Worst Possible Idea, SCAMPER, etc. - Get the maximum of ideas at this stage!
Design Thinking Phases - Prototype
- Construct a number of cheap versions of the product, or of some features of the product in order to investigate the solutions achieved.
- Each solution should be tested against the users’ experience and needs in order to be accepted, revised or rejected.
- At the end of this stage, the team should have a clear idea of how users will behave when interacting with the product
Design Thinking Phases - Test
- Test the complete product achieved with the best solutions identified in previous phases
- This is the final phase but … it is an iterative process so some results may lead to redefinition of the problem a let’s start again
Emphasise with your users
Emerge in users’ environments
Adopt a beginner’s mindset: leave all your assumptions at home ☺
Ask 3 questions: what? how? Why?
* What?: details of what happened during observations
* How?: how the person is doing what she is doing
* Why? Try to figure out the motivations and emotions with the users
* Methods: Photo and Video User observations, Personal Photo and Video Journals, Interviews, Share Stories, Bodystorming
Define the Problem and Interpret the Results
Definition of a meaningful and actionable problem statement
Analysis and synthesis of observations
Analysis: breaking down complex concepts and problems into smaller, easier-to-understand constituents.
Synthesis: creatively piecing the puzzle together to form whole ideas,
when we organise, interpret, and make sense of the data we have gathered to create a problem statement.
Why is a problem statement important?
Because it will guide you and your team, and provides a focus on the specific needs that you have uncovered
What makes a good Problem Statement?
- Human-centered: problem statement should be about the people the team is trying to help, rather than focusing on technology, monetary returns or product specifications.
- General for creative freedom: Should not focus on a particular way of implementing, preventing the achievement of good solutions
- Narrow enough to be manageable: should have enough constraints to be manageable and achievable (not good example: Irradicate poverty!)
How to? [Problem Statement] - Space saturate and Affinity Diagrams
You space saturate to help you unpack thoughts and experiences into tangible and visual pieces of information that you surround yourself with to inform and inspire the design team.
You group these findings to explore what themes and patterns emerge and strive to move toward identifying meaningful needs of people and insights that will inform your design solutions.
How to? [Problem Statement] - Empathy Mapping
An empathy map is a collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user.
It externalizes knowledge about users in order to
1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and
2) aid in decision making.
4 quadrants:
Says – contains what the user says out loud in an interview or some other study, e.g.: “I want something reliable”, “I don’t understand what to do from here”
Thinks – captures what the user is thinking throughout the experience, e.g.: “This is really annoying”, “Am I dumb for not understanding this?”
Does – encloses the actions the user takes, e.g.: Refreshes page several times
Feels – portrays the user’s emotional state, e.g.: confused: too many contradictory prices, worried: they are doing something wrong
How to? [Problem Statement] - Point of View
A Point Of view (POV) is a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which will allow you to ideate in a goal-oriented manner. Your POV captures your design vision by defining the RIGHT challenge to address in the ideation sessions.
How to? [Problem Statement] - How might we? (HMW)
- After establishing the POV it is important to try to generate new ideas
- How might we (HMW) questions are questions that have the potential to spark ideation sessions.
e.g.
How might we make trip planning more collaborative
How might we help users inform others about trip details
How to? [Problem Statement] - Why-How Laddering - WHY
Generally, asking ‘why’ yields more abstract statements and asking ‘how’ yields specific statements. Often abstract statements are more meaningful but not as directly actionable, and the opposite is true of more specific statements.
That is why you ask ‘why?’ often during interviews – in order to get toward more meaningful feelings from users rather than specific likes and dislikes, and surface layer answers. Outside an interview, when you think about the needs of someone, you can use why-how laddering to flesh out a number of needs and find a middle stratum of needs that are both meaningful and actionable.
How to? [Problem Statement] - Why-How Laddering - HOW
When considering the needs of your user, start with a meaningful one. Write that need on the board and then ladder up from there by asking ‘why’. Ask why your user would have that need and phrase the answer as a need.
For example, “Why would she need to see a link between a product and the natural process that created it’? Because she needs to have confidence that something will not harm her health by understanding where it came from’.” Combine your observations and interviews with your intuition to identify that need.
Then take that more abstract need and ask why again, to create another need. Write each on the board above the former. At a certain point you will reach a very abstract need, common to just about everyone, such as the ‘need to be healthy’. This is the top of that need hierarchy branch. You can also ask ‘how’ to develop more specific needs.
Climb up (‘why?’) and down (how?) in branches to flesh out a set of needs for your user. You might come up to one need and then come back down.
In the previous example, you climbed up to the ‘need to understand where a product came from’. Then ask ‘how’ to identify the ‘need to participate in the process of creating a product’. There will also be multiple answers to your ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ – branch out and write those down. The result (after some editing and refining) is a needs
hierarchy that paints a full picture of your user or composite user.
Ideate
“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.”
Use creativity and innovation to develop solution.
Aim of Ideate
- Ask the right questions and innovate.
- Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential of your solution.
- Bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
- Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
- Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
- Get obvious solutions out of your heads and drive your team beyond them.
Ideation - Brainstorm
Generate many ideas by leveraging the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each other, listening, and building on other ideas
Rules:
* Set a time limit
* Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a plan, or a goal and stay focused on the topic
* Stay on topic
* Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal
* Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas
* Aim for quantity
* Build on each others’ ideas
* Be visual
* One topic at a time
Methods to Select Ideas
- Post-it Voting or Dot Voting
- Four Categories Method
- Bingo Selection
- Idea Affinity Maps
- Now Wow How Matrix
- Six Thinking Hats
- Lean Startup Machine Idea Validation Board
- Idea Selection Criteria
Methods to Select Ideas - Post-it Voting or Dot Voting
Each one places a post-it or a dot on its preferred idea
Methods to Select Ideas - Four Categories Method
Divide ideas into 4 categories:
- Most Rational
- Most Delightful
- Darling
- Long Shot.
- Then have the team select a few ideas from each category.
- This method ensures that you cover more ground and include different types of ideas.
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What is UX?18
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User Research: Methods and Best Practices44
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User Research - Designing a Questionnaire59
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Design Thinking35
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User Research - Personas13
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Mobile User Experience44
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Storytelling36
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AI and UX9
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Design Thinking Complete Process10
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Introduction to Data Visualization26
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Visual Storytelling and Decision Support8
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Business Intelligence and Analytics19
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Dashboard Design8
