Design Thinking in the field
In an increasingly complex technology and business landscape, companies are beginning to realize the value of design thinking in creating products and services. I set out to learn from individuals’ experience with design thinking methodologies in the field. My survey inquired about their views on design thinking, how their organizations utilize it, what they would change about it, and how their organization supports it. Throughout the paper, I will share my findings and summarize the insights. The paper’s goal is to share others’ experience with design thinking, so newcomers and veterans of design thinking can draw inspiration and look at it in their organization through a new lens.
Defining Design Thinking
Before we dive into the survey, I’m going to define design thinking clearly. Design thinking is when design methods go beyond the usual design context for business purposes (Johansson-Sköldberg, Woodilla, & Çetinkaya). Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that balances desirability, feasibility, and viability with user empathy (Design Thinking Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ)). Design thinking can work for business strategy and operating efficiency.
It consists of five steps:
1. Empathizing with users
2. Defining the problem space
3. Ideation
4. Prototyping ideas
5. Testing to validate or invalidate a hypothesis
Design thinking is a systematic and rigorous process that organizations utilize today because they recognize 21st-century value creation revolves around solving complex problems.
The Survey
The survey received sixteen responses from people working in eleven different industries, spanning various internal teams. Respondents work for companies such as Google, Capital One, Carmax, and Spotify. The highest number of responses came from product managers, with six total answers. The questions are broad in scope instead of narrow, focusing on one aspect of design thinking. The questions cover design thinking in a general sense.
The questions:
“Do you believe design thinking is valuable? Why or why not?”
“How does your organization (if at all) utilize design thinking?”
“If you had a magic wand, what would change about design thinking within your organization?”
“Would you say your organization’s culture supports design thinking? Why or why not?”
Two questions focus on the individual’s opinion, while the other two inquire about their organization’s treatment and implementation of design thinking.
Is Design Thinking Valuable?
Let’s start with the first question on the survey: “Do you believe design thinking is valuable? Why or why not?” I wanted to gauge how respondents value design thinking. It was an overwhelming yes with every respondent stating design thinking is valuable. One of the more prominent reasons listed is how design thinking emphasizes understanding user needs and pain points to solve real problems. The saying “the customer is always right” has been around for a while, and it appears design thinking further strengthens it by allowing companies to understand their customers. Another interesting takeaway is how design thinking helps define the problem. Defining the problem based on insights helps create actionable assumptions to solve the problem.
My top-level takeaway from this question is how people that have experienced design thinking positively value it because it helps them better understand customers and define problems for solving.
How is Design Thinking Utilized?
Moving on to the next question, we know our respondents highly value design thinking, but how do their organizations utilize it? I asked respondents, “How does your organization (if at all) utilize design thinking?” An organization’s ability to use design thinking is essential because there are many tools, and if misused, design thinking will fail. A common theme I found across answers is how design thinking is used for customer and problem validation when planning product roadmaps.
One interesting response is how a Google team uses critical user journeys to plan their yearly roadmap. Mapping projects and features based on user needs and the journey where applicable is similar to how Marty Cagan (a thought leader in product management) advocates for outcome-based roadmaps for product teams (instead of features based).
Another interesting example is how VSCO, a mobile photography app, created a program called “VSCO collaborators.” This program rotates groups of users every two months and allows users to discuss their product feedback and its impact on their lives. Customer and problem space immersion appear to be the most significant utilization of design thinking because it provides a shared understanding of customers and a problem, and how to plan for the future in which to solve it. It’s reassuring how organizations are successfully using design thinking to empathize with customers and utilize those insights to create an actionable outcome-based roadmap.
The Magic Wand Question
The next question focuses on the individual level and gives respondents a magic wand. It asks them, “If you had a magic wand, what would you change about design thinking within your organization?” I assume there’s something respondents want to improve about the design thinking process in their organizations. Giving them a magic wand allows them to share the most significant need.
Ironically, one commonality I found in responses was how they wish their organization had more interactions with customers to improve user research. Some respondents stated they would like to improve the frequency of customer interviews, while others mentioned user interviews were utilized too late in the process. In my previous paper, “Identifying Opportunities to Use Design Thinking,” I identified how organizations struggle with design thinking principles. One of the fundamental principles is early customer discovery, and it appears organizations may not put enough emphasis on customer empathy early in the process.
