Unit 3 : Innovative Leadership and Design Thinking

Part 2

 Design Thinking
Design Thinking is a powerful approach to innovation that places the user or customer at the center of
the innovation process. It takes its name from the fact that it uses the tools and methods of a designer
to develop products and services that better meet people’s needs. Also referred to as “Human-
Centered Design,” the process is founded upon gaining a deep sense of empathy for the challenges
that customers face, understanding what is important and meaningful to them, and developing
solutions to fit their needs in the context of their daily lives.

Good designers never start by solving the problem that is given to them: they start by trying to
understand what the real issues are for the users of a product or service. Hence a distinctive
characteristic of Design Thinking is that substantial amounts of time are devoted up-front in a project
to exploring the problem to be solved, and ensuring that this is the “right” problem. Engineers and
managers are expertly trained at solving problems, but rarely reflect on how these problems are
defined.

Designers, in contrast, are trained to discover the real problems facing users. A brilliant solution to the
wrong problem can be worse than no solution at all.

The Design Thinking process can be depicted in many ways, however the simplest and most common
of these is called the Double Diamond model, Developed by the British Design Council, this model
captures the two main phases in a design thinking project.

First, the team explores the Problem Space to define the specific problem to be solved and the
customer needs that will be addressed. And

Second, the team explores the Solution Space, to determine the new products, services and/or
experiences that can be developed to satisfy these needs.

Within each of these phases, the process is further characterized by divergent and convergent thinking
(giving rise to the “double diamond” shape).

In the divergent stages, teams generate lots of ideas and information to broaden the funnel of potential
problems (or solutions to them). In the convergent stages, teams synthesize data to make informed
choices about where to focus.

This repeated pattern of divergence and convergence is critical to ensuring that teams have i)
identified the right.
Source: British design council

Design Council’s Double Diamond clearly conveys a design process to designers and non-designers
alike. The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply
(divergent thinking) and then taking focused action (convergent thinking).

Discover. The first diamond helps people understand, rather than simply assume, what the problem is.
It involves speaking to and spending time with people who are affected by the issues.

Define. The insight gathered from the discovery phase can help you to define the challenge in a
different way.

Develop. The second diamond encourages people to give different answers to the clearly defined
problem, seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with a range of different people.

Deliver. Delivery involves testing out different solutions at small-scale, rejecting those that will not
work and improving the ones that will.

This is not a linear process as the arrows on the diagram show. Many of the organisations we support
learn something more about the underlying problems which can send them back to the beginning.
Making and testing very early stage ideas can be part of discovery. And in an ever-changing and
digital world, no idea is ever ‘finished’. We are constantly getting feedback on how products and
services are working and iteratively improving them.