They are just a few of the leading brands that use Design Thinking to create innovative products and services. What’s more, Design Thinking is taught in leading Universities, such as Harvard, MIT, and the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school.

Design Thinking is a mindset of framing and solving difficult problems of any nature, by applying a solution-focused mindset rather than the traditional problem-focused approach. This method takes into consideration deep insights of human needs related to the problem (empathy) and uses the resulting observations to gradually separate it into its constituent elements (analysis) and subsequently redefine it in a human-centric manner (synthesis).

Sparking creativity and innovation

Understanding Design Thinking will empower anyone to apply the method in order to solve complex problems in our companies, our environment and beyond. Design Thinking practices are innumerable; as many as the problems around us. For example, Design Thinking is a holistic way for a business to gain a comprehensive, empathic understanding of customer needs, which will spark an innovative product or a complete redesign of the customer journey. However, it might also be used as a tool to increase employee engagement and unleash employee creativity within an organization.

That’s because Design Thinking is a mindset rather than just a method.

Design Thinking delivers results for the reason that it is based on the intelligence of people and the creativity in each one of us. Creativity is an integral part of being human; we are all creative individuals, no matter who we are or what we do. In other words, it is what we know and who we are that makes us creative. It is how we interact and how we react to our environment that makes us creative. Reaching back into who we are, will ultimately give rise of our creativity to the forefront of our being.

To drive employee engagement and creativity in your organization, allow your employees to be who they are. Allow your employees to tap into their inner-selves, to release the intrinsic creativity that for one reason or another has been insulated behind beliefs on how we are supposed to think and act in the workplace.

It is no surprise, that employee engagement is low in most organizations. Somewhere along the way, we integrated to the workplace and learned to no longer expect or deem ourselves to be creative.

 “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” Henry Ford

Moreover, Design Thinking places the customer at the center of it’s process, involving a deep understanding that, potentially, there is not just one customer group for your business to focus, but rather, several customer groups with different needs and expectations. Designers leverage on insights and new perspectives, gained by observing mainstream, as well as, extreme customer experiences, outside of the normal distribution.

When you have two coffee shops side by side, and each sells coffee made out of the same coffee beans at the same price, the design of the service is what makes you and other consumers to walk into one and not the other.

Enabling the Design Thinking Process

According to d.school, there are five phases that contribute in a Design Thinking project: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The sequence of phases, from Empathise to Test, suggests a linear process. However, Design Thinking is not sequential at all.

All five phases, may occur in parallel and repeated as many times as necessary. For example, as prototypes are build and tested, new insights might surface. These insights will feed new ideation sessions, hence generating more ideas and subsequently leading to new prototypes.

Phase 1: Empathise

The first phase of a Design Thinking project, is to understand the problem on the table, by developing a deep empathy for stakeholders (customers, users, consumers etc.). This involves, abandoning viewing customers as statistical data and sales value and focusing on gaining a deeper understanding of the human needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations related to the problem.

To truly achieve unconditional empathy with customers, designers should switch their mindset to that of a beginner. In other words, when engaging with users to gain insights, design thinkers should leave their own assumptions and experiences behind. They should actively listen to what others have to say, avoid to judge and aim to challenge the obvious.

Phase 2: Define

All resulting observations and insights gathered during the Empathise phase, gradually separate the problem into its constituent elements (analysis). These elements will now be used, to subsequently redefine the problem in a human-centric manner (synthesis). This phase assists designers to create a brand new big picture, which will in turn help progression to the Ideation phase and the generation of ideas and desired outcomes to solve the problem. The new problem definition has to be:

• Human-centered, thus triggered by a deeper understanding of the human needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations related to the problem.
• Non-restricted by specific methods or technicalities, but aimed to enable unexpected creativity.

To illustrate the first two phases of the design thinking process, let’s utilize a healthcare study. This study revealed that 3 out of 10 scheduled medical appointments are “no-shows”, meaning that patients simply do not show up. This causes more than $150 billion dollars of annual healthcare system costs in the U.S. only. Besides timely patient care and treatment needs, hospitals are faced with increasing idle time and further costs of rescheduling the missed medical appointments (Sviokla, Schroeder and Weakland, 2010). In this case, problem definition could be as follows:

“We need to decrease healthcare system costs by 10%”

Now, let’s understand the problem on the table by developing a deep empathy for patients. In an effort to analyze and understand the reasons behind the 30% of “no-shows”, hospital administrators spoke to patients with painful chronic conditions who continually failed to keep regular appointments.

