Design Thinking

Design Thinking !

Here are my short notes from the Design Thinking course at SPJIMR, Mumbai. I hope this helps you get an idea of design thinking and to help you solve problems, ideate solutions and generate new and innovative solutions.

  • Human centered Design
  • 3i’s of design thinking –
    • Insights (empathy, immerse, observe, ask, listen to stories)
    • Ideas (use design principles, check assumptions)
    • Impact (make prototype, go to users for continuous feedback)
  • VUCA – Volatile/Uncertain/Complex/Ambiguous
  • Fail early and make and iterate
  • Quick & Affordable solutions
  • Empathise with users -> define the problem -> Ideate -> prototype -> test
  • DFV Framework-
    • Desirability – Is it useful? (did we hear) (user experience)
    • Feasibility – Is it possible? (can we deliver) (Technology)
    • Viability – Is it profitable? (should we create) (entrepreneurship)
  • Observation Toolkit AEIOU
    • Activities
    • Environments
    • Interactions
    • Objects
    • Users
    • Descriptors(what I see), Interpretations (what I think and Feel), Evaluation (do I have questions?)
  • Insight-
    • Deep consumer understanding, not immediately obvious
    • Motivation behind a behavior
    • Insight != idea
    • Insight > observation
    • Insight != Research
    • Insight != Rational need
    • Insight != fact
    • Example- People take pictures to preserve memories
    • Example- People have FOMO, thus check phones frequently
  • Inquiry (Good questions)-
    • Broad, open ended
    • Probe and Prompt
    • Ask why, again and again
    • Never say usually
    • Encourage stories
    • Look for inconsistencies in answers
    • Pick Nonverbal cues
    • Don’t be afraid of silence
    • Don’t suggest answers to your questions
    • Ask neutral unbiased answers
    • Don’t ask binary questions
    • Prepare unusual situation questions specific to the problem
    • Be prepared to capture

  • Insight Statement (POV)
    • Underlying deep motivation of the users
    • User + Rational need + Emotional need
  • LOOK, ASK, TRY
    • Observational – Look
    • Inquiry – Ask
    • Experimental – Try
  • What Why How
    • Observation -> inference
    • Questions -> empathy map -> insights -> POV statement
    • Interpret and make what they need, check to stretch available resources
  • HMW statement
    • How might we (action)
    • For (whom)
    • In order to (change what)
    • Example- How might we create a baby warming device for parents in remote village, in order to give their dying infants a chance to survive
  • Empathy v/s Sympathy
    • Feeling with someone  v/s  Feeling for someone
    • Designing with users  v/s  Designing for Users
  • Ethnographic Immersion Study – Living the Experience
    • Patricia More – lived like an old woman to gain insights
    • Do as the romans do
  • Webbing and Laddering
    • Webbing – What is stopping you from activity? What else? What else? …
    • Laddering- how does it make you feel? Why are they important?  What matters for you?
  • Fact – state of reality
    • Lady in picture is accompanied by her family- but you can’t see
  • Observation – may or may not be reality
    • Lady is alone
  • Inference – an assessment made out of observation + existing knowledge/context +peripheral information
  • Power of Extremes
    • Look at the extremes – for a break through
    • Stretch your thinking – beyond assumptions
    • Identify extreme people to observe and interview
    • It informs us- and moves us to think differently
  • When to use Design Thinking ?
    • Broad project goals – Known
    • Stakeholder perceptions, thoughts, motivations – unknown
    • Constraints/rules/principles- unknown
    • Alternative solutions – unknown
    • Impact – unknown
  • User Experience Journey/ Customer Journey Map
    • What customers are doing, thinking and feeling
    • Touchpoints in use
    • People they interact with along the way
  • Persona
    • Who is the customer?
    • How does they consume/buy?
    • What do they feel?
  • Cognitive Frames
    • Resident mental pieces that help us organize information and our learning to create a viewpoint that becomes useful in our daily lives.
    • Frames act as shortcuts to help quickly interpret the world around us and decide the course of action
    • AEIOU is not a frame
    • Our interpretations, judgements, assumptions are not frames
    • The lens through which you look at a problem is a frame
    • Example- penalize alcoholic behavior, promote participative behavior
    • Example- make MRI machines fun play where kids can be a statue
  • Empathy Map
    • Say – quotes and defining words (Needs)
    • Do – actions and behavior (Needs)
    • Think – thought and beliefs (Identity)
    • Feel – feelings and emotions  (Identity)
  • POV statement
    • User + need + Insight
    • (empathetic language elicits expressions from the right user) + (verb describing activities and desires with which user could use help) + (remarkable realization, story that could be used for solution generation)
    • Example- People travelling in economy class felt the need of more comfort and amenities because they wanted to feel important, esteemed and respected.
    • Define some POVs and then select a dominant POV
    • Define a designer’s view on dominant POV – define the problem statement – narrow and wide
    • POV of a designer is a well defined problem statement that clearly and coherently explains what problem your design effort is going to solve.
  • Ideation
    • Divergent tools
      • Re-expression- Borrow from analogous concept
        • Pond’s fragrance -> memories -> dream
      • Related worlds- Borrow ideas from associated experiences
        • Using sachets(from shampoos) to carry milk/food
      • Revolution- Reversing the process flow
        • I go to market, market comes to me
      • Random Links-
  • Convergent tools
    • Subtraction
      • Pulling out or re-sequencing a few steps from a task, that has many steps
      • Ex- ATM machine pulled out the teller from the counter, counting and delivering are moved out.
    • Division
      • Breaking an object or a service into smaller pieces
      • Each piece is reconfigured for a different purpose
      • Ex- refrigerator- freezer and normal chamber
    • Multiplication
      • Addition of the elements already existing in the product along with a required qualitative adjustment and a different benefit
      • Ex- razor blades- 1st, 2nd, 3rd to do different things
    • Task Unification
      • Assign new tasks to an existing resource – make it do “double duty”
      • Ex- smart phone(phone + camera + music + internet + maps)
      • Ex- bag with wheels
    • Attribute Dependency
      • Functionality and outcome changes based on customer usage
      • Create dependencies between product/service with its environment
      • Ex- self-correcting lens in spectacles
  • Prototype
    • It changes a habitual need`, into a fresh and effective one, as the user sees benefit by getting exposed to the prototype.
    • Also prototype the experience
    • Create situations to gain empathy
    • Create conditions to bring out new information
    • Gain insights about design space and people’s mindset about certain issues
  • Creative Matrix
  • Importance-Difficulty (ID) Matrix
    • to help plot different solutions on the scale of importance to users (impact) and difficulty to implement
    • Helps us identify which solution to pick as our final solution
  • Concept Map / Business Plan – A business proposition
    • Name
    • Key stakeholders
    • Price
    • Value statement – your USP
    • Unmet needs
    • Benefits
    • Prototype

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Neelesh Rajpurohit