Empathy – As a design thinker, the problems you are
trying to solve are rarely your own. Instead, they are the
problems of a particular group of people. In order to
design for that group of people, you must gain empathy
for who they are and what is important to them. Learn to
see things from their eyes.
Empathy is the center piece of the human-centered
design process. It is the work you do to understand
people, including the way they do things and why, their
physical and emotional needs, how they think about the
world, and what is meaningful to them, all within the
context of your design challenge.
Define – It is your responsibility as a design
thinker to define the challenge you are taking on,
based on what you have learned about your user
and about the context. The goal of the Define
stage is to craft a meaningful and actionable
problem statement. Crafting a more narrowly
focused problem statement tends to yield both
greater quantity and higher quality solutions
when you are generating ideas.
Ideate is the process of “going wide” to transition from
identifying problems to creating solutions for your
users. It’s about pushing for the widest possible range
of ideas from which you can select, not simply finding a
single, best solution. The determination of the best
solution will be discovered later, through user testing
and feedback.
Converge note: To select which of your ideas to prototype, we
have developed an “ID Analysis” (Impact x Do-ability) tool to
prioritize your actions. Have participants or groups write each
idea on a sticky note and place that idea on the matrix above.
Ideas in the upper-right quadrant should be prioritized for
prototyping
Prototype – Once you select your highest-potential-
impact solutions, create low-resolution prototypes that
are quick and cheap to make but can elicit useful
feedback from users and colleagues. A prototype can
be anything that a user can interact with, to help test
possibilities and stimulate emotions and responses
from the user that you can use to refine your solutions.
Test – Always prototype as if you know you’re
right, but test as if you know you’re wrong. Testing
is the chance to refine your solutions and make
them better. Solicit feedback about the
prototypes you have created within the real
context of the user’s life. Continue to ask “Why?”
and focus on what you can learn about the person
and the problem as well as your potential
solutions.
Repeat – Iteration is a fundamental of good
design. Iterate both by cycling through the
process multiple times, and also by iterating
within a step – for example by creating multiple
prototypes or trying variations of a
brainstorming topic with multiple groups.
