Design Thinking

What is Design Thinking

➢ It is an iterative process in which we seek to

❑ understand the user
❑ challenge assumptions
❑ redefine problems
in an attempt to
➔identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be
instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding.

➔It provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is

a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on
methods.
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Empathize with people's needs,

Collaborate with others across disciplines, skill sets, and

perspectives,

Include every idea in visible form for evaluation, and

Repeat, iterating and testing solutions to perfect them, always

with human needs at the center.

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Five phases of Design Thinking

Empathise – with your users Test – solutions

Define – your users’ needs,

Prototype – to start creating
their problem, and your
solutions
insights

Ideate – by challenging
assumptions and creating
ideas for innovative solutions

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It is important to note that the five phases, stages, or modes
are not always sequential. iteratively.

They do not have to follow any specific order and can often
occur in parallel and repeat

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Empathize

"deep understanding of the problems and realities of the

people you are designing for"

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Three Step of Empathize

Observe
▪ How users Engage
interact with ▪ Interviews scheduled or ad-hoc
their ▪ Learn how to ask the right questions
environment.
▪ Capture quotes,
behaviors and Immerse
other notes that ▪ Find ways "to get into the user's shoes"
reflect their
▪ Best way to understand the users'
experience.
needs
▪ Notice what they
think, feel, need
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Empathize tools

Assume a beginner's Build empathy with

mindset analogies
Use photo and video user-
Ask What-How-Why
based studies
Use personal photo and
Empathy map
video journals
Conduct interviews with
Engage with extreme users
empathy

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Empathize - Beginner's mindset

▪ Forget your assumptions and

personal beliefs What you should do
▪ Misconceptions or stereotypes • Don't judge
limit the amount of real empathy • Question everything
you can build. • Be truly curious
• Find patterns
A beginner's mindset allows you • Listen without thinking
• to put aside biases and how you're going to
approach respond
• Design with fresh eyes
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Empathize - Ask What - How - Why

Tool to help you better Good for analyzing

observe photos

What you should What = write what you observe the user is
do for a specific doing without making assumptions
observation
How = understand what the user is doing. Is it
positive or negative, does it require effort?
Divide a sheet Use plenty of adjectives
into 3 parts -
What / How / Why = now you have to interpret; guess
Why motivations and emotions, make assumptions
that you have to test with users later
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Empathize - Empathy map

Says Actions
➔quotes from what users ➔that the user takes during
say during interview the experiment

Feels
Thinks
➔The user's emotional state
➔What users seem to think
(adjective + context) like
when experiencing the
impatient: pages load too
product Does
slowly
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Empathize - Conduct interviews with empathy

Pay attention to nonverbal

Ask why.
cues.
Never say "usually" when
Don't be afraid of silence.
asking a question.
Ask questions neutrally and
Encourage stories
don't suggest answers.

Look for inconsistencies.

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Empathize - Create journey maps

Visual representation Steps:

of the process a • Set clear objectives for the map.
customer or prospect • Profile your personas and define
goes through to their goals.
achieve a goal with • List out all the touchpoints (places in
your company or the app/site where you can interact
products with the customer)
• Identify the elements you want your
map to show.
Identity the customer's
• Take the customer journey yourself.
needs and pain points • Make necessary changes.
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Define

synthesise your observations about your users from the

Empathize stage
problem statement, which the design thinker will focus on
solvindefinition of a meaningful and actionable g
A great definition of your problem statement => kick start the
ideation process (third stage) in the right direction.
unpack your empathy findings into needs and insights and
scope a meaningful challenge

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Define your Point of View - meaningful and actionable
problem statement
▪ Preserves emotion and the ▪ Includes a strong
individual you're designing insight.
for.

▪ Generates lots of
• Includes strong language
possibilities

▪ Uses sensical wording.

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Define tools

▪ Point of view

• How Might We

▪ Why-How Ladder

▪ Powers of Ten
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Define - Point of View

▪ You articulate a POV by combining these three

elements - user, need, and insight.

▪ Insert your information about your user, the

needs and your insights in the following
sentence:

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Define - How might we? Example:
• Challenge: Redesign the
ground experience at the local
Short questions that international airport
launch brainstorms
• POV: Harried mother of three,
rushing through the airport only to
Seeds for ideation wait hours at the gate, needs to
entertain her playful children
because "annoying little brats"
only irritate already frustrated
Come out form the
fellow passengers.
point of view
statement
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Define - Why How Ladder?
Step 1: Identify a few
meaningful user needs and
write them at the bottom of a
piece of paper.
Step 2 Ladder up from that
need, asking "why?“
For example, why would a user "need to see a
link between a product and the process that
creates it?" because the user, "needs
confidence that it won't harm their health by
understanding its origin."
Step 3: Ask why again, and
continue to ladder from that
same need.
At a certain point, you'll reach a very
common, abstract need such as, "the need
to be healthy." This is the top of the ladder.
Step 4 Climb back down the
ladder asking "how?"
This will give you ideas for how to address
the needs
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Define - Why How Ladder?
Step 1: Identify a few
meaningful user needs and
write them at the bottom of a
piece of paper.
Step 2 Ladder up from that
need, asking "why?“
For example, why would a user "need to see a
link between a product and the process that
creates it?" because the user, "needs
confidence that it won't harm their health by
understanding its origin."
Step 3: Ask why again, and
continue to ladder from that
same need.
At a certain point, you'll reach a very
common, abstract need such as, "the need
to be healthy." This is the top of the ladder.
Step 4 Climb back down the
ladder asking "how?“
This will give you ideas for how to address
the needs
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Ideate

• Generate radical design alternatives

• The goal of ideation is to explore a wide solution space

• both a large quantity and broad diversity of ideas.

