Design Thinking: creating value through problem-solving.
This paper was written for the Design Thinking module as part of my Master's in Digital Experience Design at Hyper Island, Manchester (UK).
Introduction
This academic paper aims not only to introduce the reader to design thinking as a methodology to problem-solving and innovation but also to critically analyze its tools and processes. Firstly, the paper defines what design thinking is according to renowned authors and practitioners. Secondly, it explores its applicability concerning human-centered design, its impact on teams, and presents design thinking as a method to identify and solve real problems. Thirdly, it elucidates ethical issues within the field of design. Finally, it demonstrates how design thinking was applied in a real-world project by examining the process that a group of students at Hyper Island used to tackle a client brief, outlining both the problem and the solution.
What is design thinking?
Even though the term “Design Thinking” has been used by design researchers and practitioners for a few decades, one could argue that its logic has been applied since the Neanderthals. As a creative and experiential species, humans naturally tend to utilize — at times, possibly subconsciously — the classic “Build, Measure, Learn” approach (Ries, 2011), which is central to design thinking as a methodology.
More broadly, regarding concept, authors and influencers define it in many ways. Tim Brown (2009) understands design thinking as the intersection of “what is desirable from a human point of view with what is logically feasible and economically viable” while Dorst (2011) describes it as “an exciting new paradigm for dealing with problems in many professions”. The former defines design thinking as the process of creating value by not only putting people first but also by acknowledging the importance of business and technical factors. The latter, on the other hand, defines it as simply as a new problem-solving paradigm. Moreover, Tom and David Kelley (2013) characterize design thinking as “a methodology for innovating routinely”. Although the definitions are interconnected at their core, Kimbell (2011) urges the design community and the general public alike to explore their understanding of the concept further: “even on a cursory inspection, just what design thinking is supposed to be is not well understood, either by the public or those who claim to practice it.”
Human-centered design
A key principle of human-centered design is that designers “empathize with the end user” (Kelley and Kelley, 2013). Putting it simply, empathy is “the effort to see the world through the eyes of others” (Brown, 2009). At a more fundamental level, being empathetic means profoundly connecting with other people, going as far as feeling their pains, fears, and frustrations as if they were your own.
More than a concept, human-centered design is a creative process that puts people first. Thereby, the desired solution should take into account behaviors and personalities (Kelley, 2002). Designers who put people first have a fresh and more empathetic perspective on others’ needs and on the opportunities that arise from research and observation. As Tim Brown (2009) would put it, ”a designer, no less than an engineer or a marketing executive, who simply generalizes from his standards and expectations will limit the field of opportunity”.
For every solution there should be a need and where there is a need, there is a person. Identifying opportunities and needs demand that one not only is empathetic but also an explorer. Therefore, designing an experience, regardless of type or goal, will most likely lead towards a path of unexpected discoveries, be it related to the target audience through empathy building or to new findings through extensive and exploratory research.
Innovation should not be seen as a linear process. Seasoned designers are aware that before finding a solution to a problem, odds are their teams had to adapt, self-correct and quickly respond to new facts throughout a design experience. Additionally, it is clear from the beginning that there is no such thing as a definitive solution. After all, context, people, and society change. Thus it is imperative that innovative design teams recognize the changing nature of a problem as well as the lack of order — or the presence of structured chaos — when pursuing a solution. Tim Brown (2009) outlines that “the continuum of innovation is best thought as a system of overlapping spaces rather than a sequence of orderly steps”. And he adds that such overlapping spaces are thought as:
- Inspiration: the problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solutions;
- Ideation: the process of generating, developing and testing ideas;
- Implementation: the path that leads from the project room to the market.
Those three spaces, combined, are critical to achieve excellence and, ultimately, to innovate. Aware of that, agile teams and companies organize projects around them as to have a sustainable competitive advantage over other businesses.
The impact of design thinking on teams
Jeanne Liedtka, a Professor at the Darden School at the University of Virginia, interviewed leaders at a number of Fortune 100 organizations and concluded that “the process of innovation in many large organizations could fairly be described as the battlefield in which R&D, marketing, and business development functions seemed to wrestle for control and often work at cross-purposes with each other” (Liedtka, 2014). Her findings indicate that design thinking is not just an innovative process or methodology, as underlined by Tom and David Kelley (2012), but also a problem-solving process.
