Design Thinking Ebook

Design Thinking
Course Introduction
What Is Design Thinking?
Design thinking focuses heavily on understanding the users, their needs,

and their environment as the starting point.
The importance of design thinking is pretty evident today, with the

surging demand for design thinkers.
What Is Design Thinking?
Many of the world’s leading brands have adopted a design thinking approach to
building their products and services. Some of these brands are:
Design Thinking Skills
There is a large emphasis on design thinking skills. Recruiters look for people
capable of the following:
Thinking Creatively
Taking Timely Decisions

Changes in Traditional Businesses
Traditional businesses are seeing huge changes in the following:
New Offerings by
Customer Preferences Business Models
Smaller Competitors
Transformation by Design Thinking
Design thinking has transformed Airbnb from a failing startup to a billion dollar business.
This transformation is evident from the fact that the US customers spend more money on
Airbnb than on hotel industry giants like Hilton.
Source: Second Measure
The Covid-19 pandemic has driven firms to think differently.

Twilio is a cloud communications provider that enables communications technology for

firms across multiple industries.
It surveyed over 2,500 enterprise decision makers globally to understand the impact of
the Covid-19 pandemic on business and consumer communications.
Their Chief Customer Officer claimed, “Over the last few

months, we’ve seen years-long digital transformation
roadmaps compressed into days and weeks in order to
adapt to the new normal as a result of COVID-19. Nearly
every industry has had to identify new ways to
communicate with their customers and stakeholders: from
patients, to students, to shoppers, and even employees -
essentially overnight.”
Adoption of Design Thinking
The following key factors are driving the adoption of design thinking across organizations:
03
01 02 03
Changing User Preferences Adoption of an Leadership Awareness

Iterative Approach
Course Objectives
By the end of this course, you will be able to:

03
Understand what design Appreciate the need for

thinking is all about design thinking in today’s
business context
Look at case studies on how Practice critical design thinking

various firms have adopted skills in hands-on exercise
design thinking
Course Outline
Course Introduction 09 Prototyping and

01
Validation
Introduction to Design
02 08 Concept Building
Thinking
Exploring Design
03 07 Ideation
Thinking
Tapping Empathy to
04 06 Problem Framing
Build User Persona
05
Customer Journey Mapping

Course Features
Self-Paced Learning Hands-on Exercises

Content
Live Virtual Classes
Course Features
The course features are right mix of the following:
Hands-on Projects
Theoretical Concepts
Case Studies
Target Audience
This course is aimed at anyone who wants to:
Understand the theory of

design thinking
Apply this human-centered

approach to achieve real
business value
Target Audience
This course is suitable for:
Innovators Product, Growth, or Marketing Managers
Product Heads, Consultants, or Executive

Strategists
Officers
Designers UX, Graphic, or Web Designers
Educators Professors, Corporate Trainers, or Researchers

Course Components
The following components are included in this course:
Downloadable e-books for quick reference
Break-out exercises for applying the

knowledge gathered from the lessons
Course Components
The following components are included in this course:
HBR case studies to witness real-world

scenarios where these concepts are applied
Spotlight videos to refresh the concepts you

learned till a particular lesson
Course Assessments
The following set of assessments is included in this course:
One course-end assessment One course-end project

with 50 questions
Introduction to Design Thinking
Learning Objectives
By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:
Define design thinking
Describe the five stages of design thinking
Build an engaging story
Describe the design thinking models

Why Is Design Thinking Critical Today?
The term VUCA was first coined by the US military to describe the world we are in today.
It was adopted by businesses to describe the context they operate in.

Volatile:
● Challenges are unexpected and may change rapidly
● For example, a natural disaster takes a supplier offline leading
to huge changes in prices and timelines.
Uncertain:
● Lots of external factors affect business
● For example, a competitor’s new product launch drastically
changes the market dynamics.
Complex:
● There are lots of interconnected parts and variables
● For example, to do business in different countries, one must
understand the regulations and cultures that may be different.
Ambiguous:
● There are often unknown unknowns
● For example, when a new product or service is launched,
business owners may not know which factors will influence their
success. They need to rapidly experiment.
According to Rupert Murdoch:
“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat

small anymore. It will be the fast beating the
slow.”
Most businesses use design thinking techniques to adapt to the changing

environment.
● Many of the regular assumptions of doing

business are being challenged.
● Firms need to think and act differently to
survive.
● Companies like IBM, SAP, Microsoft, and many
others are adopting design thinking to
understand, plan, and execute strategies.
Advantages of design thinking:
Helps companies to Keeps strong focus on Drives future goals for

understand and deal changing user and buyer the business
with massive changes preferences
Firms Lost in the Changing Market
Many market leaders have rapidly lost their firms in the changing market.
● Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones.

● They were slow to respond to the smartphone market and
rapidly lost market share.
● Kodak was a market leader in films.

● They had developed an early prototype of the digital sensor.
Since the film sector was the largest, they did not follow it.
● They lost market share when digital cameras became
popular.
● Xerox was the first to develop a graphical user interface.

● They focused on the print business and didn’t realize the
importance of computers.
● They lost out to firms like Apple, IBM, and Microsoft.
Case Study on Oral-B
Oral-B is a leading dental care organization.
In the mid-nineties, Oral-B researchers talked to parents and found that kids hate
brushing their teeth.
IDEO was involved to help understand user preferences.
● Kids’ toothbrushes were like those of adults, only smaller

in size.
● Oral-B was interested in improving kids' toothbrushes.
● They went to homes and studied how kids brushed their
teeth.
IDEO was involved to help understand user preferences.
● They observed that kids hold toothbrushes differently than

adults.
● They realized that kids have less dexterous fingers, so they
hold the brush with their fists instead of their fingers.
IDEO and Oral-B designed a squish gripper prototype: a toothbrush for kids.
● The toothbrush was easy for kids to

use.
● Bright colors and graphics were added
to make the toothbrushes look livelier.
The new toothbrush design led to a huge growth in the category of kids’ toothbrushes.
Case Study on BMW
Case Study on BMW
BMW realized that customers’ needs are changing.
They started experimenting with different ownership models that offer customers
access to a BMW fleet for a fixed price.
Case Study on BMW
In US, BMW experimented by offering a subscription service through an app.
● The app-based service called Access is designed to allow

users to choose between models like X5 SUV, 4 series,
and 5 series sedans for a $2,000 monthly subscription.
● The fee includes insurance, maintenance, and roadside
assistance.
● The customers can enjoy their cars at a fixed fee instead
of making a huge down payment on the cars.
Design Thinking Approach
Design Thinking Approach
Design thinking focuses heavily on understanding the users, their needs, and their
environment as the starting point.
It enables you to:

● Build a holistic view of the user’s
life, problems, desires, and abilities
● Come up with the best solution
● Satisfy the needs of the users
Design Thinking Concept
The following are the concepts of design thinking:
● It is not the exact replica of design

like building UI/UX for products or
solutions.
● It borrows a designer’s view to the
problems.
Design Thinking Concept
Design thinking involves:
Keeping users in sharp focus
Generating and prototyping the

ideas
Validating the ideas with target

customers
Customer Experience
In design thinking, customer experience is expected to overtake price and

product as the biggest differentiators for brands.
According to research:
One in three customers will leave a 86% of the customers are willing to pay
brand they love after a bad premium prices of up to 13% for great
experience. experience.
Source: Experience is everything, PwC

Big Bets and Lean Approach
Design thinking combines the Big Bets and Lean Approach.
Big Bets mean setting big and Lean Approach quickly

audacious goals that can validates the workable
transform your company or solutions to identify the
product. game changers.
Blended Approach in Design Thinking
In today’s market, we need a blended approach of creative and analytical thinking to

understand the problems that the firms are facing from multiple perspectives.
The creative approach involves an open-minded outlook to

explore the qualitative aspects of the problem.
The analytical approach involves studying the quantitative data

about the problem.
Case Study on Bank of America
Case Study
Bank of America is one of the Big Four banking institutions in the US.
● In 2004, Bank of America was looking

to encourage new users to open
accounts with them.
● They engaged IDEO, a leading design
thinking consulting firm to implement
this effectively.
Source: https://www.designbetter.co/design-thinking/empathize
Case Study
The following points depict the working style of IDEO:
● Worked with a human-centered approach

● Worked with key teams within the Bank Of
America
● Engaged with individuals and families
● Analyzed their banking habits and spending
patterns
Case Study
The following observations were made by IDEO:
● Mothers handled finances in many

households.
● They rounded out to the nearest
dollar when writing checks for
monthly accounting.
● These families were not able to
save money as they lived paycheck
to paycheck.
Case Study
Bank of America came up with the Keep the Change Program, which made monthly accounting
easier. This program became very popular, and over 12.3 million people enrolled in it.
Case Study
The following are the features of this program:
● People could enroll in a savings account.

