In today’s highly competitive and ever shifting market, companies are in a constant scramble to remain ahead of the curve and stay relevant. Those companies who thrive are often the ones that innovate. But innovation isn’t just about a sudden ‘eureka’ moment. It’s about a structured process and mindset, and at its core often lies Design Thinking. So why is Design Thinking so important in Innovation?
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is a problem-solving approach rooted in empathy, collaboration, and experimentation. While initially associated with product design and architecture, its principles have now transcended those borders to become universally relevant in all applications such as process improvement, service development and customer experience design.
One of the structural strengths of Design Thinking is that it is customer-centric and has participants focus on the customer’s problem versus rushing to a company led solution.
I like to tell clients that by its very nature Design Thinking was designed to lead a team to solve the problem, not simply to continue to ‘build a better bad solution’.
The traditional form of Design Thinking that I use is what I call the ‘Stanford University Model’. It consists of five distinct phases:
Empathize: Understand the ‘users’ needs, their problems, and the context around them. This phase is about immersing oneself in the user’s world, ensuring that the solutions developed are human-centric and specific to the individuals that the solution is to be built for.
Define: Articulate the user’s needs and problems. It’s a phase of consolidation, where insights from the empathy stage are synthesized to define clear challenge statements. This is where the development team is doing whatever it can to understand the problem in a way where if possible, it was their own problem.
Ideate: Generate a myriad of solutions. Here, no idea is too outlandish. It’s about quantity and diversity, ensuring a broad scope of solutions. It’s looking at other solutions in other applicable industries or genres and similar products and/or applications that have solved similar problems.
Prototype: Build tangible representations for a subset of your ideas. These are ‘quick and dirty’ models, enabling a preliminary test of the solutions. Unlike the popular Minimum Viable Product (MVP), these prototypes should only be advanced enough to convey the ‘concept’ and idea as to what is possible versus and exact replica as to what will go to production. The reason for this is that we are still in the discovery stage at this point and are trying to find out what the customer wants and needs to solve their problem.
Test: Validate the solutions with real users, refining and iterating based on feedback. This is where we form an iterative learning loop between prototyping and testing; taking feedback and input from the customer and refining the prototype and then testing it again until we reach that point where what we have designed addresses the problem that our customer has articulated.
So, why has Design Thinking become synonymous with innovation?
Let’s dive into the nuance of its intrinsic value:
Human-Centricity: At the heart of Design Thinking is the user. In a market inundated with products and services, those that truly resonate are the ones that cater to genuine human needs and emotions.
By rooting its process in empathy, Design Thinking ensures that solutions are not just functional but also emotionally resonant for the actual individuals who have voiced their concerns, needs and desires to those that can provide a solution.
Iterative Nature: The world is dynamic and as a result, more ‘friction’ in life is being experienced and so are the problems and needs within it. Design Thinking acknowledges this fluidity, emphasizing iteration and experimentation. This adaptability ensures solutions remain relevant and optimal as they evolve in real-world contexts.
Collaboration: Design Thinking fosters cross-functional teamwork. By breaking down silos and encouraging diverse perspectives, it enriches ideation, ensuring a holistic solution. Different backgrounds and expertise of the development team culminate in more creative and comprehensive ideas.
Risk Mitigation: The prototype and test stages of Design Thinking act as a safeguard. Before investing massive resources in final product development, these stages validate the feasibility and desirability of solutions. It’s a way to ‘fail fast’ and ‘fail cheap’, ensuring that when a product hits the market, it has a higher likelihood of success.
Unlocks Creativity: By structuring creativity, Design Thinking makes innovation more accessible. It demystifies the process, proving that innovation isn’t just for the ‘creatively gifted’ but can be harnessed by anyone willing to adopt this mindset. In fact, innovation doesn’t occur without creativity but in turn, innovation only becomes innovation when action is taken on this identified creativity.
Why It’s More Relevant Now Than Ever
In the age of rapid technological advancements, consumer preferences are ever-evolving. The lifespan of products and services is shrinking. Companies that once stood as titans have toppled due to complacency and a failure to innovate (think Blockbuster in the wake of streaming services).
This volatile environment demands a nimble approach, and Design Thinking provides just that. It’s no longer sufficient to launch a product and iterate based on market feedback. To that end, the ‘build it and they will come’ product or service development process of the past has been relegated to old iconic movies (thank you Kevin Costner and “Field of Dreams”).
The modern consumer expects products to address their problem at a high level and be tailored to their needs from the outset. Design Thinking, with its emphasis on user empathy and rapid prototyping, facilitates this expectation.
Furthermore, in a world where technology often takes center stage, Design Thinking serves as a reminder. It underscores that while technology is a powerful enabler, true innovation is rooted in understanding and addressing human needs. Building things using the latest whiz-bang technology isn’t good enough anymore; the customer actually needs to want the solution and what is being sold as the solution actually needs to address that customer groups problem.
Conclusion
Design Thinking is not just a buzzword or a fleeting trend anymore, as much as it might have been just a decade ago. It’s a transformative approach, shaping how companies and individuals navigate the complex challenges of the modern world. It democratizes innovation, proving that with the right mindset and process, anyone can be an innovator.
As we hurtle into an uncertain future, this mindset will be the compass that guides us towards meaningful, impactful solutions. As a result, the new mantra in boardrooms of companies will start to take on the ‘build things people want’ backdrop as more and more companies start to truly embrace a customer-centric approach to delivering value.