Design thinking has proven to be a valuable methodology that positively impacts how teams work. By encouraging creative leaps, managers help their teams envision what the future could be rather than what the present is not. Liedtka (2014) observed that design tools “such as ethnographic interviewing, customer journey mapping and job-to-be-done analysis encouraged people to stay involved with the problem long enough to reframe opportunities.”
Traditional teams — those with a tendency to rush through the exploratory phase — might encounter more difficulties to find a solution to the problem at hand than those of that embrace design thinking and carefully explore the question. Hence, precisely defining the problem is of utmost importance.
Liedtka (2014) argues that “contrary to the heroic, lone-genius myth of innovation is the reality that success is often the result of a team effort”. Therefore, one can hardly win alone. Expanding on Liedtka’s view, design thinking is the collective effort of a few individuals working toward a common goal. Design thinking’s collaborative methodology impacts teams in a way that the focus shifts from “I” to “we” and the group’s attention is redirected to what matters: the end user’s problem.
A design thinking approach to problem-solving
According to Liedtka (2014), the design thinking process needs to answer four questions — What is? What if? What wows? What works? — each representing a different stage of a design experience. “What is” refers to the present. “What if” builds on the present to envision a new future. “What wows” helps teams focus on solutions that stand out and “What works” tests possible solutions with actual users in the real world.
At a glance, the journey from “What is” to “What works” may seem linear. However, as in any design thinking framework, it is iterative. Pivoting and self-correcting guide the process as unknowns become knowns. Design tools such as customer journey mapping, mind mapping, brainstorming and rapid prototyping serve to the purpose of helping designers and researchers uncover hidden truths, hence making a seemly linear process become a feedback loop — “Build, Measure, Learn” — (Ries, 2011) focused on swiftly improving the existing solution.
Dorst (2011) argues that humans use basic reasoning patterns to solve problems by comparing different settings of knowns and unknowns:
The above figure represents what he defines as “Deduction”: by knowing the “what” and the “how” the result is predictable. In another method — “Induction” — there is a missing variable, which is the “how.” Dorst (2011) goes on as to affirm that this form of reasoning is the way hypotheses are created and that researchers and scholars set out critical experiments and rigorous tests to falsify them.
A design-driven approach, however, requires an alternative process. To prove that value is created through problem-solving, Dorst (2011) introduces the “Abduction” method, which is subdivided in two: Abduction-1 and Abduction-2. The former is more conventional and objective as both the “value” and the “how” are known. The latter is more complex since the only known variable is the “value”:
Abduction-2 allows designers to focus on the problem as they understand that the need for a new solution derives from an aspiration. The primary challenge lays in identifying the working principle that leads to creating the value. As an example, one may argue that going to the supermarket to purchase groceries is exhausting and time-consuming. Identifying such problem, both startups and traditional businesses created value to customers by offering groceries delivery through online shopping. In said example, the “value” is the convenience of receiving your groceries at home, the “how” is online shopping, and the “what” is a smartphone app or a website. As noted, to tackle this problem designers worked backward, starting from the known variable: the “value.”
Interestingly, as technology and human needs evolve, known variables can become unknown, creating a problem-solving loop. Using the same example, as people use online services to purchase groceries, much has been said about the constraints of the convenience mentioned above as receiving groceries at their doorsteps no longer suffice. People do not want strangers picking the fruits and vegetables they will eat. They want both the convenience and the experience. As a consequence, the equation is back to its initial stage. Identifying the opportunity, a few entrepreneurs in Silicon Valley are building self-driving grocery stores to solve the new equation. Customers request a self-driving store through a mobile app, and when it arrives, the vehicle opens its doors as customers approach. They pick the desired items and instantly pay for them. This is innovation and problem-solving at its finest.
Ethics in design thinking
Leslie Becker (2012) argues that “design practices can involve many genres of ethical problems”. From her perspective, even though design professionals have been discussing ethics for decades, there is no conversation about what method is being used to define what is a right action. Becker then describes five methods that could assist the decision about right action (Becker, 2012):
- Deontology: a right action is the result of one’s moral obligation and duty;
- Communicative ethics: rational speech defines what is right and rational people understand each other;
- Virtue ethics: a method focused on one’s moral character — someone of high moral character acts right;
- Consequentialism: outcomes are more important than the process;
- Casuistry: acting right depends on the particulars of a problem — cases are resolved based upon comparison with similar cases.