● The account would automatically round up
the purchases made with debit cards.
● The bank would automatically transfer $0.03
dollars into the savings account.
● It would also match the money transferred to
the savings account up to a certain amount.
History of Design Thinking
Cooperative Design The term Wicked

emerged in Problems was coined
Scandinavia in the in 1973.
1960s.
Design for the Real The Second Wave of

World was published by design thinking came in
Victor Papanek in 1971. the 1980s.
● Every worker has the right and duty to participate in decisions concerning
the design and development of systems.
● It was facilitated by creating environments for designing-by-doing, using
tools like:
Cooperative Design ○ mock-up envisionment
○ organizational games
○ co-operative prototyping
○ ethnographic field research
○ democratic dialogue
○
● The focus was on:

○ knowing with the users
Cooperative Design ○ giving the users a voice
○ learning together by doing
○ acting it out
○ exploratory scenarios’ research and development
• Victor Papanek argued for anthropology and social sciences to be the core
Design for the Real
parts of design science.
World
• He later influenced collaborative project design at UNESCO and WHO.
• Social sciences were seen as complex problems needing designer-ly ways

of thinking.
Wicked Problems • The term Wicked Problems was coined to outline constantly changing
problems, without simple solutions, that needed a holistic view of the
environment, actors, and interactions.
• Researchers started exploring the process and mindsets of the designers.

Second Wave • This encouraged other disciplines to emulate creative thinking techniques
like brainstorming.
Design Thinking Frameworks
Five Stages of Design Thinking
Define Prototype
02 04
01 03 05
Empathize Ideate Test

Empathize
The first stage of the design thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the
problem you are trying to solve.
● Studying the area of concern of people by connecting with

them and observing the actions and decisions of them
● Gaining a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved

by surrounding yourself with similar subjects and environments
Empathize
● Allowing design thinkers to gain insight into users and their needs
by a human-centric design process
● Developing the best possible understanding of the users that

underlie the development of that particular product
Define
In define stage, design thinkers accumulate the information gathered during

the empathize stage.
● Analyze observations and synthesize them to define the core

problems
● Create personas to help keep your efforts human-centric
● Define stage will help the designers to establish features that

will solve the problems with minimum risk
● Ask questions related to the observations gathered in

empathize stage to come up with a substantial problem
statement which can be used in the ideate stage
Ideate
In ideate stage, design thinkers start putting down the possible solution to the
human-centric problems defined in the previous stage.
Some of the processes used in this stage are:
● Brainstorming: It aims at building good ideas from various sources

and members.
● Worst possible idea: It is opposite to brainstorming, where you

solve all the impediments.
● Storyboarding: You design a solution-related story to explain the

dynamics of the problem.
Prototype
In prototype stage, team produces a scaled-down version of the product to test and
showcase it to the users.
● Identify the best possible solution for each problem
● Build an inexpensive, scaled-down version of the product
● Investigate the ideas generated with the possible impediments
● Involve paper prototyping
● Enhance based on the feedback on prototype

Test
In test stage, rigorous testing of the prototypes is done to identify the gaps.
● This is not the final stage as design thinking is iterative.
● Feedback from this stage is used to refine the product and

remove other impediments.
● Team can return to previous stages to make further

iterations and refinements.
IDEO
The following design thinking model is adopted by IDEO:
Source: www.pinterest.com
IDEO
IDEO breaks down design thinking into distinct phases of:
Interpretation:
Storytelling,
looking for
meaning, and Experimentation:
opportunity Prototyping and
Discovery: framing Ideation: feedback Evolution:
Understanding Generating and Tracking
a challenge, refining the learnings for
research, and ideas the future
gathering
inspiration
LUMA Institute
Source: www.pinterest.com
LUMA Institute
LUMA institute organizes the methods of human-centric design in three key

design skills: looking, understanding, and making.
Each method can be applied individually for a focused approach to a specific

question.
Multiple methods can be combined in different ways as needed for more

complex challenges.
The methods can be used with any type of problem, in any type of setting.
Darden School of Business
The Darden School of Business in the University of Virginia splits the design thinking
process into four distinct phases:
Source: www.researchgate.net
Darden School of Business
What is: helps us understand the current situation at hand
What if: helps us generate fresh ideas on what the future could be
What wows: helps us understand what really resonates with the customers
from the ideas and concepts that are generated
What works: helps us understand what is viable as a business and how we can
learn by experimentation
IBM Model
IBM Design Model
Design thinking framework encompasses hills, playbacks, sponsor users, and the loop.
IBM Design Model
Hills are designed to gather teams around a common goal embedded in human needs and desires.
● These are statements that are written as

meaningful user outcomes.
● It tells us where to go, not how to go, to let
the team come up with creative ideas.
● A hill includes elements that describe the
user persona, issue to be resolved, and the
unique approach.
● It is implementation-agnostic.
IBM Design Model
Playback technique is designed to bring these groups to a similar alignment directed

towards achieving the project target which is ultimately centered on the user needs.
● It aims to align the team with common objectives

in the project.
● Playbacks comprise assessment and feedback.
● Types:
○ Goals defining playbacks (hills playbacks)
○ Solution defining playbacks (playback zero)
○ Progress measuring playbacks (delivery
playbacks)
IBM Design Model
Sponsor users involves real users from the extreme ends of the targeted user spectrum in the IBM
Design Thinking process.
● Working with real people grounds the design

experience on the reality of the user needs.
● Co-creation with the sponsor users increases
product value in a rather painless Design
Thinking process.
IBM Design Model
A loop is an iterative and rotational process, whose end marks the beginning of a new
process or the same process.
● It represents a process of continuous reinvention that forms a road

map of the company’s design thinking process.
● It seeks to discover user needs and endlessly prototype solutions
for a better future.
● It is completed in a three-point process which involves:
○ Observation
○ Reflection
○ Making
IBM Design Model
A loop is a three-point process:
1. Observation: It is taking a closer look to notice the easy-to-miss

consumer needs and verify their expectations against your ideas.
2. Reflection: It is aimed at consolidating the knowledge acquired,
developing a solid point of view, and designing a solid plan.
3. Making: It transforms the ideas from the abstract into reality.
Structured Iterative Model
Structured Iterative Model
Structured Iterative Model is similar to the five stage design thinking framework.
• It focuses on keeping the user at the center of the project.

Define
Problem
• It is an iterative approach.
User User
Testing Scoping
• Cross-functional teams work on the project to build viable
solutions.
• It has five stages, namely define problem, user scoping, Prototyping Brainstorming
brainstorming, prototyping, and user testing.
Define Problem
1 Define
Define problem
problem
● Most people start with a stated problem definition, but in design
thinking, we start by exploring more about the problem’s root
cause.
User scoping
● This involves deep research on environments, actors, constraints,

Brainstorming and competition.
● Problem definition is never complete.

Prototyping
User testing
User Scoping
Define problem
● User scoping requires empathy, that is deep understanding of users’
lives, motivations, and desires without being judgmental.
2 User scoping
● It uses tools like qualitative user research to build user persona (a
fictional prospective user for our product) and customer behavior.
Brainstorming
● It aims is to avoid our own opinions when designing a product or
service.
Prototyping
User testing
Brainstorming
Define problem
● It is a structured brainstorming technique to generate ideas
addressing the commonly faced problems.
User scoping
● Brainstorming is first done individually, and then ideas are
discussed and sorted between teams.
3 Brainstorming
● At the end of brainstorming, we merge related ideas into concepts
that can be prototyped and tested with users.
Prototyping
User testing
Prototyping
Define problem
● Prototypes help us quickly test key assumptions with target users.
● Prototypes do not have to be functional.

User scoping
● It aims to get good quality feedback on our assumptions.

