Design Thinking

Today we are going to be giving you an overview of a mental framework called Design Thinking. You have probably heard the term thrown around before - it's a design process that has become essential to how physical products AND software is designed and built. At the heart of Design Thinking is empathy. If you don't remember anything else from today, just remember that to design good products, you need to have empathy. You need to understand what problems your users are facing, how that makes them feel, what they're looking for in a solution, etc. You need to be able to see the problem from their point-of-view.

Design thinking has 5 stages in the process.

Stage 1: Empathize

The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem that you are trying to solve. This involves asking experts about the industry, observing for yourself, engaging, and empathizing with people in question. During this phase it's important to come to an understanding about their motivations, as well as immersing yourself in their physical environment. The most important part of this stage is to put aside your pre-conceived assumptions so that you can gain new insights from your observations and questioning.

It is important to dedicate enough time to this phase. People usually underestimate the amount of time it takes to do this phase well. The actual time will depend on the scope of the project, deadlines, etc.

Stage 2: Define (the problem)

During the Define stage, you put together the information you have gathered during the Empathize stage. During this stage you will analyze all of your observations from the Empathize stage and try to summarize them in order to define the core problem that you discovered. You should try to define the problem as a problem statement, in the form of a question. This is usually done with "How might we" questions. A few examples:

• How might we increase the number of high school students who pursue apprenticeships after graduation?
• How might we increase university students' motivation to live waste free?
• How might we make tech education more accessible to elementary school students in Austin, Texas?

Stage 3: Ideate

This is the fun part when you get to start generating ideas to solve the defined problem. There are about 1,000 different frameworks that have been well documented that you can use during this step. If you want to read about them, you can get a free Design Kit that was created by Ideo. Download a free PDF version here. This field guide has a ton of exercises that you can work through that will help you think outside of the box and come up with unique solutions to the defined problem. To give you a quick example of different exercises, you can read more about our favorites: Worst Possible Idea and SCAMPER.

Stage 4: Prototype

After you have a few great ideas for solutions to your defined problem statement, it's time to start building prototypes. These prototypes are always inexpensive, scaled down versions so that you can investigate the problem solutions. This phase is all about experimentation and is meant to help you identify the best possible solution. During this phase, it is also important to look out for constraints because this is where they become apparent. Record these constraints as they come up because they should be accounted for during the testing phase (and eventually once you actually start building the product).

Stage 5: Testing

The last phase is to run tests of how the product solves the problem statement. This is going to be an iterative process. The results from the first test are often used to redefine more problems and give you more information about users that you didn't learn during the earlier stages. Even during this phase, alterations and refinements are made in order to rule out solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.

Conclusion

It's important to remember that design thinking is rarely a linear process. You can try to stick to going through Stages 1-5 and following the framework religiously but often when you're in the field you'll go through Stages 1 and 2 and then come to a new understanding or get a new piece of information that might change what your understanding of the root problem is. Another common occurrence is that you build a prototype and because of something in the context of the problem, that prototype doesn't work (maybe you made an app but you forgot that the majority of your end users don't have smartphones).

To new UX designers, this can feel frustrating at times. Just keep in mind that each time you gather more information, you're getting closer to the real solution!

We want you to work through this quick exercise. It's a 90-minute experience where you will be taken through a full design cycle by participating in the Gift-Giving Project.

Find a partner who is willing to work through the exercise with you. This could be a roommate, a parent, another student in Foundations, whoever!

Go through the experience here.