Module 4: Tools for Design Thinking

Theory and practice in design thinking

Design Thinking is the most popular, most successful, approach to innovation in business, arts and social enterprise.

In Design Thinking, theory and practice are closely interconnected. The theory serves as a blueprint,
guiding companies in general and design teams in particular through the design process.

Design Thinking research needs to be set up in a particular way. This setup ties in with Design Thinking
process models: To attain ever more suitable design solutions, prototypes are supposed to be tested and
refined.

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What is Theory of Design Thinking

Design Thinking is a methodology basically used for Problem Solving.

It concentrates on the human point of view and the customer’s tradition area. The Design Thinking approach
specially used in business, marketing, and design fields. The main motive of the methodology is to take the
User into consideration initially and then take the remaining considerations. This is done only by finding
needs, creating a solution for a product that is really helpful.
Design Thinking Concept is Divided into 6 Phases as
Shown:

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1. Empathize: This phase is basically the Information Gathering phase. Business-related information
gathered by searching and understanding the customer’s views. It is done by interviews, group
discussions, and most of the observations. Along with this the questions related to What, How, Why
take into consideration.

2. Define: In this phase, we focus on the collection and classification of the information from the
empathize phase. The information gets categorized according to ideal customers, their problems, the
solution to their problems and needs, and fears of users that we have to consider.

3. Ideate: In this phase, we give an optimized and real-time solution to the problems. No irrespective and
illogical thinking accepted. These solutions are raised by Sketching and Prototyping.

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4. Prototype: In the prototyping phase, the basic implementation of the design thinking solution is used
to verify the solution in real life. During prototyping it finally takes our idea in real life. The prototype
must be less expensive and the very first version of the ideal solution.

5. Test: After the above phases finally, it is time to verify the product in real life. Customers are able to
use it and give feedback for their personal experience. Also, the designer can ask questions on how to
improve such products for better usage.

6. Implementation: This is a final phase of design thinking where all collected information gets
converted into the final product. The implementation phase takes about a month to develop our new
system. Both frontend and backend developers work to implement the requirements.

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 Design Thinking is Helpful in Many Areas:
•It is used in project management, it is used to define the scope and architecture of the project.
•It is used for business management. It used to focus on the features which have more value in the
actual world.
•It helps to allocate the goal so that we can go towards the exact direction with more clear views.
In this way, it is helpful in the development field.
•For most of the team works, It allows us to work in a more effective manner and according to
users’ requirements.

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 3 Principles of Design Thinking:
•Empathy: This principle is depends on empathize phase of design thinking. User
requirement is the first priority of design thinking. There is no need to focus on the optional
features for users. But the smartness to develop a design that fulfills the customer’s
requirements.

•Expansive Thinking: It is the principal of finding many ways to solve the problem of finding
the solution. This principle is also known as BrainStorming. The main motive for this is to
think big.

•Experimentation: After finding many solutions, you have to find that optimized solution
from the list. Experiments are necessary for building a more effective prototype. For the
selection of the correct prototype, it must be tested before releasing it for the public. It is a
method that is accessible form almost everyone.

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Customer journey map examples

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 MVP
What is a minimum viable product?
MVP, or minimum viable product, is a test version of a product or service with a minimum set of functions that brings
value to the end consumer.

The word “viable” means that the product actually solves the user’s problem. And if after testing we find out that it is not
viable enough, we start it all over.

Here is a check-list for designing a good MVP

•Define the problem and target audience
•Run research on both users and competitors
•Find that minimal set of features that are enough to solve the problem
•Don’t forget about testing

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Design thinking approach in MVP
Values and principles
Design thinking is not just a sequence of steps, it is a different way of seeing a problem.
Here is how each principle can be applied in MVP.

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Empathy
For many teams, the process of developing an MVP might be one of the very first times they really get to
know their users. Empathizing with users instead of just learning their consumer patterns is what design
thinking teaches us to do. And we are talking not only about user interviews — empathy is needed at every
stage of the product design process.