Another interesting response was critical of the confusion caused by buzzwords, such as design thinking. They said they avoid using the term, and in its place, use the concepts within design thinking such as customer discovery, experimentation, and co-creation. They are tools that can be used for specific problems, whereas design thinking is more of a mindset to be woven into activities. One last thing to note is design thinking’s usage for machine learning and A.I. teams. The respondent stated design thinking needs to be more uniform and organized instead of giving teams autonomy. The reason given is that design thinking doesn’t align with machine learning problems, and teams would benefit from a more structured process.
It was interesting to learn how respondents would use their magic wand. It appears earlier customer empathy and access to customers for interviews is a need within organizations.
Organizational Support for Design Thinking
The last question on the survey focuses on organizational support for design thinking. In my previous paper, I found that design thinking fails at organizations because it lacks support for all organization levels. I was curious about how organizations support it, so I asked respondents, “Would you say your organization’s culture supports design thinking? Why or why not?”
The majority of respondents stated their organization supports design thinking. Many of the commonalities focused on how design thinking is a mindset across the entire organization and not just for the product team. Most respondents stated how the shared philosophy is what allows design thinking to thrive. If there is one takeaway from this paper, a shared design thinking mindset across the organization is key to design thinking. If the product team is the only one to have this mindset, then design thinking will be a shell of its true self.
One thing that stood out is how many respondents said their organizations invest in research. They stated the priority of research to guide the decision-making process and product outlook. These results call back to a previous survey question and the value of creating outcome-based roadmaps.
There were a few caveats, though. One respondent from Google shared how the engineering-focused culture can clash with the design thinking mindset. The respondent stated engineers can sometimes prioritize feasibility over what is best for the end-user. The power dynamic of different teams within organizations is interesting. If one has more pull than the other, then they can roadblock other groups or ignore empathy findings to suit their ideas.
Another caveat from a respondent stated their research team’s lack of capacity to support more user research. Lack of user research support shows how an organization may have a design thinking mindset but lacks the amount of staff needed to gain its benefits fully. The issue is the result of a lack of budget rather than a lack of understanding of design thinking. It is nice to see that a respondent values design thinking to the degree of wanting more research than can be budgeted. It appears organizations are placing value on an organizational-wide design thinking mindset to guide their future growth better. However, there are issues impeding organizations from fully reaping design thinking benefits such as culture clash or lack of budget.
The Takeaways
So, what have we learned? Design thinking applies to different industries. It works across a variety of teams. It performs best when it’s a shared mindset across an entire organization. Much of the value comes from how it emphasizes customer discovery and research to guide organizations over the short and long term. When implemented correctly, it helps guide decision making by prioritizing customer insights over guesses or instincts.
We found that companies can utilize design thinking in various ways (such as rotating users per month or easing access to user interviews). If respondents could change anything about design thinking in their organization, it would be easier to access and a higher frequency of customer interviews. The priority respondents placed on customer interaction show how valuable it is to guide their teams, product, and outlook.
We learned that organizations could successfully support design thinking by creating a nurturing environment that facilitates shared learning. One caveat is how organizations handle culture clashes between teams or a lack of capacity to conduct user research thoroughly.
Conclusion
I hope these insights may provide inspiration or remedy issues you may be facing within your organization or team. Examine how customer research is viewed and implemented in your process. Are you speaking to enough customers at a high enough frequency? How are customer insights informing your decision making? Is design thinking a shared mindset across your organization? These types of questions, among others, will help you better understand where your team is successful, can improve, or lacks when implementing a design thinking mindset.
Every situation is unique, so understanding the root cause for your particular concern helps pinpoint the best concepts within design thinking to implement. I hope you see the value in design thinking and how you may be able to advocate and implement it in your organization.
Works Cited
“Design Thinking Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ).” IDEO, designthinking.ideo.com/faq/whats-the-difference-between-human-centered-design-and-design-thinking.
Ulla Johansson-Sköldberg, Jill Woodilla, and Mehves Çetinkaya. “Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures.” Creativity and Innovation Management 22.2 (2013): 121–46. ProQuest. Web. 17 Apr. 2020.