While Leslie Becker (2012) explores ways of acting right on a philosophical spectrum, IDEO on its book on design research ethics (2015) focuses on the ethical application of research. When interacting with users, the company outlines three principles: respect, responsibility, and honesty. It is critical that participants never feel manipulated or pressured. Explaining the process and asking for consent, therefore, are sine qua non conditions to an ethical design research.
Designing ethically aligned experiences, however, involves designing technology that respects human rights, human effort and human experiences (Balkan, 2017). As our lives are intrinsically attached to the technologies we use, human rights (e.g., privacy and respect) are commonly overseen by those who own the technology. Consequently, designers have an increasingly important role in shaping the future both by a moral and human standard.
Applying design thinking in the real world
On the “Design Thinking” module, Hyper Island challenged its full-time MA students to tackle the homelessness problem in Manchester by asking the following question: “How can we improve the system, cultural and personal process to enable those people looking for gainful employment to find their success story?”. The Crew UK 18 was divided into groups of six and the one I was part of was called “T.I.S — This is Simple.”
The journey that will be described below allowed T.I.S’ members to use design thinking tools, frameworks and concepts to solve a specific problem rather than a broad one. Additionally, it was an opportunity to experience design thinking in a real-world context for the first time for most members of the group.
Before doing any actual work, T.I.S decided to use the British Design Council’s Double Diamond (2015) as the primary framework to apply design thinking and tackle the brief. Mostly, the Double Diamond is “a simple visual map of the design process” (British Design Council, 2015) that consists of four phases: Discover, Define, Develop and Deliver. Although it might look like a linear process — with a definite beginning and ending — it is not. To find the right solution, it is vital that the design team iterates as much as necessary. Strong ideas need to be developed, tested and refined whereas the weak ones are dropped.
The Double Diamond starts with a challenge (problem) and ends with an impact (solution). The first phase — Discover — is the insight into the problem, which means that the design team focuses on researching and gathering data. The second phase — Define — is the area to focus upon; after research, it is essential that all the data is synthesized, so the team can make sense of its findings. The third phase — Develop — involves identifying potential solutions and the fourth — Deliver — is about implementing a winning solution. Discover and Develop are diverging phases, which allow designers to open up as much as possible, whereas Define and Deliver are converging phases, which focus on condensing and narrowing down findings or ideas (Nessler, 2016).
Deciding on which design thinking framework to use, however, was not sufficient. Thus the group defined Trello as its project management tool and Kanban as the methodology. The combination of the Double Diamond and Kanban was crucial to the team’s workflow. Furthermore, T.I.S’ Trello Board was organized according to the Double Diamond’s principles: all tasks were labeled either as Discover [Research], Define [Synthesis], Develop [Ideation] or Deliver [Implementation]. At the end of the project, the group concluded that such approach was helpful since every team member was on the same page from day one.
Team T.I.S’ process
Even though the brief had the potential to be impactful, it was broad. Therefore, the group decided it was important to discuss the brief’s main points to understand the intricacies around it. An overview of the brief was written down on a piece of paper. Doing so helped the group to focus on the goal of the project as well as on the initial challenges.
The next step was research (first diverging phase). All team members went online and read articles, projects and real-life stories regarding homelessness both in the United Kingdom and abroad. As a result, a considerable amount of data was gathered from it. The group then spent two days synthesizing data (first converging phase) to create its “How Might We” question. Originally, there were 3 “How Might We” questions, which made the problem definition complicated since they were generic.
After the How Might We questions were defined, the group started ideating (second diverging phase). It was agreed that all team members would think about potential solutions and they would share their ideas with their peers. To evaluate ideas, T.I.S used the “Low/High Effort, High/Low Impact” matrix:
Out of fifteen ideas, three stood out: “Blockchain for the homeless”, “Personalized 3-month training programs” and “Kickstarter for entrepreneurial projects focused on people with lived experience”. However promising, the group was not sufficiently convinced they solved a real problem. Therefore, a step back was needed, which led to returning to the research phase to conduct interviews with Mooch Ashley and Graham Wood from Street Support. During the interviews, followed by more secondary research, new insights emerged. One, in particular, was recurrent: a job is not enough.