Optimism
MVPs are often built as a thing for testing, something that is likely to fail and will need to be restored. That is
why optimism is crucial: you have to remember to go on whatever happens.

Integrative thinking
Or thinking differently, in other words. With an MVP, we aim to build a new solution to a problem. Naturally,
we need to come up with original ideas, something that hasn’t been made before. Give a chance to the
different ideas, and if they don’t come on their own, try implementing some brainstorming strategies.

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Experiment
There are people who think of a minimum viable product as a big experiment, and there are those who would
disagree. Whichever side you take, a dash of experimental spirit is essential for designing a good MVP.
Remember that we run competitors’ research not to just copy their methods.

Collaboration
Minimum viable products are often built with a very small team. When there are just a couple of developers
working on it, they easily get stuck in their own mindsets. Inviting people with different backgrounds to
collaborate is important even if there is no budget for that. You can ask your users for help, or even friends.

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Step-by-step guide to building an MVP using design thinking
approach

Design thinking process has this circular or 8-shape structure. You have to go through all the stages at least once to ensure
that the solution to the problem is the best option possible. Often you would have to iterate more than once.

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Now, let’s go through each stage and see how each of them works in the case of MVP.
1. Research
Every guide to design thinking will warn you from doing literally anything before you do at least some research. The
same goes for MVP design. When resources and time are limited, as it often happens with minimum viable products,
you should focus mainly on competitors, market research, and user interviews. If you can do more, perfect, but this
is the minimum.
2. Define
When we want to minimize the effort, we have to know very precisely what we are doing, for whom, and why.
When you aim to help all the world and make life better, design thinking won't do much for you. Even when you
think that the problem is crystal clear, take some time to phrase it and make sure that everyone in the team knows
about it. Our brain starts working on the problem unconsciously only when the question is stated clearly.
3. Ideate
When you need to come up with a new solution for an MVP, you need new ideas. That's clear, right? However, in
design thinking ideation is not just about picking a solution. The most important thing is to come up with
non-standard, innovative ideas, and you need to have more than one.
You have to go beyond those typical solutions that come to mind first. There is a whole science of "idea fishing". You
may use our list of top ideation techniques that will get you going.

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4. Design
Yes, here we come to the “actual design”. Note that this is the fourth step, not the first. When building an MVP, it
is important not to forget about user experience.
Designing a sophisticated user interface is typically excessive for an MVP, as well as adding too many features.
However, as a UX design agency, we have strong evidence that good user experience adds value to the product at
any stage of development.
5. Test
In the case of MVP, testing takes place both before and after the launch. First of all, you should test usability, and
afterward — customer satisfaction, system usability, and all the other UX metrics that fit into your budget.
6. Iterate
Once you have a minimum viable product that is functional and, well, works, it is time to… build another one.
Well, not exactly. What I mean here is that you shouldn’t fall into temptation to just go on once the product is
out there and somebody is using it.
The purpose of MVP is to build a functional and usable version of the product and test it. Once the testing
showed results, you can go for the second circle, or rather a spiral: gather user feedback, empathize, define new
challenges, ideate, find the solution and design it, build a prototype, test… And so on.

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how to use design thinking in MVP development. Of course, no one's perfect (except the
design we make for our clients) and you can adjust the process to your personal needs. But
what is crucial to remember is that design thinking indeed brings a ton of value to the MVP
development, such as:

•Design thinking helps to create a product that brings real value to users
•Motivates you to test MVP as much as possible
•Advocates research
•Promotes creative ideas and original solutions.

