Design Thinking has gained a lot of win over the past 20 years. It is used by many large companies such as Google and IBM as the method to fuel innovation within your organization. At its core, it is a method where it is treated differently than in traditional project management. This is because a solution is immediately devised for a problem that arises. With Design Thinking a step back has been taken and the context results in a different content about the problem emerges and a suitable solution can be devised. The Design Thinking method has a long history, which is described here, where the official adoption was made by IDEO. The most commonly used definition therefore comes from them and reads as follows:Starting document: how and what do we want to innovate, where do we see opportunities in the organization?Starting document: how and what do we want to innovate, where do we see opportunities in the organization?Team: which people do we need to make innovation successful? Who have the character traits of an innovator with us? And which roles within the organization do we need for the organization to succeed?In the Understand phase you will first delve into what the context is. You examine the current situation, why it is actually a problem and why the organization has not yet been able to solve it. Then you map the stakeholders to discover who is in the context. A specific end user is chosen and possibly in-depth research is carried out. Once all this has been properly visualized, we can go more in-depth.
Imagine if you could make a simple tweak to your problem-solving approach and see an immediate boost in interested colleagues and customers.
What if there were 9 of these tweaks… and each of them could generate more involved colleagues and stakeholders to implement your solution?
Lucky for you, that’s exactly what i’m going to share with you in this post: 9 insanely practical innovative and creative problem solving techniques that you can use to implement new ideas TODAY
The STUDIO.WHY method explained
STUDIO.WHY Design Thinking focuses on value creation through an entrepreneurial mindset and uses for that a combination of design thinking, design sprints, lean startup, agile, and scrum to help companies solve complex problems and drive innovation.
Then we have 3 large deltas called:
Context design,
Concept design and
Market design
Each with its own focus. In context design, this is examining the entire context among different stakeholders. Subsequently, concept design ideas are conceived and devised. This is processed into a prototype and tested at the end user. Market Design is only discussed when the solution has been tested several times and successfully solves the pain points, after which this solution is only brought to the market. Are you curious about when to use STUDIO.WHY Design Thinking? We have a great blog about that here: www.studiowhy.com/studiowhy-design-thinking/
Phase 1: Context Design Delta
So the first big delta is about exploring the context. This is the core of Design Thinking in which it distinguishes itself from other techniques: first step back and examine the different perspectives in the context, before moving towards a solution. The Context Design Delta is divided into three phases:
Understand
Explore
Define
Technique 1 | Understand the challenge: Dive into the challenge.
In the Understand phase you will first delve into what the context is. You examine the current situation, why it is actually a problem and why the organization has not yet been able to solve it. Then you map the stakeholders to discover who is in the context. A specific end user is chosen and possibly in-depth research is carried out. Once all this has been properly visualized, we can go more in-depth. Itamar Madeiros (Director of Design Strateg at SAP) has a great blog about problem framing. check it out for more information!
Technique 2 | Explore the context: researching the consumer.
In this phase, intensive research takes place on various fronts. In Design Thinking the end user is central, this will therefore be carefully examined in the context. This is done through empathic research. Other stakeholders in the process are also examined in order to be able to include those perspectives in the follow-up process. In addition, various opportunities are explored by looking at trends and technologies.
This can be done with the Value proposition Canvas for example. This looks like this:
Do you want to better understand the needs, wants, and challenges of your customers, clients, and stakeholders? Then you’ll love this post about empathy and innovation: www.studiowhy.com/empathy-and-innovation/
Besides this there are also great tools for data driven user research. Check out Answer the public out for example! They will help you to get instant, raw search insights, direct from the minds of your customers.
Technique 3 | Define your focus: creating a new problem statement.
After an intensive research process, a new focus is determined on the basis of relevance and the most surprising results. The power of Design Thinking lies in this important but also difficult phase. You and your team must be able to determine what the problem is really about and, without already knowing a solution, dare to make the choice.
This is how you can turn your insights into new focus questions.
These were the three phases of context design.
Phase 2: Concept Design Delta
The following phases belong to the concept design phase:
Imagine
Develop
Frame
Technique 4 | Imagine new ways: coming up with ideas and concepts
After determining the new focus, it is time to let the creativity flow. Different brainstorming techniques are used to come up with many different ideas.
—- Only 8% of all ideas that come up during a brainstorm are useful ideas —-
This is a nice brainstorm technique to come up with cool new and surprising solutions:
Technique 5 | Concept: Expanding your concept
After coming up with a lot of ideas, it’s time to choose the best ideas. Using various convergence techniques, you ensure that the best ideas from the brainstorm are collected. These ideas are formed into a concept. Forming a concept also needs multiple iterations to become an inspiring story and be able to convey this to others.
This is how you can create a concept out of your chosen ideas
Technique 6 | Frame your product: defining the business model
In the Frame you bring together everything you have found; what problems are you going to solve and how is the concept going to do this?
This is a way to frame your solution:
We learned about this tool from Guido Stompff. He has a great book about Design Thinking. Check out his book here.
Phase 3: Market Design
These were the three phases of concept design. STUDIO.WHY focuses the most on all of the above phases. The third delta can only be implemented when the market is ready for it. Scaling up consists of the following steps:
Build
Test
Learn
Technique 7 | Build your prototype: by developing from concept to prototypes
Prototypes are made in order to transfer the concept properly. This can be done in many different ways: with drawings, crafts or Lego. It is important that it can be made quickly in any way and that it can also be quickly adapted again. You will test this prototype again with your end user to see if this has actually taken away the pain. You keep adjusting the prototype until the end user thinks it is good enough to start using it.
There are multiple reasons to prototype. In this overview you see the different ones plus an example of a prototype you can think of.
You test the prototype extensively with the target group. You do this by first making assumptions and hypotheses and testing them in various experiments.
By making experiments it makes sense to really think about the fidelity. The feedback will be different at a low fidelity, look at this for example:
Last tip for testing a prototype is to avoid the mom test. Don’t know what this means? See this video for a fun explanation.
Technique 9 | Improve the prototype
After each test round you will improve the prototype before you start a new test round.
This is where you go back to step 7 or 8. And maybe even to one of the other steps. Why? Because you find out that your customer – problem fit isn’t true of your solution is not the right fit for the problem.
Conclusion
In this way we would like to give you a first impression of how Dutch Design Thinking works. This process is of course very linear. However, in reality innovation is of course not so linear. It often happens that we go back and forth between the deltas in order to achieve the best result. That is why we always speak of a conscious innovation approach. You should not follow the process blindly, but you should consciously act and act on what is happening at that moment in order to take the next step.
Curious about the impact of our approach? We have delivered over 460 learning experiences, see those experiences over here.
Your turn
What would be your order of steps in your next innovation process? Starting with stakeholder insights or building a prototype?
Let us know via a comment below
Uitgelicht
The advantage of STUDIO.WHY Design Thinking lies in the aspect that in times of uncertainty and change, people like to be able to cling to structure, something that gives you direction but which also gives enough room for your own interpretation and can deviate from own insight.
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