SARTHAK ANUPAM

REFLECTIVE NOTES

 Design thinking is a popular methodology which inspires an individual to use his/her creative
thinking skills to innovate something which is beneficial for the society. It is used by many
companies to create a user-friendly product which can solve a particular problem. It’s important
to note that different stages might spark new ideas in the user journey which will lead to new
iterations of phases.
 The Five Stages of Design Thinking-

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs

 The designer talks to real people regarding their view point and introspections without bias.
 Few steps taken are consulting subject matter expert, having in-depth conversation with other
designers, immersing oneself in the physical environment.
 Also, without this stage solving the problem is difficult.

Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and Problems

In this stage of the design thinking process, you compile all of the information you gathered during
the Empathize stage and thoroughly analyse it to define the core problems you’ve observed. One
needs to analyze the collected observations and synthesize them to define the prime problems the
team have identified. These are called problem statements. For example, instead of saying We need to
increase traffic to our site by 15 percent to improve conversion rates you might say site visitors need
to be able to see the core features at a glance.

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas

The third phase in the Design Thinking process is where the creativity happens, and the ideation stage
is a judgement-free zone! When you’re working with a team, it’s a good idea to organize collaborative
brainstorming sessions and encourage free thinking. Toward the end of the ideation phase, one needs
to narrow it down to a few ideas with which to move forward by using co-creation tool.

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem found. The team should produce
some inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product by the help of visualization tool to investigate
the ideas one has generated. Throughout the prototype stage, the proposed solutions may be accepted,
improved, redesigned or rejected depending on how they fare in prototype form.

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

SARTHAK ANUPAM

Once you are ready with the functional prototype, one can test its usability to see if it solves the
problems which the team has identified in the Problem stage. If the problem is severe, you might have
to go all the way back to the Empathize stage. On the other hand, if it’s a minor problem then you’re
able to define it accurately or team can skip it ahead to the Ideate stage instead.

 Primary Data
Primary data are usually collected from the source—where the data originally originates from and
are regarded as the best kind of data in research. Examples can be cited as surveys.

 Secondary Data
Search online and offline for studies, news articles, newspaper reports, websites about your target
group and collect statements in social networks (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc.).

 SPA CANVAS
SPA canvas which is also known as Observation canvas consists of space, people and activities. It
has clusters which defines the categorization of the feedbacks we receive.

SPA CANVAS LINK- https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_lbaqrGY=/

 EMPATHY CANVAS
An empathy map is a simple, easy-to-digest visual that captures knowledge about a user’s
behaviour and attitudes. Empathy maps are most useful at the beginning of the design
process after user research but before requirements and concepting

The benefits include:

 Better understanding of the user

 Callouts of key insights from research

 Easily customizable based on available information and goals

 Common understanding among teams.

SARTHAK ANUPAM

Link for empathy canvas- https://miro.com/app/board/o9J_laR6GCQ=/

PERSONA

A persona is an archetype of a user that helps designers and developers empathize by

understanding their users' business and personal contexts. By basing personas on user
research, teams can avoid the pitfalls of designing for anecdotal, "fake," or extreme users.

JOURNEY MAPPING

A Customer Journey map could be interpretation of the overall story from an individual's
perspective of their relationship with an organization, service, brand or product.

Stakeholder list - 
Investors such as Airbnb, Softbank Group, Hero Enterprise etc.
SARTHAK ANUPAM

Employees
Customers
Service and Logistics Team

Customer Support Activities

-24*7 Customer service                  -Trained Staffs
-Fastest Hotel Booking App           -Special teams to solve problem
-Largest Inventory of Hotels          -Free Wifi, Cleaning, Housekeeping
-Routine Audits

PROBLEM STATEMENT
1. How might we 2. For whom: Organization / Department 3. Core Issue i.e. problem 4.
Percentage/amount change 5. In what time frame 6. Because of the following “Insights” can be 3
or more.
1. Locality of the hotels
-Is the area safe? -Is the surrounding smelly? - Is it insect infested, or mosquito prone?
2. Staff training or replacement
-Was the staff rude? - how was the response time? - was the issue properly solved?
3. Payment procedure or option
- Payment cash or card? - Transaction successful without any glitches? - UPI payment accepted?

 SELECT TOP THREE: Your design team will select three of your best questions for your
brainstorm session. Trust your gut feeling: Choose those questions that feel exciting and help you
think of ideas right away.