Brainstorming
● For effective prototyping, we may have to explain the context to
users using stories for them to understand what we are trying to
4 Prototyping do.
User testing
User Testing
Define problem
● These are the actual users who test the products.
● They proceed to refine the idea or go back to understanding the

User scoping
problem, if the fundamental assumptions stay.
Brainstorming ● It is a low-cost technique to test the core hypothesis.
Prototyping
5 User testing
Progress of Design Thinking
Nigel Cross investigated design methodology. His book, Designerly ways of knowing states
the way designers think and make decisions in the construction of design thinking.
Reference: https://medium.com/@szczpanks/design-thinking-where-it-came-from-and-the-type-of-people-who-made-it-all-happen-dc3a05411e53
● The rise of service design, and their emerging

methodologies focused on complex problems.
● This created an environment for a new wave of
design tools.
According to the founder of Make Tools:
This human-centered design revolution is causing us to rethink the design

process. In order to drive the human-centered design revolution, we need to
tap into the imaginations and dreams of designers but also of everyday
people. New design spaces are emerging in response to everyday people’s
needs for creativity.
Source: https://medium.com/@szczpanks/design-thinking-where-it-came-from-and-the-type-of-people-who-made-it-all-happen-dc3a05411e53
Innovation Design Engineering Organization (IDEO) was formed in 1991.
They encouraged people from multiple disciplines like:
Anthropology Business Strategy Education Healthcare
Their multidisciplinary approach helped them to understand the problems differently.

The founders, Tom and David Kelley, and the next CEO, Tim Brown, were hugely influential
in popularizing design thinking to understand and solve business problems.
According to Tom Kelly’s book, it turns out that creativity isn’t some rare gift to be enjoyed by the lucky
few: it’s a natural part of human thinking and behavior. In too many of us it gets blocked. But it can be
unblocked. And unblocking that creative spark can have far-reaching implications for yourself, your
organization, and your community.
Change by Design is one of the most influential

books on Design Thinking authored by Tim
Brown, the CEO of IDEO, who has written a lot
about popularizing design thinking among
non-designers.
Reference: https://medium.com/@szczpanks/design-thinking-where-it-came-from-and-the-type-of-people-who-made-it-all-happen-dc3a05411e53
Design thinking has gained a lot of recognition and is used in a variety of disciplines like:
Social Innovation
Policy Design Education
Business Service Design
Firms adopt design thinking methodologies to understand what to build and Agile methodologies to
plan how to build a product or service.
Challenges Best Suited for Design Thinking
In an interconnected world, most problems have multiple facets.
Design thinkers have mindset of both a designer and an artist to solve

human-centered problems in any discipline.
Challenging situations where design thinking can be applied, include:
One where the problem is not fully defined
One where a human-centered approach is required
One where innovation is the key requirement
One where data alone cannot solve problems

The problem is not fully defined:
• Design thinking is an exploratory process

that focuses on understanding the core of
a problem.
• Due to better understanding, innovative
solutions can be applied to these
problems.
A human-centered approach is required:
• Any business requires a deep understanding

of people, their motivations, constraints, and
desires.
• Design thinking inspires practitioners to
empathize deeply with people.
• It keeps people at the heart of any solution.
Data alone cannot solve problems:
• Businesses have started exploring the

power of big data and technology.
• For crucial problems, a mix of data and
design thinking is required.
Innovation is the key requirement:
• Design thinking is closely linked with

innovation.
• The design thinking approach helps in
exploring fresh ideas and
experimentation.
Challenges Associated with Design Thinking
These are the challenges associated with design thinking:
Design thinking is marginalized
Misalignment is a risk to every design thinking project
Design thinking is a linear process
Design thinking has an image problem

Design thinking is marginalized:
● It is not trusted or understood by senior

executives.
● It is approved for use at lower levels of the
organization.
● Due to less exposure to senior executives,
solutions take time for recognition.
Misalignment is a risk to every design thinking

project
● Many design thinking projects run into

problems because they fail to maintain
alignment throughout the project.
● Design thinking experts spend more time with
the client’s customers to identify insights
within the project.
Design thinking as a linear process
● Design thinking is sorted and set as the

five-step design framework from IDEO or
Stanford.
● Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test
are the main steps and people consider it’s a
linear process with no iterations.
Design thinking has an image problem
● Design thinking isn’t related to what the

design portrays.
● It extracts human centricity and design
mindset leading to suboptimal results that
cause issues. This creates a bad reputation.
Complementary to Other Techniques
Design thinking complements the existing approaches in business strategies.

The traditional way of building strategy is based on:
Market Info Competition
Business Analysis Financial Aspects

Firms like PepsiCo have also adopted design thinking in their strategy. This has led to:
Development of Improvement in Change in the approach

new product lines marketing to problem solving
information
Technology Sector
Design Thinking Product Development

How does design thinking help in discovery of problems?

Agile Methodologies How the products are built
Lean Startup What needs to be built
Design thinking complements these by enquiring around why and who.
This leads to more clarity at the beginning of the project.

Engaging Better with Storytelling
Storytelling in Design Thinking
Communication plays a huge part in design thinking. It is about:
Stories Problems Ideas Concept

Storytelling in Design Thinking
Storytelling is a powerful tool in the design thinker’s toolbox.
● Stories help teams get excited, aligned, and rallied.

● They help paint the world of prospective customers
in a relatable way.
● Storytelling helps while presenting your ideas.
Building Your Story Right
Storytelling is an art but can be improved with practice. Nicole Kahn, a long time IDEO
project lead says:
We all have an innate sense of what makes a good

story, but we forget it at work.
Building Your Story Right
Her four-step framework for building a story involves:
Building a skeleton
Finding your story Rehearsing the story
Crafting the story

Finding Your Story: The Bar Test
Bars are friendly, social places, but something important happens when
you’re at a bar. You do the following in a bar:
Use direct language
Make sure what you’re saying is entertaining and

engaging
Don’t quote tons of data
Don’t use overly corporate language

When narrating stories to our friends, we prove that we are storytellers by birth.
The introduction of bar testing in the workplace helped answer this question,
what’s the point?
● In the middle of a project, the stories are as

numerous as the stars in the sky
● We get excited to share them all to show
what we’ve done, but we can’t do that
IDEO runs the bar test by talking to strangers, before putting a presentation.
According to Kahn, we tell them our story. We verbalize it. We grab

a colleague who’s completely unfamiliar with what we’re doing and
buy them a beer or a coffee and spend 15 minutes to see if they
understand the point of the presentation.
It takes 15 minutes to have coffee and receive feedback.

Kahn says, force it to be succinct. That’s the magic of verbalizing your story. You’ve invested
nothing and there’s no reason to get stuck. You can redo it again and again.
According to Kahn, we look for when they lean in, or

when they look away or reach for their phone. We
look for nods and ‘uh huh’s. That’s how we figure out
what’s sticky and resonating.
Building a Story
Building a Skeleton
According to Kahn, after a good Bar Test, the skeleton of your story should emerge the
main points you know you have to hit to make it memorable.
The three essential elements that make a great story are:
A through-line that connects everything together: the point of telling the story in
the first place.
Put me in the room anecdotes: let your audience experience the journey and details
and create drama.
Moments of reflection: telling your audience how you feel, so you can cue them to
feel in a certain way.
Building a Skeleton
Kahn gave the following example on the importance of anecdotes,

while setting the stage:
‘It was a Wednesday night and there were four storytellers taking to the creaky floorboards of the
building as the waves crashed outside.’ I tell you this and you’re immediately in the room with me
even though it’s a pretty boring story. Nothing’s happened, but it’s the start of something.
Anecdotes hang off the skeleton of your story and you can change its arc by changing the order
you tell them in. Being able to change them up gives you control and flexibility as you present.
Building a Skeleton
Kahn gave the following example on the importance of anecdotes,

while setting the stage:
‘It was a Wednesday night and there were four storytellers taking to the creaky floorboards of the
building as the waves crashed outside.’ I tell you this and you’re immediately in the room with me
even though it’s a pretty boring story. Nothing’s happened, but it’s the start of something.
Anecdotes hang off the skeleton of your story and you can change its arc by changing the order
you tell them in. Being able to change them up gives you control and flexibility as you present.
Moments of Reflection
Moments of reflection should be scattered throughout your talk to grab attention and
create intimacy with the audience.
Kahn says, I might say something like, ‘I knew we were onto something the moment I
met Sandy and she said this one thing.’ This cues others to pay attention.
Moments of Reflection
You find your story when you bring the following elements together:
Through-line Found in conversations with others
Anecdotes Ignite the imagination
Reflection points Draw people’s attention to how you approached the work
Crafting the Story
Crafting is an important part of storytelling if the presentation is used to aid your story,
like for instance, explaining your market context to your team or seniors.
The holy grail of good presentations is to use strong visuals.

Crafting the Story
According to Kahn:
● When there are visuals on the screen and few

words, people rely on you as a presenter to know
what is happening.
● The presenter has the authority in the room, not
the slides.
The Story of Running Shoes
Nicole Kahn recounts a time when she had to talk to a client about running shoes. Rather
than using standard charts, she decided to use pictures of runners across terrains.
Trails Streets Treadmill
There is no single way for people to run.

