What is Design Thinking and How Can It Make You a Better Designer?
Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to solving problems that can be applied in any field or industry. The goal of Design Thinking is to create a solution that improves the lives of the people it’s meant for — whether that’s your customers, the people who work for you or the people you work for. Design Thinking is a way of thinking and working that isn’t confined to the traditional boundaries of your role or company. It’s a way of approaching problems from a human-centered perspective, which requires you to see users as people first and customers second.
Why is Design Thinking Important?
Designers have always had to find solutions to the problems they’re tasked with solving, but these approaches have been mostly confined to the whiteboard and Sketch file. With Design Thinking, you break out of that mode of thinking and begin to approach your work from a human-centered perspective, which means you’re not just thinking about how to solve the problem, but also how the person experiencing that problem feels. Developing this way of thinking is useful for designers because it forces us to: — Challenge ourselves: Design Thinking creates a space for exploration and discovery that goes beyond the constraints of your job description. When you’re practicing Design Thinking, you’re not only solving the problem at hand but also trying to understand the people who are experiencing that problem. This can lead you to discover new opportunities and paths that otherwise wouldn’t have been on your radar. — Go beyond the whiteboard: When you’re working in a siloed field, it’s easy to get trapped in your own way of thinking. Design Thinking helps you break out of that mode of thinking and begin to approach problems from a human-centered perspective. This can help you explore creative solutions to problems that you may not otherwise have explored.
5 Core principles of Design Thinking
- Empathy: Design Thinking requires you to go beyond thinking about how a problem impacts you and how you can solve it, and put yourself in the shoes of the person who has the problem. By asking questions like, “How does this problem make the customer feel?” and “What are their other options?” you begin to understand the customer’s perspective and grapple with their pains and desires.
- Definition: Empathizing with users often leads to a whole new level of insight and understanding of the problem that needs to be solved and at this stage, you define the problem properly. Preferably, Summarise into a problem statement.
- Ideation: In order to fully go beyond the problem you’re solving, you need to come up with as many possible solutions as you can. The more solutions you have on the table, the higher chance you have of finding the right solution.
- Prototyping: this is more like an experimentation phase. It involves trying out all your ideas and to find which one is the best solution to the problem.
- Testing and validating: The best way to know whether you’ve solved a problem is to test your solution with real customers. Design Thinking urges you to go beyond just ideating, building a prototype and showing it to customers, and using surveys, and find meaningful ways to get your ideas out into the world.
Becoming a better designer through Design Thinking
As a designer, you’re tasked with solving problems in various ways at work. You ideate, build prototypes and create customer journeys, but you also have to manage projects, meet deadlines and write proposals. Throughout these activities, you’ll have to apply some degree of Design Thinking to solve the problems you encounter. The more you engage in Design Thinking, the more it becomes part of who you are as a designer. And while it may feel like you’re learning a new skill, what you’re really doing is just expanding the way you think about problems. Design Thinking is a transdisciplinary way of thinking that puts the human at the center of the problem. It’s not confined to just designers, but it can help designers become better at their craft by challenging them to go beyond what’s typical for their field.
How to use Design Thinking in your job as a designer
There are a few ways to get started with Design Thinking. You can begin with one or more of the core principles of Design Thinking and look for ways to apply it to your work. You can also go even further and try and break down the Design Thinking process into its different steps. However you go about it, Design Thinking is something you’ll have to engage in on a daily basis as a designer. Here are some ways you can get started with Design Thinking.
- Audit your own work: Take a look at some of the projects you’ve worked on and see if you can apply some Design Thinking to them. If there’s a project you worked on that you feel could be better, try going through the Design Thinking process again, but this time, apply what you’ve learned from Design Thinking.
- Audit external works: Look for problems outside of your work and see if you can apply Design Thinking to solve them. Look for problems that need solutions and then apply Design Thinking to solve them. You can even try and apply Design Thinking to problems that other designers or companies are trying to solve.
- Read/watch Design Thinking content: Read up on Design Thinking and notice how other people are applying it to their work. Then, look for ways to apply what you’ve learned to your own work. You can also watch videos on Design Thinking, which will give you access to real-life examples of how people are applying Design Thinking in their work.
Conclusion
Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that can be applied in any field or industry. The goal of Design Thinking is to create a solution that improves the lives of the people it’s meant for. Design Thinking requires you to go beyond thinking about how a problem impacts you and how you can solve it, and put yourself in the shoes of the person who has the problem.
