The design thinking model has conquered designers and users everywhere — but how does it work? Here is a guide to put it all into perspective!
Design thinking has been around for a while now, and its popularity is still going strong. People from all sorts of professions trust this model to help them tackle complex issues, and achieve something that truly makes a difference — and consumers and users everywhere definitely appreciate that.
That’s the thing about great products. They aren’t just fun or pretty to look at, but they actually solve problems that users face — finding that problem and its solution is easier said than done, however. Thankfully, that’s what the design thinking model is here for: it gives you a sense of direction and pushes you towards innovation while using your prototyping tool.
Let’s take a closer look at why the model works to everyone’s advantage and how it manages to achieve that.
What is design thinking?
The design thinking method is a workflow that creative professionals can use for guidance during the creative process. By following certain steps and organizing tasks such as user research, designers can decrease the risk of getting lost in their search for the perfect product or the ideal market gap.
Not only that, but the model also helps designers to succeed in each step, because the methodology calls for designers to approach each stage in a certain way. Going back to the user research stage — designers aren’t expected to just list data and data on users until you can write a biography.
The real goal here is to understand the user so you can understand their struggles, to truly empathize with others.
The model does work like a map to make sure designers don’t deviate from the path to a useful product. Each stage has a goal, and acts as a building block that pushes you closer to a product that will make a difference in users’ lives.
The method was originally based on the H. A. Simon book by the name of The Sciences of the Artificial. Since then, it was evolved into the most commonly used version today which derives from the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, a leading institution on the matter.
The design thinking methodology found the perfect home in UX design, for its user-centric orientation. UX designers all share the challenge of creating something for the user that combines both automated software and human-like communication — which can be a tough line to walk.
If that wasn’t reason enough for designers to at least give the model a shot, there is also the way the model is organized.
Contrary to other creative models, the design thinking model isn’t linear. In fact, it encourages designers to constantly test their ideas and reiterate on what can be improved. This can have massive consequences for UX designers, especially when working on a complex product, of which each feature needs to be tested, examined and improved several times over.
Hence, UX designers use design thinking to ensure they create something that is not only useful, but something that people can understand, relate to or even befriend. Designers also enjoy the way the model guides them through the key parts of the creative process, while not limiting their creativity at all. What’s not to love, right?
The design thinking process
The classic design thinking process is divided into 5 stages. Each of them has its own goal within the creative process, and while none of them can be skipped or ignored, designers are welcome to leap back and forth from stage to stage. Check them out.
Stage 01: Empathy
The equivalent to carrying out market research, the first stage of the design thinking model has the goal of understanding the user. This is when you’ll talk, watch and read about users and try to empathize with them, with the aim of seeing things through their eyes.
You want to find out any problems that users face frequently, things they need to find workarounds for — we all have those, without even noticing.
Logically, spotting those issues isn’t easy and requires quite an ability to place yourself in the user’s place. There are many ways and tactics you can use to achieve that — from focus groups to interviews.
This stage may seem simple enough, but it does come with some pitfalls. Setting out to understand people seems easy — but the real danger lies in your own mind. Designers are often tempted to draw conclusions from the data they have, assuming that to be enough to paint the whole picture.
Stage 02: Definition
Putting all you learned from stage one into practice, the definition stage calls for you to define what problem your product will try to solve. Here is where you want to make sure you understand what are the leading factors that cause the problem, along with the consequences the problem implies for users.
Contrary to what many believe, reiterating and going back to the definition of the problem is a good thing in the product development phase. The problem is the very reason your product exists — getting this wrong will, without a doubt, spell disaster. It’s always better to take what you learn on the other stages and make sure your definition of the problem is accurate. Trust us.
Stage 03: Ideation
Designers everywhere unite with joy at this stage. Once you’ve got the people you’ll design for and which one of their problems you’ll solve, it’s then time to come up with solutions.
The design thinking model encourages you and your team to gather as many ideas as you can, without controlling or discriminating against unfeasible ideas — to maximize the creativity of everyone involved.
Once you have all the ideas you can come up with in one spot, it’s time to separate a few winners that will move on to the next phase. You want from 3–5 ideas, to allow plenty of room to change and adapt the ideas into something truly usable. Those selected ideas will become prototypes, which will then be put to the test.
Stage 04: Prototyping
The trick to making the most of your prototyping when applying the design thinking model is to get the winning ideas and turn them into low-fidelity prototypes — we recommend you make use of a prototyping tool from the get-go, so you develop and test prototypes as you advance.
As a general rule, the greater detail you apply to the prototype and the longer you work on it, the more expensive that prototype becomes.