Kahn showed pictures of people running in varying environments, different times of the day,
and wearing different clothes.
● The presenters seem inhibited by the visuals alone

on the slide.
● They can use the speaker notes function, which is
detailed to highlight the talking points in the slide.
There was a lot of market space for doing things differently.

Rehearsals and practice are the most critical parts of storytelling.
Kahn says, the thing is, while people are natural-born

storytellers, there’s no such thing as a natural-born
presenter.
One piece of advice she cites is to use a story coach.

Rehearsing the Story
The best story coach is someone who will not rip apart your content. They will
focus on the following:
● Making the existing material good to great

● Finding the gaps
● Strengthening the points, simplifying the anecdotes, or
making it more ornate for maximum entertainment
value
● Taking your timeline into account and adjusting the
feedback based on where you are in the process.
Case Study on PepsiCo
Innovation
In 2012, Indra Nooyi, the CEO of PepsiCo, realized that they had to innovate their products to
stay ahead in the market. She knew that innovation was possible through design thinking.
Indra Nooyi, CEO of PepsiCo (2012)

Innovation
To convince the leadership team that design thinking was the right approach,
she did the following:
● Gave an album to the members of

the leadership team
● Asked them to take pictures of their
idea of a good design
Many of them did not have any idea as they considered design to be
related to packaging only.
Implementation
Design thinking was implemented in PepsiCo in the following ways:
● Nooyi brought in the Chief Design

Officer, Maurco Porcini, who earlier
was the design head at 3M.
● This led to a huge shift in exploring
the customer needs.
Implementation
Design culture evolved in PepsiCo, which included:
● Thinking about product creation,

packaging, and labeling
● Imagining how a product would look
on a shelf and how customers would
interact with it
User Segmentation
PepsiCo analyzed the user experience of snacking, mainly focusing on how women
snack differently from men.
This research involved a journey

mapping of:
○ Which snacks are preferred by
women?
○ How do they consume it?
○ What is their reaction after
consuming it?
User Segmentation
The research showed the following snacking pattern differences:
Women Men
● Prefer less crunchy ● Pour the remainder of

snacks as they don’t chips into their mouth
like people hear them after finishing a snack
eat bag
● Worry about staining ● Are not worried about
their clothes staining their clothes
● Are careful about ● Rub the remnants on
smaller pieces of the chair or their
snacks pants
● Clean their hands
properly
User Segmentation
The research detected the following problems:
● The regular size of the chips was an issue.

● They were a little big and broke on the
first bite.
● Women generally preferred a smaller
size, which they could eat without the
crunching noise.
Strategy
PepsiCo implemented the following changes to overcome the problems that were
analyzed from the research:
● Came up with smaller chips that were less

noisy
● Experimented with the packaging as they
introduced stacked chips in a plastic tray
inside a canister
● Implemented an easier way to take few chips
and store the others in the drawer discreetly
Strategy
A lot of brainstorming went behind changing the products.
● The original size of the chips was determined

by the size of the mold that made them.
● The new insights revealed that women
preferred smaller chips.
● The leadership decided to invest in new
molds to serve the customers based on their
preference.
Key Takeaways
Design thinking mainly focuses on the users’ needs and

environment as the foundation.
Design thinking emerged in Scandinavia in the 1960’s as

Cooperative thinking and has been practiced ever since.
The five stages of design thinking are Empathize, Define,

Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Storytelling helps customers engage better in understanding

the purpose of a product.
Exploring Design Thinking
Learning Objectives
List the key design thinking skills
Identify design thinking risks
Implement the DOI theory
Build a user-centric innovation goal

Key Skills in Design Thinking
Problem Discovery
Problem discovery is an essential skill in design thinking where we need to

explore the problem in detail from multiple perspectives.
Problem Discovery
The following are the important aspects of problem discovery:
● Most of the problems are easy to

comprehend at first.
● We tend to rush to solutions without
exploring the problem.
● As per Einstein, if he is given an hour to
solve a problem, he would focus:
○ 55 minutes on exploring the problem
○ 5 minutes on finding the solution
Empathy
Empathy is an essential skill in design thinking, as it involves understanding the life of

another person. It is not about judgment or action, but it is about observing at a deeply
emotional level and trying to unearth why someone behaves in a particular way.
Empathy
The following are the important aspects of empathy:
● Without empathy, we lose sight of

whom we are building for and why the
solution would matter to them.
● It involves leaving aside our biases and
deeply listening to and observing our
potential customers.
● We try seeing the world from the
customer’s frame of reference.
Prototyping
The next important skill is to develop the prototype of an idea. In design thinking, we are playing
with the world of ideas where we need collaboration for bringing these ideas to life.
Prototyping
The following are the important aspects of prototyping:
● It is needed for building a structure.

● Our partners and potential customers
should be able to understand what we
are trying to do.
● It does not only mean mock-ups or
physical prototypes.
● We can also use techniques like
storytelling to describe our prototypes.
● The main focus is on customer feedback.
Validation
Validation of prototypes with potential users is also an essential skill in design thinking so
that one can avoid getting attached to a designed solution without seeking feedback
from the users.
Validation
The following are the important aspects of validation:
● Planning structured interviews with

potential users
● Building products without any
strong bias
● Focusing on getting feedback on
our prototypes
● Asking questions for finding out
where things don’t work
Context Matters: Why Successful Firms Fail
The Graveyard Analysis
Let’s look at a few products and services that were slated to change the world, but
failed miserably.
● Many products were designed by some of the world’s best firms.

● They were engineering and design marvels.
● But customers couldn’t adapt to them when they launched, and the backlash
was severe.
● This caused the firms to take them off the market quickly.
Failed Product: Google Glasses
Google Glass: History
Google Glass launched in a pilot program in 2012 as a way to overlay digital

information in the real world.
● It featured a touchpad to the side of a frame, a

camera mounted on top of the glass, and a
display.
● It consisted of a unique lens that allowed
information to be beamed on it depending on the
user’s field of view.
● It had the ability to quickly take a photo or
video.
Google Glass: History
Google expected Google Glass to create history.
● The device was launched in an Explorer’s Edition

for $1500 in 2013, aimed at developers who
could build new solutions for the product.
● Google Glass was released in 2014.
Google Glass: Reasons for Decline
● Many consumers were worried about having a device with

Bluetooth and wireless access so close to their heads.
● Spectacles that would always sit on their face added to the
concerns while they were talking on smartphones.
● The initial prototype was clunky and underpowered,
making interactions slow.
Google Glass: Reasons for Decline
● Battery life was poor.

● Users struggled to identify how it could help
compared to a regular smartphone.
● Due to the presence of a camera, bystanders
were worried about users secretly taking
photos and videos without their knowledge.
Failed Products: Windows 8
Windows 8: History
Windows 8 was launched in October 2012 as a reimagining of the

Windows and the Microsoft brand.
● Microsoft launched the Windows Phone OS, but

consumers were comfortable with iOS or
Android.
● It was the platform of choice for developers.
● They feared that developers would shift to
mobile platforms with the rise of iOS and
Android.
Windows 8: History
Microsoft predicted that the next wave of customers would have touchscreen
enabled devices and decided to build an interface for a touch-first paradigm.
● The Start menu was extended.

● Users were allowed to access another set of apps
built on new technologies.
● The system hosted the traditional Windows app,
making it a bridge between the old and new ways of
doing things.
Windows 8: Reasons for Decline
When Windows 8 was launched, users found the new interface confusing.
● Touchscreens were not common on desktops,

making it difficult to use on the traditional desktops
and laptops.
● Enterprise users were hesitant to adopt a radical new
paradigm due to training costs for existing users.
Windows 8: Reasons for Decline
Microsoft rolled out a new version of Windows, titled Windows 10, in 2015,
which rolled back many of the aggressive features of Windows 8.
Finally, Microsoft tablet ecosystem did not bear out, and Windows Phone OS
was discontinued.
Failed Products: Tata Motors
Tata Nano: History
● Tata Nano was Tata Motors’ most ambitious

project, championed by the Chairman of Tata
Sons, Mr. Ratan Tata.
● It was hailed as a landmark in value engineering
and was widely expected to be the modern 21st
century people’s car.
● The car debuted at Auto Expo 2008 to much
acclaim.
Tata Nano: History
There were many innovations that led to the vehicle:
● The small fuel-efficient engine was mounted at the

rear.
● The car could seat four people comfortably.
● The car had good ground clearance and a small
turning radius.
Tata Nano: Reasons for Decline
But Tata pulled the plug on the dream project in the 2018-19 timeframe as it
had not made a splash in the market.
● There were many strategic failures contributed to

this.
● Tata couldn’t reach out to its target market as
their dealer network was largely concentrated in
urban areas.
● There was delay in relocating its factory from West
Bengal state to Gujarat state of India.
Tata Nano: Reasons for Decline
● While the marketing hype was about it being a