“Was there an issue with transportation? Did they need other appointment reminders aside from the paper letter mailed to their home and the standard phone call?” (Kim, Myers and Allen, 2017)

Interviews revealed, that the main issue for patients with a painful chronic condition, was not forgetfulness nor time management, but rather socioemotional discomfort. For these patients, a trip to the hospital was overwhelming to say the least. Some of them had to go through a difficult, time-consuming and hectic coordination for arranging just-in-time, door-to-door help and special transportation.

Furthermore, when in the hospital, the patient journey was not getting simpler at all. Large academic medical centers have several entrances, long corridors and multiple floors. Interviews revealed, that some of the patients were very worried that they would get lost or they would not find someone to push their wheelchair. Taking into account all of the above challenges, patients simply preferred not to show up on their regular appointments!

As a result, the human-centric definition of the problem, could be articulated as follows:

“Create new ways of helping patients feel comfortable and safe during their hospital journey.”

Phase 3: Ideate

Once the problem has a human-centered definition, creativity and innovation kicks in through the Ideate phase. Design thinkers apply divergent, unrestrained, free thinking and ideation techniques such as: brainstorming, experience flows, worst possible idea, crowdstorm or co-creation workshops, to name a few.

The objective is to collectively generate a large pool of creative ideas and solutions, out of the obvious and use them to spark innovation. Once the pool of ideas is filled up, then design thinkers can filter and narrow down into the best, most practical, or most innovative ones that directly affect a user’s experience of a product or a service. Techniques such as, post-it voting or the four categories method are used to select the best ideas out of an ideation session.

Phase 4: Prototype

Prototyping, is the most efficient and cost effective way of visualizing and experimenting with the best ideas emerging from an ideation session. The quick formation of experimental manifestations of concepts, can assist in determining which ideas can provide viable or technologically possible solutions to the problems defined in the previous design phases. In parallel, hands on user interaction with the prototypes, generates invaluable insights which can assist in dropping ideas fast and engaging with others without spending a lot of money and effort.

For instance, to test the look, feel, and value of a new, unique service environment, aiming to enhance customer experience, designers would start cautiously with service and floor-plan paper blueprints. Then, gradually move into physically building full-scale foam core prototypes of welcome stations, waiting lounges, and service counters. On the other hand, when developing a new mobile application, designers may first built paper screen prototypes and then use prototyping tools such as Balsamiq or Justinmind, before settling upon a particular design.

Once the primary design is settled, prototypes may move to the actual development phase delivering a much more comprehensive version of the product. By the end of this phase, the design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent within the product and the problems present in potential development.

Phase 5: Test

As prototypes are completed, testing should initiate as fast as possible. Testing generates a better, more detailed perspective of how actual users behave, think, and feel when interacting with the product or service.

All prototypes should be tested at a setting that resembles -as much as possible- natural user environment, thus simulating real life interactions. Such user feedback, is invaluable and may potentially feed further insights back to every phase of the Design Thinking process. That is because:

• Testing enhances empathy and provides a clearer understanding of end-users and their needs.
• Testing generates new, radical insights redefining the problem and potentially changing the way designers will work.
• Testing sparks new ideas and new rounds of Ideation.
• Testing sizes user experience potentially rejecting, accepting, re-evaluating or redefining a prototype.

The quintessential purpose of the Test phase is… failure. Designers should not be afraid to fail. The quicker they fail, the greater the chances of them coming up with a creative, innovative idea. d.School, sets five steps as the guideline for planning the test phase. However, in my opinion it can be simplified by following a triptych of three actions: « Engage », « Listen » and « Ask ».

1. Engage: Let users interact with and compare prototypes as they like, without user manuals or guidelines. Observe interactions that highlight pros and cons, such as handling or use mistakes.
2. Listen: Let users experience the prototype on their own with their own actions, thoughts and feelings. Develop a deep empathy for users, and focus on gaining a deeper understanding of the human needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations related to the problem and how the prototype provides a solution or not.
3. Ask: Let users to talk through their experience while interacting with the prototypes. Follow up with a lot of « Why? » questions. For example, « How did the prototype make you feel? Why was that? ».

The End-Result of Design Thinking is Desirable, Feasible and Viable Solutions

The End-Result of the Design Thinking process can be illustrated by a Venn diagramconsisting of three overlapping closed circles, each representing a set of desirable outcomes that validate the success of the project. A solution has to be humanistically desired, hence meet user needs, thoughts and emotions; technologically feasible and commercially viable.

