Design Thinking

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a methodology used to solve problems with greater efficiency, collectivity, collaboration, and creativity. The term was created in the 1990s by David Kelley and Tim Brown, and encapsulated methods and ideas that had been brewing for years into a unified concept.

The methodology creates the necessary conditions to increase the generation of ideas based on the real needs of the consumers of a given product or service, allowing them to arrive at ideal solutions for both the company and its customers.

Thinking as a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategies. Design Thinking brings together what is desirable from a human perspective with what is feasible from an economic and technological perspective. The approach also enables untrained people such as designers to use creative tools to address challenges.

When to apply it?

We can use Design Thinking to find solutions to various problems, achieving a complete understanding from different perspectives.

The methodology is recommended for application in complex problem solving and in innovation projects and new product creation.

Who can participate

It is important to create a diverse group, so that we have different perspectives on the same theme. This increases the chances of solving problems in a faster and more creative way.

What are the stages?

A Design Thinking project is divided into 6 stages:

Empathy:
Conducting research to learn about what users do, say, think and feel;
Definition:
Analysis of the obtained data and identification of the users’ problems. By identifying the customer’s needs, we begin to highlight opportunities for innovation;
Ideation:
Brainstorm with the objective of gathering different ideas that meet the users’ difficulties, identified in the definition phase. It is important that the team has total freedom in this stage, because no idea is far-fetched and quantity replaces quality;
Prototyping:
Time to produce real representations for a part of the ideas. The goal of this stage is to understand which components work and which do not. At this stage the analysis of the impact compared to the feasibility of the ideas with feedbacks on the prototypes begins;
Testing:
In the testing stage we focus on the users’ feedbacks and on understanding if the ideas meet their needs and if they improve their daily lives;
Implementation:
Time to put the idea into practice. It is important to make sure that your solution materializes and improves the lives of your users.

But be aware! In some cases, the steps may not occur in a linear fashion.

Benefits

Better understand the needs of customers when using a product;
Create empathy with the final users of a product or service and find solutions with real impact on their day-to-day lives;
Stimulate collaborative work;
Encourage innovation, exploring different ways to solve the same problem;
Reduce the risk associated with the launch of new ideas, products and services;
Generate revolutionary solutions, not just incremental ones.