‘One Lakh Car’, in reality, it cost more once one
added requisite accessories.
● The on-road price was significantly higher, which
dented the value proposition.
● Customers were not keen on being associated
with a ‘cheap car’ as it affected the perception of
their status.
The car that was one of the most innovative products in the market just
couldn’t find a market due to these factors.
Design Thinking Risks
Risks
Firms require integrative thinking to be successful.
There are many factors that affect the success of projects.
Context Exploration Customer Exploration

Risks
Being aware of these factors early in the project increases the chances of building something
that customers want.
Even well-designed products or services fail if they don’t take cognizance of context and
customer needs.
Market Needs
The top reason startups fail:
● Unclear about market needs

● Startups build products with less knowledge of
market demands
● Unable to find customers
● Features that are rarely used
● Understanding the lifecycle of a feature or trend
in the market
Customer Needs
Our potential customers are encountering various brands and interfaces through the day.
● Customer’s expectations and needs have

changed based on their exposure.
● Earlier products came with a detailed manual
instruction for customer reference.
● Nowadays, Customers can quickly complete the
setup and start enjoying the device.
Customer Needs
While they appreciate change, there are often elements that they want to retain.
It takes a lot of encouragement for them to try a new way of doing things.
Customer Needs
These products have remained the same over the last two decades with regards to
the basic functionalities.
Change involves training a lot of people around the new workflow which increases the cost
and introduces errors.
Other Risks
In many domains, there are government regulations and laws that need to be complied with.
● It has a whole set of requirements around

patient information confidentiality and
storage of sensitive information.
● There might also be specific legal
requirements for certain countries that firms
need to comply with.
● These need to be understood well before
building for these markets.
Healthcare
Other Risks
Contextual factors:
● Are big changes in marketplace

● Require secondary research
● Need consulting industry experts
Other Risks
Consumer needs:
● Start with qualitative analysis

● Involve understanding customer behavior
● Focus on user experience
Other Risks
Company factors depend on the type of firm. They include:
● Business strategies
● SWOT analysis
● Selected target audience
Define Your Problem Context
Duration: 30 minutes
● Evaluate what the contextual factors are that affect your chosen problem area:
○ You can do this with a mix of secondary research and analyst reviews
○ You can also supplement this later with discussions with industry experts
● The idea is to get a broad sense of:
○ Major trends affecting your potential market area
○ Major competitive moves in the area you are looking at
● Organize these into enabling factors and potentially limiting factors
Case Study on Mobisol
Mobisol: History
Mobisol was started as a three-person startup.
On the one hand, we saw rapidly decreasing

prices for PV solar technology; on the other
hand, we saw how the mobile revolution put
cellphones in the hands of millions in
sub-Saharan Africa. We wanted to combine
that, but had no clear idea how.
Klara Lindner
Co-founder & Design
Thinking Architect, Mobisol
Source:
https://thisisdesignthinking.net/2016/05/reinventing-solar
-energy-supply-for-rural-africa/
Field Research
● Mobisol began with context immersion.

● To empathize with their potential customers,
the team traveled to rural Tanzania.
● They observed the daily lives of the villagers and
spoke to them about the benefits of electricity.
Discovery of Needs
Mobisol discovered the other needs of electricity. Context immersion showed that:
Lighting was just one of many uses
Owning and watching TV at home was a status symbol
Owning mobile phones for connectivity

Understanding Constraints
The general view about rural users was that they were price conscious. The team
realized that:
● Users saw a high value in electricity as a

means to bring them comfort and status.
● They were already paying significantly for
other energy sources.
● Price would not be the primary constraint
if they saw the value.
Competitive exploration showed that customers didn’t like rental models.

Insights Gathered by the Team
# Observation Insight Design Principle
What people really need is The demand for electricity is way Solar panels must be big enough to power
1
radio and TV, not light. higher than just for lighting. larger appliances, such as televisions.
There exists no infrastructure

to save up money (no banking Money has to be spent the moment it Monthly payment options are a core
2
infrastructure, houses can’t be is earned. requirement.
locked).
Renting may win games, ownership wins

Belongings are well-kept Private property is better maintained championships. To ensure long-term
3
and respected. than rentals are. electrification, people need to have the
feeling they actually own their solar panels.
If a supportive infrastructure isn’t

Existing PV are solar are often A maintenance infrastructure on-site is key
4 provided, people can’t maintain their
non-functioning. to success.
solar panels.
Business Model: Rent-to-Own
Mobisol introduced rent-to-own, a unique solution.
Customers owned the system by paying 36 monthly installments.
To counter non-payment, they devised a means to switch off the

panel in case of non-payment.
They realized maintaining the panel was still a challenge. If systems

were in a bad shape, users would not pay installments.
Iterating Towards a Solution
The team decided to prototype a solution. They prototyped a simple plug-and-play

solution and asked customers to install and use it.
Our customers feel like they just bought a

Mercedes. They are very proud of having the
solar panel but at the same time also very afraid
of breaking the precious, new panel. Customers
would actually rather pay someone to come
install the panel and know their new
“Mercedes”—aka solar panel—is safe.
Mobisol Installation Engineers
Mobisol realized that customers would be comfortable if they had someone locally for
repairs.
● They got the existing folks who had a

reputation for repair.
● The freelancers were trained for two weeks
and paid for each installation and repair.
● This helped Mobisol win many customers, and
freelancers earned additional income.
Need for User-Centric Innovation and Design Thinking
Diffusion of innovation
Diffusion of innovation (DOI) is a prominent theory developed by E. M. Rogers in 1962.
● It is one of the oldest social science

theories.
● It aims to explain the idea of how a
product gains momentum and
diffuses through a population.
● It aims to explain how people adapt
to something new.
Diffusion of innovation
Not all segments of the population are equally excited by a new idea or
product, some segments are more keen to adapt to something new.
•The theory of diffusion of innovation proposes five adopter categories.

•The population clusters around the middle segments.
•The X-axis represents time.
Five Adopter Categories
The theory of diffusion of innovation proposes five adopter categories. They are:
Innovators
● They want to own something unique.

● They want to be first at discovering new things.
● They are very flexible on price and often pay a
premium to try something new.
Early Adopters
● They are already aware of the problems.

● They can envision using new solutions when you
describe the problem.
● They mentally weigh the advantages of features
before buying a product or trying a service.
Early Majority
● They notice innovations when presented to them.

● They will check for word-of-mouth referrals and
reviews.
● They do a stringent cost-benefit analysis in their
minds.
Late Majority
● They are usually skeptics.

● They are comfortable with existing ways of doing
things.
● They will adopt the new option with low risk.
● They weigh multiple options and are very price
conscious.
Laggards
● They are conservative and detest change.

● They are forced to change because other options are
obsolete.
● They need a lot of handholding when they switch to
something new.
Diffusion of Innovation Theory
The DOI theory gives a frame for planning something new. We can:
● Calibrate the novelty of what we are trying to

do
● Map needs of customers in that segment
● Address these in our plans
We should understand the evolving segment and refine product or services.

Case Study on Tesla
Case Study on Tesla
Before Tesla, other firms that tried to launch electric vehicles focused
mainly on the environment-friendly aspect.
Tesla was the first to launch a high-end car.

Case Study on Tesla
The Tesla Roadster was proudly launched as a competitor to the best cars
in the world.
● The marketing team of Tesla Roadster

touted it as a supercar.
● They mainly focused on the innovators
segment.
When it was launched in 2008, the car was priced at over $100,000.
Case Study on Tesla
In 2006, Elon Musk, the chairman of Tesla, wrote a blog post titled The Secret
Tesla Motors Master Plan.
● Tesla planned to initially launch a

high-performance vehicle.
● They planned to launch an affordably
priced car in a ten-year time frame.
Source: http://www.teslamotors.com/blog/all-our-patent-are-belong-you
Case Study on Tesla
● Tesla launched the Model S for the early

adopters.
● It launched a series of Superchargers
between the launch of Model S and Model 3.
● It aimed at bringing more value to customers
as per their needs.
Identify Segments to Target
● Identify the segment that you want to target by answering the following questions about
your problem area:
○ Of the different segments, which one will you target?
○ For this segment, who are your biggest competitors?
○ What do people feel about their offerings?
Case Study on Olay
Oil of Olay: History
The Oil of Olay was Procter & Gamble’s largest and most popular skincare brand.
• The Oil of Olay was struggling to grow.