SCAMPER TOOL
 Scamper is useful creativity tool that helps you to generate ideas for new products and services or
to improve existing ones.
 EXAMPLE- Revlon idea, Substitute lips to leaves, Be Vegetarian etc.
CREATIVE THINKING
 Much of the management research and general literature combines these five types into one type,
simply called ‘creative thinking’.
 This is based on old bi-polar concepts such as right vs. left-brain thinking or rational vs. intuitive
thinking.
 There are two types of Creative Thinking-
1. LATERAL
2. DIVERGENT
SARTHAK ANUPAM

1. LATERAL THINKING
“Creativity involves breaking out of established patterns in order to look at things in a
different way.”
– Edward De Bono
Lateral thinking can be used for generation of new ideas and problem solving as it by
definition leaves the already-used behind and looks for completely new options. This type of thinking
is based on avoiding the intrinsic limitations in the brain, which rapidly sees patterns and handles
information in a distinctive way, where long thought sequences are not broken up once formed.
2. DIVERGENT THINKING
Divergent thinking is the process of thought where a person
uses flexibility, fluency and originality to explore as many solutions or options to a problem
or issue as possible. It is the opposite of convergent thinking, which has the characteristic to
focus on only one idea or single solution. Brainstorming is a typical example of divergent
thinking, where “downloading” or emptying the brain of a certain topic takes place.

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM 2 VIDEOS

Walker case

While watching this video about the designing of the walker tool for old age people, a bit of insights, I
could gather only when the designer talked with the concerned group of people. Few of these insights
were too difficult for us to think straightaway. Many problems can be visualized only when we go and
work in the field. Being creative doesn’t mean to give any random new solution, it talks about creative
solutions that adds value.

Good kitchen

Problem was because of less motivation of staff and citizen eating alone. Therefore, it is very
important to talk o stake holders. 125,000 senior citizens were on government sponsored meals and
20% of these senior citizens were malnourished. Therefore, it was important to address this issue.

REFLECTIVE NOTES 2
SARTHAK ANUPAM

 Ideation- It is a stage where we tend to generate ideas by using brainstorming, co-creation etc. It
is the most creative part and maximum of design thinkers love to generate ideas during this
session.
 Journey mapping traces the journey of a customer as they experience a product. Ex- Hatch and
Bloom
 Holistic perspective is something that we observe the current customer, discontinued people from
service and the people who are close to retirement age.
 Product Innovation is one of the key stages of Design thinking where a new idea is being
converted into a prototype and when tested successfully, it is finally named as “product”.
 One of the best examples is shopping cart designing.
 There are various ways to approach Ideation-
Quantity
Diversity
Generate
 Innovation is novel combination of relevant ideas as it helps the design thinkers to brainstorm and
get a creative output as well as feasible one.
 One of the best examples of substitute is McDonald’s replaced the traditional (then) potato chips
with the famous French Fries.
 Best example of Combine is McDonald’s collaborated with Disney to get children to buy Happy
Meals. Combining a free toy with the meal inside for the children.
 In the middle east, they modified their sandwich to appeal to the Arabian culture,
using Arabian flatbread bread instead of the traditional bun is one of the key examples of
MODIFY.
 Best example of Reverse is McDonald’s introduced a new consumer experience by having them
pay first then eat.   

Creative thinking is not a talent,

it is a skill that can be learnt.
- Edward de Bono
 Forced connection is a process where we tend to generate random words and then match those
with the problem statement.
 Key Activities: Signature of superior methods for doing your work … McDonald’s franchises
were encouraged to develop and launch their own food items, leading to wins like the Egg
McMuffin. Others: Toyota, Zara
SARTHAK ANUPAM

 Revenue Stream: In the case of McDonald’s, the franchisee insight that led to the introduction of
the Egg McMuffin spearheaded the company’s entire breakfast offering, which now accounts
for 25% of revenues. Breakfast is also now the company’s most profitable segment.
 Distribution Channel: How your offerings are delivered to customers and users … Nespresso
locks in customers with its Nespresso Club as well as through ongoing sales of  its own single use
coffee pods. Others: Birchbox, Nike.

KEY LEARNINGS
PROTOTYPE VIDEO- 3 types of prototype as mentioned. They are story board,
roleplay and works like-feel like. Puppy ad and buddy bike ride were two ideas which
were selected.
In this video how the above mentioned prototypes are made that is being mentioned here.

PAPER PROTOTYPING VIDEO- Here by using wireframing one can design the
prototype to get the feel of it. It lacks the functionality and detail of traditional prototype.
These are great for evaluating the early concepts of from user perspective. In case one
doesn’t like them can discard them. Highly polished prototypes draws attention to details.

TESCO HOMEPLUS VIDEO – Tesco is one of the well known players of south
Korean market and they have changed their names from TESCO to HOMEPLUS. Here
we can use DT as a tool to resolve its issues. The problem statement was to increase the
no of stores as compared to E-mart. Mission – could we become no 1 without increasing
the number of stores. Korean are the second most hardworking people and they are lazy
to go to grocery store. So what the company did is they introduced the online QRcode
scan system where the customers can scan the materials they require and then that would
be delivered directly to the doorsteps. Also, by doing so the new registered members rose
by 76% and the online sales increased by 130%.