The intersection among the three sets, represents the successful End-Result of a Design Thinking project.

Case Study: Applied Service Design Thinking

Singapore Employment Pass, is that country’s mandatory work visa of expat professionals, managers and executives. The process of obtaining the work visa at the Employment Pass Services Center or EPSC, used to be interminable and labyrinthine, comprising of 13 steps. Common understanding, is that shorter service times equals better customer experience. In this regard, several leading indicators and KPIs were set by management to measure EPSC service times and operational efficiency.

However, when Singapore Ministry of Manpower partnered with Design Thinking consultants, IDEO, this, de facto service culture, was challenged.

By observing user experience, across the spectrum of the customer journey, designers identified that applicants, as well as agencies, are predominantly interested in process reliability and consistency, rather than faster service times. As a result, all visits to the EPSC are now by appointment only. User insights, have also generated ideas for a complete redesign of the service area, which is now comprising of three segments: the welcome area, the waiting area and the registration or enrollment area.

The first touch-point of the customer journey is the welcome area, which is characterized by its simplicity. « Service Ambassadors » are always available to greet visitors and help them navigate through the areas and process steps.

The waiting area is the exact opposite of a typical service area. There are no wall-to-wall service counters, queuing machines, customer queues and multiple series of chairs in the center of the room, with seated customers, waiting for their ticket number to be called. Instead, waiting areas are in the perimeter of the room with views of the Singapore river and skyline. The main service counter is located at the center of the room and customers are called by name, not by numbers.

Finally, the registration area has service points, designed to serve disparate human needs. There are points for users with special needs or physical difficulties, as well as, family points that have play corners designed to occupy young children as they wait with their parents to be served.

By applying Service Design Thinking, ESPC did not only increase customer happiness but also achieved operational efficiency; 95% of the visitors are now served within 15 minutes (Source: IDEO).

Enabling a Design-Centric Organization

As pointed out earlier, Design Thinking delivers results because it is based on the intelligence of people and the trapped creativity in each one of us. Design Thinking can be infused into the organization’s culture, become a core competency and allow employees to release the intrinsic creativity that for one reason or another, has been insulated behind beliefs on how we are supposed to think and act in the workplace.

By putting design much closer to the center of the organization, companies can become more flexible, more responsive to their customers, and ultimately improve employee engagement, participation and interdepartmental collaboration.

The first key-element in such a design-centric transformation is having a strategic intent and broad commitment from an organization’s senior leadership, including the CEO and the Board. Organizations have an intrinsic resistance to change, so the new design culture must be sponsored and protected.

The new design culture, requires creative processes, infused across the organization and has to be complemented by the right people. It is absolutely required for the design team to possess a comprehensive set of design and business skills; empathy and user understanding has to be run side by side with strategy setting.

Finally, the design-centric vision has to be visible and valued inside the organization. People should know that the ship is steered to the right direction, hence building up confidence and credibility. Credibility is built on results, hence this can be achieved by successful design projects and product launches, magazine articles, design awards, etc.

The only challenge that organizations will potentially face is how to reconcile the use of abstract and intangible elements in the creation of the absolute and the concrete; how to bridge the gap between utility and experience, in order to anticipate new customer needs, environments and futures (Gwee, 2010).

In Conclusion

As services and products on shelves look more and more cluttered, Design Thinking provides a new way for a business to gain a comprehensive, empathic understanding of human needs, thoughts, emotions and preferences. Shifting to a design-centric mindset allows thinking to go beyond « the box », to a fresh, limitless space with no defined height, depth, and width.

In addition, the iterative nature of Design Thinking recognizes that it’s absolutely impossible to get things right the first time, hence there is a cost of failure associated to innovation. Creative thinking is encouraged and any idea is allowed, in a place where there’s no box! Possibly, people will be queuing up for an iPhone X in November 2017, but in order to get there, Apple suffered major failures in the past. Like Apple Pippin, the games console which was released in 1996 and discontinued in 1997.

By infusing Design Thinking into corporate culture there’s no longer any real distinction between business strategy and the design of customer experience. Design Thinking becomes a core competency, establishing brand new perspectives in order to generate the right experience, transform the perception and meaning of a product and redesign the customer journey.

Source : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/design-thinking-enabling-mindset-innovation-thanos-papadimitriou-2/?trackingId=6kZ0V8oaV1RsenDP5gOb9Q%3D%3D