Such unexpected discovery made the team rethink its How Might We questions. Rather than broad and unfocused, it had to target a specific problem. According to our research, people with lived experience of homelessness find it difficult to retain their jobs due to a number of factors, from lacking peer support to returning to old habits. Hence the new How Might We question was “How might we help people with lived experience of homelessness retain their job and live a happy, healthy life?”.
It was clear at this point that design thinking is iterative. Problem solvers understand that new findings might surge unexpectedly — and rather than fight it, they embrace it as part of the innovation process. The group then made another ideation session, which was more pragmatic than the first one since the new How Might We question was also more objective.
The idea
The idea T.I.S agreed on to pursue was called Keep Hub. It was focused on people with lived experience of homelessness that were employed, and it had two main offerings: personalized mentorships and a physical place where they could participate in workshops, general courses, and social activities.
In an attempt to visualize how the solution would work from the user’s perspective, the team created a customer journey map. Fundamentally, it mapped out not only what customers would do at Keep Hub, but also how they would feel at different moments. It also helped T.I.S to identify touchpoints with the end user.
To make the project more efficient and transparent, the team also had an idea for a web platform that would help employers, mentors, and people with lived experience to stay connected. To summarize it:
- Employers would see a list of their employees with lived experience as well as have access to the notes their mentors wrote about them.
- People with lived experience would be able to check a calendar with the dates for their next workshop or mentoring sessions.
- Mentors would be able to write notes about their mentees and share them with employers in real-time.
The final step was to prototype, test and refine the idea (second converging phase). The team drew a floor plant for the physical place and prototyped the web platform. After that, it showed the concept to a few people — potential employers and people with lived experience — who tested it and provided feedback. By assessing the new inputs, T.I.S was able to improve the final solution.
Conclusion
As demonstrated in this paper, the design community still struggles to find a common denominator when it comes to defining what design thinking is. Nevertheless, its innovative approach, tools, and frameworks have been helping agile teams and companies worldwide to succeed.
Even though there is no right or wrong way of applying design thinking, people must always come first. Since humans design solutions for other humans, the “people” variable will be present in every design experience. Empathy, therefore, is vital to build better solutions. Without it, the human component of the process is weakened, and there is a lack of understanding of the user’s needs.
Innovation is iterative, and teams need to be aware of it. Rushing to a solution when the problem is not clearly understood will lead to resources being wasted; if necessary teams should not be afraid of starting over. By asking more “whys” one build better “whats.”
All things considered, design thinking is a methodology that not only helps teams to innovate, but also to solve problems by creating value to team members — or design thinkers — and stakeholders alike. Team members feel empowered and engaged as they empathize with the people they are trying to help, and stakeholders — customers, managers, other employees, suppliers, etc. — experience joy when a well-defined problem meets a well-executed solution.
References
Ries, E. (2011). The Lean Startup: how today’s entrepreneurs use continuous innovation to create radically successful businesses. New York: Crown Business.
Brown, T. (2009). Change by design: how design thinking transforms organizations and inspires innovation. New York: Harper Collins.
Dorst, K. (2011). The core of ‘design thinking’ and its application, pp.521–532.
Kelley, D. and Kelley, T. (2013). Creative confidence: unleashing the creative potential within us all. London, United Kingdom: William Collins.
Kimbell, L. (2011). Rethinking Design Thinking: Part I, pp.285–306.
Kelley, D. (2002). “Human-centered design.” Available at: https://www.ted.com/talks/david_kelley_on_human_centered_design. [Accessed 12 February, 2018].
Liedtka, L. (2014). Innovative ways companies are using design thinking, pp.40–45.
Becker, L. (2012). Design and Ethics: sealed-off thinking, pp.51–53.
IDEO. The Little Book of Design Research Ethics, IDEO, 2015.
Balkan, A. (2017). ”The nature of the self in the digital age”, 23 Jan. Available at: https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/content/nature-self-digital-age. [Accessed 20 February, 2018].
British Design Council (2015). “The design process: what is the Double Diamond?” Available at: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/news-opinion/design-process-what-double-diamond. [Accessed 12 February, 2018].
Nessler, D. (2016). “How to apply a design thinking, HCD, UX or any creative process from scratch”, 19 May. Available at: https://medium.com/digital-experience-design/how-to-apply-a-design-thinking-hcd-ux-or-any-creative-process-from-scratch-b8786efbf812. [Accessed 14 February, 2018].
