Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a process to continuously test and develop ideas and concepts within a multidisciplinary team in order to solve complex problems, with a focus on the human factor. The needs, wishes and challenges of users are thus taken into close consideration and deeply understood; this produces innovative solutions that fulfill those needs and satisfy customers, users, and stakeholders. The Design Thinking approach combines the mindset and creativity of design with technological and business know-how to create innovative products, processes and services.

In addition to cross-functionality, a creative space (physical, mental and schedule-wise) is important to leverage the full potential of the Design Thinking principles. These are:

• Build on the ideas of others!
• Visualize your ideas!
• Encourage crazy and wild ideas!
• Only one speaker at a time!
• Always remember your users!
• Develop many ideas: Quantity before quality!
• Hold back on criticism (at least in the idea phase)!
• Fail early, move quickly!
• Stay on topic!

The iterative Design Thinking process generally follows six phases. It’s possible to jump back or repeat these as needed:
1. Understand: The problem is defined. The user’s needs are analyzed on the basis of existing information to gain an overview of the problem area.
2. Observe: Users are observed and interviewed to gain deeper insights into their needs and behaviors. Empathy helps to get to know and understand the realities of the users.
3. Define Point of View: The gained insights are summarized. A clearer problem definition is formulated. This can take the form of a How Might We question.
4. Ideation: Creative ideas and solutions are developed in brainstorming sessions. One possible format to record these is the Idea Napkin.
5. Prototyping: The best ideas are selected and specified, visualized and made tangible as prototypes.
6. Test: The prototypes are tested with users to gather feedback and improve on the solutions. Further iterations can kick off from here based on the test findings.

An alternative representation of the 6 phases of Design Thinking is the Double Diamond. The first diamond represents the problem area and comprises the first three phases. First, the focus is placed on quantity and collecting and observing a lot of information; the diamond is “opened”. The diamond then “closes” again by breaking it down to a very specific point of view. The second diamond comprises the solution area with phases 4 to 6. Here, too, the area is first opened wide to collecting a large number of ideas using creativity methods. Then the area is narrowed down again by deciding on a specific idea and testing it as a tangible prototype.

Nice to know:

Design Thinking finds far-reaching use, e.g. in business model development, product and service design and process optimization. It’s a flexible and dynamic framework that enables continuous learning and adaptation. This is why we at D-LABS are guided by the Design Thinking principles in everything we do.