• Customers considered it old-fashioned and irrelevant.
• Top brands provided a halo effect for other beauty categories
like cosmetics, hair care, and fragrances.
User Research
P&G commissioned user research.
One of the principal mottos of design thinking is to understand the user’s perspective.
User Research
Design thinking encourages:
Qualitative Research Deep Probing
P&G analyzed the existing users to understand their perspective better.

Insights from Initial User Research
Most of the existing customers were women aged fifty plus who used the Olay brand
to fight wrinkles.
• These women invested minimum on skincare and were

not willing to pay a premium.
• Many brands targeted women from this segment.
Olay brand was powerful and showed a lot of promise.

Insights from Initial User Research
P&G focused on the women in their mid-thirties as:
The early insights from the first research was that women
could have handled the problem earlier instead of tackling it
after getting wrinkles.
Observational Studies
P&G commissioned observational studies to know the preferences of women.
Some interesting insights emerged after researchers closely tracked the

customer’s day-to-day life.
They observed that women use:
Body lotions
Hand creams
Toners
Cleansers
They also observed that women in their mid-thirties start noticing their
first wrinkles.
Deeper research revealed fascinating insights.
• The first wrinkle was a wake-up call around aging.

• The women they researched were anxious and vulnerable.
• They used different lotions to extend their youthful appearance.
• They noticed their skin more closely and kept it healthy.
• They used lotions 2-3 times a day as an attempt to delay the
aging process.
Reframing the Problem
The insights led P&G to reframe the problem.
• They reframed skincare as a business for helping women

have healthier and youthful lives.
• They realized that women care about other elements,
such as dry skin, age spots, and uneven skin tones.
New Product Line
Based on the research, P&G launched Olay Total Effects in 1999 as a premium brand.
• They followed this up with Olay Regenerist, an even more expensive

brand with richer and more effective ingredients.
• They switched their brand positioning and value proposition.
• This led to double-digit growth with high-profit margins and a loyal
customer base.
Key Takeaways
The key design thinking skills are problem discovery,

empathy, prototyping, and validation.
It is important to understand the risks that affect the success

of a company’s product.
The DOI theory helps build a user-centric goal for a

successful innovation.
The theory of diffusion of innovation proposes five

adopter categories, Innovators, Early Adopters, Early
Majority, Late Majority, and Laggards.
Tapping Empathy to Build User Persona
Learning Objectives
Define empathy
Empathize with a customer base with respect to the design

thinking approach
Define a user persona
Create a user persona or multiple personas

Power of Empathy
Power of Empathy
Intelligence quotient (IQ) aims to measure intellectual intelligence using a

series of tests.
False presumption: The future success of a

candidate depends on high IQ.
Evidence: People with high IQ do certain tasks

faster and better, but they don’t always
succeed.
Power of Empathy
People with higher EQ have:
More self-awareness Ability to self-regulate
Better understanding of
Better social skills
others
EQ defines how we relate to ourselves and to our environment.

What Is Empathy?
Empathy goes beyond sympathy.
Sympathy is about feeling for someone, for example, feeling sorry for
someone.
Empathy is about feeling with someone by understanding their life.

What Is Empathy?
Empathy leads to tolerance, and may even decrease the amount of bullying
behavior in schools.
It is the piece that makes design thinking different from other problem-solving
models, and this idea has enormous potential in the field of education.
Types of Empathy
Psychologists have identified three types of empathy in people:
Cognitive empathy:
• It involves understanding how people think

and feel.
• It helps us to communicate in a better way.
Types of Empathy
Emotional empathy:
• It involves sharing the feelings of other

person.
• It helps to build emotional relationships.
Types of Empathy
Compassionate empathy:
• It goes beyond sharing and understanding.

• It drives to take action in any way possible.
Psychologists say that all the three types of empathy work together.
Empathy: Example
Types of Empathy
When you hear about a sad incident, sympathy may move you to send a
condolence card or make a call. Showing empathy takes more time and effort.
• Who did they lose?

Cognitive Empathy • How close were they?
• How will the loss impact their life?
Types of Empathy
Emotional empathy helps you overcome a situation.
• Help your friend with the strong

support to overcome
Emotional Empathy
• Imagine how you would feel if you
were them
Types of Empathy
Compassionate empathy drives you to take action.
● Have they eaten?

Compassionate
● Can you help them overcome the
Empathy
loss?
How Empathy Helps in Ideation
To get ideas for new products or services, firms often employ structured
market research.
The risk is that the people developing the products may only have an intellectual
understanding of the needs.
Some of the best leaders were naturally empathetic.
Steve Jobs
Steve Jobs was famous for citing that they never used market
research.
To make ideation easier, Apple relied a lot on:
Watching people in their environments
Deducing their needs
Coming up with products

Case Study: The Sony Walkman
Personal Music History
Personal music had never been a normal thing in the past. People had been using transistors, CDs,
and cassette players to listen to their favorite music.
Personal Music History
All the traditional music players were big and not portable, until Sony introduced the Walkman series
and made on-the-go music listening a norm for the people.
• It wasn’t a completely revolutionary product, but it imparted new ways

to listen to music.
• The iPod first arrived in 2001. Before this, Sony had already sold
millions of cassette players called Walkman.
• The first Sony Walkman was launched in 1979. Within a few years of
launch, it was a global phenomenon.
• The Walkman was the first to put traditional things together in a

portable package that attracted the consumers.
The Walkman Idea
Sony already had portable stereo tape recorders, but they were big and did not comply to the
portable music player standards.
• Back then, the chairman of Sony, Masara Ibuka was a music

lover and carried his portable stereo tape recorder when
traveling in international flights.
• During one of the flights, he wanted to listen to music, but Idea

couldn’t as the device was too bulky.
The Walkman Design
Masara Ibuka requested his engineering team to design a prototype only for music playback.
• He wanted the prototype to have the headphone feature to

avoid disturbing others.
• The team took an existing Pressman, removed the recording

function, added headphones, and gave it to him for his next
flight. Idea
• The headphones were very big, and the batteries ran out
mid-flight.
Commercialization
Ibuka came back and asked for a commercial version of the prototype.
• The team was initially confused and sceptic on why

anyone would buy a cassette device that was not for
recording, but only for playback.
Idea
• After a development phase of four months, engineers had
a device ready in 1979 for around USD150.
• They initially produced only 30000 devices on a test basis.

Initial Phase
• In the first month, only 3000 pieces sold.
• The team had initially expected that their major customers will be
students.
• A marketing campaign was launched where Sony representatives

asked the general public on the streets of Tokyo to try the device.
• Word soon spread among the youth of Tokyo and within two years,
Sony sold over two million units.
Why Walkman?
Customers could carry music around with them in a very

portable manner.
Customers could slip into their own bubble isolating them

from the outside noise.
People could use it as a soundtrack against the cacophony of

the city life.
Inspiring Next Generation
The Walkman went on to inspire another proponent of customer observation and

empathy: Steve Jobs.
• Steve Jobs was gifted a Walkman on a trip to Japan.
• Steve’s point of reference was Sony at the time. His successor at

Apple, John Sculley, recalled “He really wanted to be Sony. He didn’t
want to be IBM. He didn’t want to be Microsoft. He wanted to be
Sony.”
• The first iPod was launched in 2001.
• Its interface was simple, unlike complicated buttons that

competitors thought customers preferred.
Takeaways
Empathy is one of the core skills of

design thinking.
Design thinking encourages

Observing customers helps you
exploration of user’s context using
decide the right approach to a
empathy.
problem.
Empathy requires setting aside

Solving the most painful problems assumptions and biases.
makes a customer love you.
It helps in building target user personas.

Empathy in Design Thinking
Empathy
Empathy is one of the core skills for design thinking.
• Empathy helps us build solutions that

can fit into users’ lives rather than
making assumptions.
• Empathy requires setting aside our
assumptions and biases.
Design thinking encourages exploration of the user’s context and problems using empathy.
Journey from Empathy to Ideas
We have looked at some of the market-related conditions of the problem that we

want to resolve.
This helps frame our area of interest.

To identify potential users and understand their context, we will use

empathy-driven research.
To understand their current way of doing things, we can also use customer
journey mapping.
Problem framing helps outline the problem as the users see it,
without any biases.
Once the problem is framed, we can then look at ways to ideate the solutions.
Empathy-Driven Exploration
Empathy-Driven Exploration
Empathy-driven exploration helps us understand user’s world better so we can define

the problems as they see it.
User Persona
There are three

parts to Customer
Journey Mapping
empathy-driven
exploration
Empathy Map
Methods to Build Empathy
Cultural
Immersion
Intercept Qualitative
Interviews Research
Day-in-the-life-of
(DILO) Shadowing
Cultural Immersion
Cultural Immersion
• It is critical when users are from different social or cultural milieu.
• It draws from ethnographic practices.
• It needs observing and understanding various environmental forces
Qualitative Research
shaping users’ lives and behaviors.
Shadowing
Day-in-the-life-of (DILO)
Intercept Interviews
Cultural Immersion
Qualitative Research • It involves open-ended questioning with potential users.

