The Design Thinking Process is a methodology that has a completely human-centered approach or can be considered as a set of tools that helps in solving problems creatively. It has been used for over more than 20 years. These days, almost every company in the fields as varied as engineering, architecture, hospitality or business is using this methodology. For any company that needs to tackle complex problems or is creating something new, design thinking ideology would be very useful.
There are different processes available to solve problems but what makes it different from others is its approach. These are five steps that it undergoes to understand people’s needs and discovering the best solutions for them.
5 Essential Methodologies Involved
There are five main design thinking steps, which remains the same for each thinker. They are flexible to use, hence companies or industries can exercise them in a way that’s best suitable for them. Let’s study these steps in detail:
1. Empathize the Design Thinking Process
This step is about gathering information and understanding what the customer or viewers need, what their demands are. You undergo a lot of research and interviews, talk to many people to get a clearer point of the demands. Different communities might come up with different needs, but that is when you empathize with the gathered information and take this up to the next stage.
2. Define
In this step, you take everything that you gathered in the above step and then define what are the problems of viewers. Also, define what does the customer need and look for the conclusions. Observations taken from the emphasized section are turned into insights.
3. Ideate
In this step, you take everything up from the above steps and look for the solutions. You come up with ideas. The point is not to get a perfect idea, but rather to come up as many ideas and then you work on the best ones.
4. Prototype the Design Thinking Process
Now in this step, you are taking ahead all the ideas that you came up with within the above steps and analyze them. After that you select a few ideas which you think can be turned into something worth making. The ideas that you come up with, can be original or being used. Ask yourself what can be done and build a prototype. These prototypes are not fully designed or coded but are good enough to be tested. so that they can be tested by real users.
5. Test
This is the final step, where you take the prototypes that you created in the last step, for testing them with the actual users. They use the product you have created and give you feedback. Do not defend your ideas if the users don’t like it, rather analyze the feedback and go through the cycle again and work on updating it. Make the improvisations accordingly and bring the best possible outcome.
Where You Can Learn Design Thinking
Always be prepared to learn the design thinking process and practice it. There are many websites and open schools available across the web which can provide you a crash course. Do consider IDF if you are serious about it.
Design thinking is a broad map of what you’re going to do in the upcoming days, months, or years but it is not a fixed set of rules that you are supposed to follow strictly. However, the main stages remain the same. This methodology is flexible and will help you in getting the most creative and innovative solutions to your problems. If you are looking for more content marketing tips, we have you covered.