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 Empathy for design
• Empathize is the first stage of the design thinking
process.
• Design teams conduct research to get personal
grasps of their users' needs.
• They set aside assumptions to obtain insights into
the users' world by observing and consulting with
users.
• This way, they can understand users' experiences,
motivations and problems.
• The Empathize stage of design thinking requires
you to visit your users in their natural
environments, learn about how they behave and
conduct interviews with them

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 prototyping

Prototyping is an approach that makes ideas and concepts more tangible and visual as compared
to written ideas. It helps us to empathize with the user in terms of the viability of the solution and
further minimizes the risk of failure at large scale.

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How is empathy used in design?
Empathy helps you:
•Appreciate people's emotional and physical needs.

•Gain insight into the way people see, understand and interact with the world around them.

•Realize how lives are impacted within the contexts being investigated.

•Find out what people mean rather than just what they say — empathic research is inherently
subjective and is concerned with motivations and thoughts, rather than facts.

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Empathize Methods

• The first step of the design process is “empathize.” The next stages in the design process are:
define, ideate, prototype, and test.
• The goal of the empathize stage is to understand the people you are designing for and figure out
what problem to solve.

Methods used for empathizing.

•Ask What-How-Why
•Ask the 5 Whys
•Conduct interviews with Empathy
•Make use of photo and video user-based studies
•Brainstorm
•Engage with the users
•Create a journey map
•Build empathy with analogies

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Empathy Mapping
Traditional empathy maps are split into 4 quadrants (Says, Thinks, Does, and Feels), with the user or persona
in the middle.

The Says quadrant contains what the user says out loud in an interview or some other usability study. Ideally, it
contains direct quotes from research.

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The Thinks quadrant captures what the user is thinking throughout the experience.
Ask yourself (from the qualitative research gathered): what occupies the user’s thoughts? What
matters to the user? It is possible to have the same content in both Says and Thinks. However,
pay special attention to what users think, but may not be willing to express.

The Does quadrant encloses the actions the user takes.

From the research, what does the user physically do? How does the user go about doing it?

The Feels quadrant is the user’s emotional state, often represented as an adjective plus a short
sentence for context.
Ask yourself: what worries the user? What does the user get excited about? How does the user
feel about the experience?

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 Collaborative Design
What is Collaborative Design?
Collaborative design is a process that brings together different ideas, roles and team members.
Collaborative design is a multi-staged UX (user experience) process that involves planning and strategy
developed by user feedback. The design phase of the UX process is iterative.

Collaborative design is where teams hold the entire process of creating an asset, from brainstorming to allocating tasks
and team members.

It's a process that involves planning and strategy that revolves around feedback and is delivered collaboratively.

collaborative design is especially helpful, like:

•Deciding on the vision and scope of a project

•Gathering feedback and context throughout the design process
•Promoting discussion and brainstorming to boost creativity
•Solving specific design problems for clients
•The design review and approval process

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Collaboration in distributed design

• Distributed collaborative systems allow users from different computers to interact with each other.

• They are layered on top of two base technologies: user-interface and distributed abstractions.

• Distributed Collaboration is a way of collaboration wherein participants, regardless of their location,

work together to reach a certain goal.

• This usually involves use of increasingly popular cyberinfrastructure, such as emails, instant
messaging and document sharing platforms to reduce the limitations of the users trying to work together

What is the importance of collaboration in design?

Effective collaboration between designers, manufacturers and the target audience can help to create a
successful product. When a diverse team works closely together, especially during the early design stages,
and revisit the designs as part of the iterative design process, it can lead to a highly innovative product.

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Goals

One of the major goals for distributed collaboration is to facilitate use of shared
resources and communication.

There is a need to enable some sort of interaction which may involve exchange of gestures and body
language information at an informal level which is usually unavailable to participants at remote locations.

The essence is to allow for groups to collaborate over distances in a manner that emulates, as nearly as
possible, the effectiveness of collaboration when the participants meet in person.

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 Enabling efficient collaboration in digital space
• Design Thinking is an approach for innovative problem solving.

• A typical characteristic of this approach involves multidisciplinary teams and the extensive use of tangible tools such as
sticky notes, whiteboards and all kinds of prototyping materials.