• It is used to understand their needs, challenges, and opportunities.
• It can be a one-on-one or focus group discussion.
Shadowing
Cultural Immersion
• Practitioners follow users with their permission.

Shadowing • They observe and note down what their day looks like and how they
engage in various activities.
Cultural Immersion
Shadowing • Participants behave differently in the last few days of the month vs.
the beginning of the month.
• Business users behave differently just before the year-end-closure vs.
Day-in-the-life-of (DILO) when they have time to brainstorm new ideas.
• Track different days in life to figure out different stresses that they
are facing.
Cultural Immersion
Shadowing
• Short interviews where researchers stop people on the street and ask
them a set of questions
• Often throw up surprising results
Case Study on Google
The user experience research helps understand people's

context, behavior, and comprehension to design products or services.
This research helps to approach new customers from the next

billion users’ group and convey the new products.
● Most of us fall into the segment of users who

know how to use internet and mobile phones.
● We all know how to use apps, email, bank
accounts, Netflix, and much more.
● Many of us have had smartphones for almost a
decade.
● Most of the first-time users have used feature

phones and cell phones mainly for calling
purposes.
● Data access is cheaper in Asia, Africa, and
South America.
● The current pandemic has also driven many to
get smartphones to enable their children to
study.
● Their exposure to the internet is limited.

● WhatsApp, Facebook, and YouTube are the
most commonly used apps.
● Sending an email, doing bank transfers, and
using complicated apps are difficult for many
users.
● Google has a special focus on this set of users
and calls it the next billion users.
● Google focused on user research for the development of an app

called Neighborly, launched in India.
● Researchers started meeting people to understand their needs
and problems.
● Around half of India lives in villages or small towns.
● Men often migrate with their families to big cities because of work.
User Research
Village City
In small towns and villages, it’s easy to walk over to a neighbor's house and ask for
information on where to find a plumber, electrician, or any other service.
Village City
People are busier in big cities, and there is less time for socializing. The migrants find it
hard to adjust in big cities.
New City
After several interviews about the lives and struggles of strangers on the street, it was
observed that in big cities it is very difficult to find answers to the local questions.
● People have become isolated and

non-reachable because of their lifestyle.
● They used to know each other and
everyone was ready to help with any
queries.
Nowadays, neighborhoods feel disconnected because of fast-paced lives.

● Design thinking involves framing the

issues of customers.
● This process is done by the
cross-functional team.
● The team framed the problem to
encourage the community.
● Google’s team tested the prototype with users to

understand their reactions to quality and
feedback to improve the product.
● They found that users are facing challenges
because they are trying to use the local language.
● They added a mic button to resolve this issue of
transcribing.
The iteration process continued till they felt that they received positive feedback.
The Neighbourly app was launched in 2018.
The team found out of research that the app can remove media files
from the device.
Since global user needs were similar, Google launched this for all
users.
● Customer insights helped Google to develop a

well-loved product.
● It is very important to know the target user’s
viewpoint without any judgements.
● It can be gathered by creating a user persona
and by empathy mapping.
It is very difficult to find users choices:
● All the users cannot like the product or service.

● People can be biased to understand the
problem.
This leads to building something very generic as the team doesn’t have anything
specific in mind.
User Persona
Why Do We Need User Persona?
While designing a specific product or service, we experience the following problems:
● Find it difficult to understand the

choices of users
● Cannot assume that all the users will
like the product or service
Source:https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-1/
Why Do We Need User Persona?
While designing a specific product or service, we experience the following problems:
● Real users may not relate to the

designs.
● Teams may end up building
something very generic.
● People may bring a lot of personal
bias into understanding the problem.
What Is User Persona?
Personas were first developed by Alan Cooper, an interaction designer and

software developer, widely known as the Father of Visual Basic.
He built the system to internalize the mindset of people who would eventually use the
software he was developing.
Cooper took the following initiatives to build an exceptional product:
● Interviewed several people who

were part of an intended audience
● Brainstormed and evaluated the
ideas from their perspective
● Followed a method-acting
technique where he put users at
the center of his design process
Cooper developed a formal methodology of developing a user persona to help his clients.
Deeply understanding users is fundamental to creating exceptional products or services.
Case Study on P&G: Febreze
P&G has a very active research division that works on:
Chemicals
Products
Packaging
● In the early 90s, a P&G scientist was working on

a substance called hydroxypropyl beta
cyclodextrin (HPBCD).
● He had used the compound in an aerosol spray
and had sprayed it on his clothes.
● He was a heavy smoker.
● One day when he got back from work, his wife

asked a strange question, “Did you quit
smoking?” “No,” he said, looking suspiciously.
“You don’t smell like smoke,” she said.
● His wife didn’t have a cold, and he suspected it
was the spray that eliminated the smell from
his clothes.
● The scientists at P&G had made a compound
that eliminated odors from clothes.
P&G was astonished by the properties of this product and launched this with the
name Febreze in the US.
It spent millions on perfecting the formula that could instantly eliminate the odor.
Initial Market Research
● The core promise of Febreze was to eliminate

odor.
● P&G hired researchers to analyze the smokers,
people who complained of bad smell from
furniture, and more.
Initial Market Research
Before using Febreze After using Febreze
● A researcher met a lady who lived ● When they returned a week

next to a skunk farm. later, she was ecstatic.
● She complained of odor at her ● She had, for the first time in
home. years, been able to have a date
● The dates she went to ended up without any complaints of
with people complaining that her smell.
clothes smelled.
● The researchers handed her a
bottle of Febreze and said they
would be back in a week.
These are the results after the first launch of Febreze:
● P&G invested millions in advertising Febreze.

● They expected consumers would love to be free of
embarrassing odor.
● After the launch, sales were low.
● P&G thought of discontinuing the product.
● One of the leaders asked for revising the product
with extensive research.
Febreze: Second Research
P&G conducted a second round of research on Febreze to analyze the lower sale.
Here are the insights from the research:
● P&G hired fresh behavioral experts

to help them figure out the problem
and the new solution.
● They asked them to track people
who complained of odor.
● They also asked them to look widely
at what women did at home.
Researchers undertook various shadowing exercises.
● They visited a woman’s home.

● They observed that though her
house was clean and organized, it
stank because of her nine cats.
● The smell was overpowering, but the
woman couldn’t notice it.
The researchers figured out that over time people get comfortable with smells
and stop noticing them.
The entire premise of Febreze was that people would be troubled by smells
around them and would want something to eliminate them.
Febreze: Fresh Insights
The following are the fresh insights from the second round of research:
The researchers decided to meet people who had

already purchased Febreze.
They met hundreds of consumers looking for clues on

how to make Febreze a regular part of their lives.
This intrigued many people who did not buy it and

suffered from odors at home.
In an observational study at a consumer’s home, the researchers saw a housewife

go about her daily tasks like:
● Cleaning up the house

● Making the bed in the
bedroom
● Tucking in the bedsheet
● Fluffing up pillows
At the end, she took a bottle of Febreze and sprayed it as a final touch to her routine.
Once the researchers noticed women’s activities, they realized that many women
used Febreze to bring in pleasant flavors instead of eliminating unpleasant ones.
Their persona definition had been wrong all along.

Repositioning Febreze
P&G repositioned Febreze in the following ways:
The researchers went back with the new persona and decided to make Febreze a
fun part of the cleaning.
P&G then reformulated Febreze with multiple fragrances.
Instead of only eliminating odors, it was positioned as an air freshener,

something you could do at the end of your cleaning routine.
Febreze was relaunched in 1998 with the new persona.