• From this pool of ideas you can build prototypes to test

with users

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How to Ideate?

ldeate=transition from identifying problems to exploring solutions

I
Ideation is leveraged to:
▪ Harness the collective perspectives and Fluctuate
strengths of your team. between
▪ Step beyond obvious solutions and drive focus and
innovation. flare
▪ Uncover unexpected areas of exploration.
▪ Create fluency (volume) and flexibility
(variety) in your innovation options.
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Tools to ideate

▪ Analogies
▪ Brainstorm ▪ Provocation
• Braindump ▪ Movement
• Brainwrite ▪ Bodystorm
• Brainwalk ▪ Gamestorming
▪ Challenge Assumptions ▪ Cheatstorm
• SCAMPER ▪ Crowdstorm
• Mindmap ▪ Co-Creation Workshops
• Sketch or Sketchstorm ▪ Power of Ten
• Storyboard ▪ Prototype
▪ Creative Pause
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Ideate - Brain Write

they pass on their own piece of paper to another participant

The other participant elaborates on the first person's ideas

and so forth.

Another few minutes later, the individual participants will

again pass their papers on to someone else and so the
process continues.

The process takes 15 minutes and Ideas are discussed

afterwords
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Ideate - Challenge Assumptions

Identify the assumptions you have about the product you're

building
Challenge these assumptions
▪ Are they fixed because they are crucial aspects or
because we have been accustomed to them?
▪ Very important step if the empathy stage wasn't well done
and there were many things assumed about the users
and their context

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Ideate - Mindmap

Process through which the participants build a web of

relationships

Participants write a problem statement

They write solutins

Link statements and solutions between them

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Define/ldeate - Power of Ten
Consider challenges through
frames of various magnitudes
Consider increasing and
decreasing magnitudes of
context to reveal connections
and insights.
How does this changes the user
behavior?
Powers often for ideation
Powers often for insight
development - imagine
what happens for example
when shopping for bubble
gum vs. shopping for a TV
vs. shopping for a house
Add constraints that alter
the magnitude of the
solution space
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Prototype

A prototype can be anything that takes a physical form—a

wall of post-its, a role-playing activity, an object.
In early stages, keep prototypes inexpensive and low
resolution to learn quickly and explore possibilities.
Prototypes are most successful when people (the design
team, users, and others) can experience and interact with
them.

interactions with prototypes drives deeper empathy and

shapes successful solution
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Prototype

A prototype can be anything that takes a physical form—a

wall of post-its, a role-playing activity, an object.
In early stages, keep prototypes inexpensive and low
resolution to learn quickly and explore possibilities.
Prototypes are most successful when people (the design
team, users, and others) can experience and interact with
them.

interactions with prototypes drives deeper empathy and

shapes successful solution
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Low fidelity prototyping

use basic models or examples

Just some features

Methods
✓ • Storyboarding.
✓ • Sketching
✓ • Card sorting.
✓ • 'Wizard of Oz'.
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Low fidelity prototyping

use basic models or examples

Just some features

Methods
✓ • Storyboarding.
✓ • Sketching
✓ • Card sorting.
✓ • 'Wizard of Oz'.
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High fidelity prototyping

look and operate closer to the finished product

For example, a 3D plastic model with movable parts (allowing

users to manipulate and interact with a device in the same
manner as the final design) is high-fi in comparison to, say, a
wooden block.

Likewise, an early version of a software system developed

using a design program such as Sketch or Adobe Illustrator is
high-fi in comparison to a paper prototype.
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Test

chance to gather feedback, refine solutions, and continue to

learn about your users.

The test mode is an iterative mode in which you place low-

resolution prototypes in the appropriate context of your user's
life.

Prototype as if you know you're right, but test as if you know

you're wrong

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Prototype/Test - Wizard of Oz Prototyping

A wizard of Oz prototype fakes Determine what you want

functionality that you want to test to test.
with users, saving you the time
and money of actually creating it.

prototypes of digital systems, in Then figure out how to

which the user thinks the response fake that functionality
is computer-driven, when in fact it's and still give users an
human-controlled. authentic experience

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Prototype/Test - Card sorting

how concepts for a project should be organized

help the user experience professional know how to best

organize a website or software application so that the
structure of information will be logical for the largest number
of users.
Open card sorting = asking the users to come up with
category names for each card

Closed card sorting = predefined names for each category

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Prototype/Test - Card sorting

a participant is given a number of cards or sticky notes, each

containing a different word. The test participant is then asked
to organize these as he sees best

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Prototype/Test - Card sorting

a participant is given a number of cards or sticky notes, each

containing a different word. The test participant is then asked
to organize these as he sees best

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Testing with users

Allows you to learn about the solution you created but also
about the users (builds empathy)
Let your user experience the prototype.
➢ Show don't tell. Put your prototype in the user's hands
(or your user in the prototype) and give only the basic
context they need to understand what to do.

Have them talk through their experience

➢ Use prompts. "Tell me what you're thinking as you do
this."
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Testing with users

Actively observe.
✓ Don't immediately "correct" your user.
✓ Watch how they use (and misuse) your prototype.

Follow up with questions.

✓ This is often the most valuable part

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Test - Feedback capture matrix

✓ real-time capture of feedback ✓ arranges thoughts and

on presentations and ideas into four categories
prototypes for easy assessment

Fill in the matrix as you give or receive feedback.

✓ 1st quadrant: Constructive ✓ 3rd quadrant: Questions

criticism raised

✓ 2nd quadrant: Place things ✓ 4th quadrant: new ideas

one likes or finds notable spurred
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