• When team members try to collaborate from separate locations their traditional way of working becomes nearly
impossible.

• A number of computer supported collaborative work systems exist, but there still lacks acceptable support for teams
applying methods like Design Thinking.

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Enabling efficient collaboration in digital space
In a digital setup, this can be achieved using pen enabled or touch enabled laptop computers and mobile
phones. These devices can then be used to write sticky notes in a private environment. From these devices,
users have to be able to transmit sticky notes to an electronic whiteboard.

1) Analyzing Design Thinking Working Modes

The different working modes and their specific characteristics are the following:

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Handwriting and drawing on a whiteboard.
• This working mode happens often and for various reasons during a design
session.
• Some examples might be: noting facts or ideas, visualizing an idea or a
process through rough sketches, or drawing a diagram to explain relations.
• Multiple colors and an eraser may be used, as well as printouts of pictures
and other information.
• It is important that the whiteboard stands vertically to be seen easily by
fellow team members.
• Each team member must have direct access to the whiteboard. Gestures
are frequently used to support communicating an idea to other team
members.

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Writing a personal sticky note.
• Sticky notes are used to note down facts or ideas, sometimes including small drawings.
• The creation of sticky notes is often done individually and simultaneously by team members.
• Sticky notes may be added to the whiteboard either immediately or during a quick
presentation phase.
• Differently colored sticky notes are used to keep track of the information’s source.
• It is important that sticky notes are relatively small so that team members use them to
record only a single, brief fact or idea that can be grasped at a glance.

Clustering sticky notes.

• Usually, one or two team members stand in front of a whiteboard and cluster the team’s
sticky notes.
• A cluster is often defined by circling sticky notes with a whiteboard marker and applying a
label.
• Other team members may instruct them from a distance.
• The team tries to group related research information or ideas that were generated during a
brainstorming session.

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Collaborative creation of hand drawings.
• Often one person draws a design object in more detail, and the other team
members give feedback.
• It is important that all people involved can see the drawing and may
contribute to it.
• A horizontal setup is generally preferred to make drawing more comfortable.

Intense discussion of a design topic.

• The team meets to discuss a topic related to design artifacts, which are often
laid out on a table.
• Visibility of team members’ gestures, facial expressions and eye contact as
well as related artifacts is crucial.

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 Presenting insights, ideas and frameworks.
• This working mode often involves a bigger audience. It is important to collect as
much feedback as possible from the audience.
• The team uses design artifacts created in their team space mostly presented on a
whiteboard using a vertical setup.

Presenting a physical prototype.

• For this working mode it is necessary to present a physical object from all sides.
• It might also include acting out an idea. Similar to the preceding working mode,
an audience is involved.

The first three working modes (handwriting on a whiteboard, writing a sticky note and clustering) are essential
for creative processes such as Design Thinking, and most suitable to be implemented in a digital solution

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Creativity Across Distances: Can We Make It Work?
• This IT-tool which truly supports and optimizes collaborative creative work without getting in the way of the teams
involved in the process.
• Recent development of touch enabled whiteboards, monitors and smartphones provided us with new opportunities
for an intuitive use of hard- and software.
• The translucent whiteboard can be displayed as an overlay on top of a full screen video of the other team members (
Fig.). This setup lets everyone see what the others are doing, where they are pointing along with their gestures and
facial expressions.

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,Real-Time design interaction capture and analysis

• For design researches, the system acts as an instrument to collect data.

• A number of client applications may be utilized for channels and feed information about captured
interactions to the services provided.
• At the same time, the services provide the functionality to measure trends and characteristics in the
recorded events and to systematically; explore the past and present of communication behavior in
the observed teams.
• Conceptual design methodology can be developed and tested leading to a deeper understanding of
relevant metrics in team communication.
• Completing the symbiosis, the set of services can be iteratively refined and adapted to form the
basis for improved guidance, management and design process support.

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