Design Thinking 101

Unleash the power of innovation with Design Thinking 101. A methodology that transcends traditional boundaries, it's a creative approach to problem-solving that puts the user at the heart of the process. Discover how it can revolutionize your strategies and outcomes.

History of Design Thinking

Throughout history, good designers have applied a human-centric creative process to build meaningful and effective solutions.

• Design thinking, a formalized framework of applying the creative design process to traditional business problems, was coined in the 1990’s by David Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO.

Definition of Design Thinking

Design thinking is an ideology supported by an accompanying process

• A complete definition requires an understanding of both design thinking and design thinking ideology
• The design-thinking process includes 6 distinct phases
• User-centric approach to problem-solving
• Innovation
• Product-disrupting innovation
• Competitive advantage

Scalability

Think Bigger

• The packaged and accessible nature of design thinking makes it scalable. Organizations previously unable to shift their way of thinking now have a guide that can be comprehended regardless of expertise.
• This mitigates the range of design talent while increasing the probability of success.

How- The Process

The design-thinking framework follows an overall flow of 1) Understand, 2) Explore, 3) Empathize, 4) Define, 5

• Identify unmet user needs
• Ideate
• Bring your team together and sketch out many different ideas
• Prototype
• Test
• Implement
• It only leads to true innovation if the vision is executed

Conclusion

We live in an era of experiences, be they services or products, and we’ve come to have high expectations for these experiences

• While design thinking is simply an approach to problem solving, it increases the probability of success and breakthrough innovation
• Learn more about design thinking in the full-day course Generating Big Ideas with Design Thinking

Why

The Advantage

• User-centered process that starts with user data
• Creates design artifacts that address real user needs
• Leverages collective expertise
• Encourages innovation by exploring multiple avenues for the same problem
• Unfetters creative energies and focuses them on the right problem

Flexibility

Adapt to Fit Your Needs

• Each phase is meant to be iterative and cyclical as opposed to a strictly linear process
• It is common to return to the two understanding phases, empathize and define, after an initial prototype is built and tested
• Looping back to your user research is immensely helpful
• You can also repeat phases

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