INNOVATION AND

DESIGN THINKING
Mr R.VUDZIJENA
 Learning objectives

Define Design Thinking

Describe the three spaces of design thinking
Outline the design thinking process
 Learning Outcomes
How to optimize the ability to innovate?
How to develop a variety of concepts, products, services,
processes, etc. for endusers?
How to leverage the diverse ideas of innovation?
How to convert useful data, individual insights and vague ideas
into feasible reality?
How to connect with the customers and end-users by targeting
their actual requirements?
How to use the different tools used by designers in their
profession for solving your customers’ problems?
 Background
The need for innovation
Companies are facing increasing pressure to differentiate their services
and products to adapt to a rapidly changing economy, in addition to
other challenges like low wages due to globalization, decreasing
resource availability, and a growing focus on environmental issues that
require businesses to maintain growth sustainably
Due to advancements in technology, the barriers to start new ventures
are now lower than ever before. However, increasing global
competition and changing customer behavior brings new challenges to
startups.
Such competition, in addition to the fact that most startups fail
(Kirchhoff, 1994), is already a great concern for entrepreneurs
Studies show that one of the reasons that startups perform
worse is because they fail to use enough time on customer
development (Blank, 2012).
Businesses have begun to recognize the need for innovation
as the key strategy that can help them gain and sustain a
competitive advantage over their competitors.
Due to the knowledge and opportunities that customers and
users can provide, businesses have begun to show a great
interest in user-centered approaches to innovation.
In their search for user-centered approaches to innovation,
business have shown an increasing interest in the design
thinking (Carlgren, Elmquist, & Rauth, 2014), which has
gained much popularity as an innovation approach.
 Introduction
Design thinking is promoted as a user-centered approach to
innovation. It has been introduced as an management approach
that brings creativity and user-centeredness to organizations, as a
new way of working (Brown,2008).
It has been increasingly associated with problem solving of
complex and ill-defined problems, also called “wicked problems
(Carlgren, 2013).
Another defining aspect with design thinking is that it is thought
to provide value through customer that allows the businesses to
interact and involve their customers in a different way and gain
insight from them in ways that can be meaningful and rewarding.
“Translating these needs into design criteria
provides the underpinning for the ideation stage
and its belief that users’ unarticulated needs and
desires are the foundation of differentiated value
propositions. “ (Liedtka, 2014, p. 5)
 Design thinking’s ability to solve complex
problems and its human-centered focus can give
startups the customer understanding that is
critical for their success.
 Definition
A method of focusing innovation on people and designing based on: 🞑
What people need and want 🞑 What people like or dislike In regards
to production, packaging, marketing, retailing, support, or all of them
Ahuman-centred collaborative approach to problem solving that is
creative , iterative and practical (Brown , 2008)
It is an approach to solve design problems by understanding
user’sneedsand developing insights to address those needs i.e. a user
centered approach to problem solving.
Design thinking is an iterative problem solving process of discovery,
ideation, and experimentation that employs design based techniques to
gain insight and yield innovative solutions for virtually any type of
organizational or business challenge
 Design Thinking and Problem
Solving
As a third example, design thinking has been found to improve people’s
ability to solve problems across a range of domains (Luka, 2014). One
reason might be that while working in multidisciplinary and multicultural
teams, people might be confronted with more perspectives and are
forced to explore many different opinions and direction in an iterative
trial-and-error process, preparing them to take decisions based on a
more solid knowledge base.

Various studies have found design thinking to be effective in building

entrepreneurship skills, which in turn have become more and more
important in today’s business worlds, where entrepreneurially minded
people are needed to approach and solve wicked problems in innovative
ways (Klenner, 2021).
Design Thinking and Strategy for
Innovation
Design thinking is also considered to be a strategy for innovation. It
leads to dramatic improvements in innovation. This is why design
thinking forms the core of effective strategy development and
seamless organizational change. Anything that involves human
interaction, from products, services, processes etc., can be improved
through design thinking. It all depends on the designer’s way to
create, manage, lead, and innovate
 Empathise
Is defined as “deep understanding of the problems and realities of
the users one is designing for”. It involves learning about the
Empathising.
In order to empathise, we need to understand our users – We need
to research our market Some of this can be done through web
research, e.g. scaling the problem, gaining a foothold understanding
of how users operate
However the real empathising starts in the context of ongoing
dialogue with potential users
The goal is to gain basic knowledge so that you know the right
questionsto ask
Methods of Empathising How to Empathise

1. Web research Observe

2. Brief interviews for Engage- interview /
background conversation
3.Reachout to friends who may
be connected / have information
Watch and listen i.e.
on domain combine
* It is not about the designer, observation and
s/he needs to understand and engagement
share the feelings of others
 Define
List pain points, i.e. things that users complain about
Formalise these into a problem statement. – This statement should:
 Make it clear whom the user is
Aggregate smaller concerns into one larger issue – This statement
should NOT:
Narrow the problem down in a way that lends itself towards
specific solutions
 Ideate
It Is the process where one generate ideas and
innovative solutions through the use of sessions such
as:
sketching ,
prototyping,
brainstorming and
brain writing.
 Prototype
Once you draw the ideation phase to a close, the next step is to cull
through the idea inventory and select the cream of the crop.
These are the ideas you’ll take into the prototype phase. Be judicious in
your selection of ideas—specifically the quantity of them—because you
will need to create a prototype of each one.
As a good rule of thumb, you’ll want to plan on prototyping at least two
or three ideas. Prototyping will start to give your ideas depth, so you can
get an impression of how they will take form in reality.
Prototypes aren’t always tangible items. It is just as important to
prototype a service, experience, process, or other intangible.
Prototypes consist of anything from paper based representations to fully
functional product
 Test
Testing will help you save money during development and avoid
potential disaster. This sounds dramatic, but it’s true. Testing will
keep you from committing resources to a project only to find out
that you were on the wrong path. The upside is that testing doesn’t
have to be complicated or expensive.
Testing serves two purposes
To evaluate ideas
 To generate new ideas from user
With this in mind, a few tips:
🞑 Test with users that are representative and appropriately critical
🞑Try to minimize users’ nerves/sense that they are being observed
🞑Prioritise key tasks (you can’t test everything)
It is part of an iterative process that provides feedback
The purpose of testing is to learn what works and what does not
work and then iterate It involves going back to prototype and
modifying based on feedback Testing ensures that designers learn
what works and what doesn’t work for the users
THE END
rvudzijena@hit.ac.zw