P&G was successful with the new approach.
● Within two months, Febreze’s market sales

doubled.
● Housewives craved the Febreze scent at
the end of their cleaning routines.
● Febreze soon became a billion dollar per
year business for P&G.
● The products included scented candles,
laundry detergents, kitchen sprays, and
more.
By identifying the right persona and needs, P&G saved a failing product,
backed by the power of insights.
Persona Definition
Persona Definition
While searching, there are many formats of creating user persona.
There is no right method to structuring a persona, as different people prefer

different formats.
Source: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2014/08/a-closer-look-at-personas-part-1/
Persona Definition
Most formats include:
Representative picture or
Description of key goal
sketch
Hypothetical day in the life

Background
of a user
The larger goal is to deeply understand the user and share information with
others in an easy-to-understand format.
Persona Definition
The persona definition calls out:
● Which channels the persona

prefers
● What brands they are familiar
with
This is possible with a mix of deep qualitative research combined with quantitative usage of data.
Source:https://www.alphadigital.com.au/blog/advice/persona-important-seo/
Persona Definition
These are the six kinds of primary motivations that drive people to adopt something new:
1 Incentives I want to get [specific reward], so I’m going to do [action]
Fear of
2 I want to avoid [bad thing], so I’m going to do [action]
consequences
3 Achievement I want to achieve [triumph, milestone, award, public recognition], so I’m going to do [action]
I want to feel like I am continually improving, progressing, moving forward, so I’m going to
4 Growth
do [action]
5 Power I want to feel strong, powerful, and influential, so I’m going to do [action]
I want to feel a sense of belonging, like I am part of a tribe or community, so I’m going to do
6 Social factors
[action]
In real life, there may be a mix of these motivations, with one or more being dominant.
Persona Definition
A mix of these motivations helps us frame the problem and later the story around what we build.
Some users may want to take on online education because

they fear not being able to progress in their careers.
Some may feel that online education is a way to learn

something new and stay relevant in the market.
Others may feel the need to continuously learn something

new and may find a certain topic interesting to explore.
Yet others may require a certificate to get promoted.

Creating User Persona
Background:
• Who are these consumers?
• What is their background?
Day in the life of:

• What does a typical day look like?
• Are there any common routines they follow?
User goals:
• What are their larger aims in life?
• What goals do they have in the problem area you are looking at?
• What are the constraints they are battling with?
Motivations: What primary motivations do they have?
Pain points: What major pain points do they face?
Not having money can't be included as a pain point. We must find out what they are looking
to spend on and when they feel the pinch.
The general method for creating persona is:
• Interview and/or observe

• Find patterns in the interviewees’ responses
and actions
• Use patterns to group similar people together
• Create archetypical models of those groups
• Draw out key goals, scenarios, attitudes, and
relevant demographic information
This is another format to present the user persona.
It is built with a lot of qualitative insights gathered by interviews

around needs for travel.
Researchers considered the scenarios where the user feels the need to get away from
home.
• The primary motivation is to

discover holiday destinations.
• The psychographic info gives more
details about the challenges, pains,
and potential gains.
Qualitative Interviews
The best ways to structurize is to observe and do a qualitative research.

User interviews help us gain deeper understanding of the user’s

motivation, behavior, attitude, and action.
● Make sure that your selected

users represent your target
users
● Get the set of questions ready
● Ask broader questions instead
of just asking if they will use
your product
In the qualitative interview script, make sure that your questions are:
Non-leading: It shouldn’t suggest any answer or any general

approach.
Open-ended: It will help you avoid non-productive interviews.
Specific and clear: It should include simple language and short

questions.
If your goal is to get to know how people are using calendar apps, prepare
questions that broadly explore these areas:
● How do they manage time?

● What are the key challenges they
face?
● Do they use the calendar or similar
apps?
● What do they like or dislike?
● How often do they use the apps?
Create Your Own User Persona
● Decide on a set of target users you would like to interview who face the problem your
team has defined earlier
● As a team, spend 15 minutes researching the persona’s life
● Post this, fill in the template given to flesh out your persona
● You can have one or more personas, depending on your problem area
● For this exercise, focus on getting one persona in place
Key Takeaways
Empathy is the ability to put one’s self into the shoes of

others and think from their perspective.
Empathy driven exploration helps bring a better

understanding of the user’s world which will help define
their problems.
A user persona was built to internalize the mindset of users

who would be using a product.
A user persona or personas are created by deeply

understanding the user and sharing this information to
others in an easy-to-understand format.
Learning Objectives
Construct a customer journey map
Identify the types of customer journey maps
Break down the segments of customer journey maps
Define and create empathy maps

Customer Journey Mapping is a powerful tool in the design thinking toolkit.
It focuses on user-centered views instead of

technology-centered views.
It is the process of analyzing what your customers experience,

either in the current way of doing things, or when using your
proposed product or service.
It includes research on user experience and their sentiments

along the way.
Customer journey maps are also referred to as UX maps, UX journey maps, user journey
maps, or experience maps.
It is about creating an understanding of every user who is interacting with your

brand, service, product, or company.
Here are the applications of a customer journey map:
● Enables companies to identify areas

where the customer experience is
delightful or sub-par
● Helps the companies to address gaps
in their services by engaging with
other teams
● Helps them to have a unified view of
the journey rather than a typical
siloed approach
● Increases the chances of having a
loyal customer base
These are the primary focus points of a customer journey map:
Customer journey maps are built on empathy by mainly focusing on the

user’s emotional fluctuations through the journey.
The main goal is to understand if the customers are happy with the
product and to analyze their reaction to your sales and marketing
strategy.
These are the uses of a customer journey map:
Helps to interact from the customer’s perspective
Helps the leadership to invest in repairing areas which diminish a customer’s

experience
Helps identify points of delight and friction, thereby assigning the concerned team to
look into the matter and mitigate or maintain
Customer journey maps are used by various teams in the following way:
Cross-Functional Design Teams Digital Marketing Teams

Map the journey of prospects from
Map out how customers will
lead generation to getting them
experience their product or
to engage with brands on digital
service
platforms
Sales Teams After Sales Teams

Map the experience of existing
Map the journey of a prospect
customers when they require
from considering a purchase to
service or support with an aim of
completion of the sale activity
securing happy customers
Types of Customer Journey Maps
Current State Map
The first type of customer journey map is the current state map.
It is a powerful way to explore how customers currently navigate the problem areas.
Current State Map
For a new transportation service, the current state map helps identify the user’s journey.
In this case, the user is a working mother, and

her day starts with:
● Waking up early
● Getting her kids ready for school
● Dropping them off at school
● Rushing to work before the peak traffic
time
Current State Map
● The working mother may then look at

adjusting the meeting schedules before it's
time to pick her kids from school.
● She may want to do part of her work from
home.
● Her hidden tension might be about managing
to get the kids to school on time before she
reaches her office.
● She may look at adjusting the meeting
schedules before it's time to pick her kids
from school.
Current State Map
A working mother’s emotional journey would vary depending on:
● Whether she is on time or

late
● If there are important
meetings to juggle
● If the kids are behaving
before leaving for school
Current state mapping is an important starting point to figure out what

solution works best for our user persona.
Current State Map
There can be multiple journeys for different personas.
In an ideal case the team would:

● Map many of the customer journeys
● Identify emotional maps and friction
points
After current state mapping, you can capture details of most critical
friction points and scenarios in an empathy map.
Future State Map
The future state map helps us trace the ideal journey for the customer.
This helps us thread the solution we build with the user’s needs at the center,
instead of getting distracted with business or system constraints.
Segments of Customer Journey Mapping
Segments: User Persona
Multiple personas can have their own journey map.
These may overlap in certain areas, but the emotional journeys may be different.
Segments: Scenario
A scenario is the high-level starting point for the journey map.
It captures the user's high-level goals and expectations.

Segments: User Persona
User persona is the persona for whom you are building the journey mapping.
● This is derived from qualitative research

and analytics data.
● You can have more than one persona, and
each can have their own journey map.
● These may overlap in certain areas, but
the emotional journeys may be different.
Segments: Scenario
The scenario also includes a narrative of the context in which the user
begins their journey.
Together, these two define the lens with which we are looking at the journey.
Insights of Customer Journey
Opportunities
This is a listing of areas around frustrations for users.

Internal Ownership
● This segment applies specifically when looking to improve customer

journeys with existing products.
● In large organizations, they also help map different teams that are
responsible for experiences.
● In each case, different teams are responsible for the segments of the
journey.
● The map helps identify which areas need more focus as an organization.
Customer Journey
Phases
Phases help us plan the start of the customer

Phases are broad segments
journey a little ahead in time, so we understand
for the journey.
forces at play before the start of the actual journey.
Steps are the detailed steps

Steps have a storyboard attached if you want to
that customers take during
make it visual.
the different phases.
As customers engage in the

You can see negative emotions like frustration and
customer journeys, they go
anger, and positive emotions like delight.
through various emotions.
Building Customer Maps
Building Maps
We can track the journey of a user with the help of a customer journey
map.
We must have a well mapped-out user persona before building this map.
Building Maps
The sample map representing a flight journey was created by LEGO.
● At the center of the wheel are the persona

and the scenario.
● The map is split into three sections:
○ Before the journey
○ During the journey
○ Post journey
The Experience Wheel
● Different steps are tracked along the wheel.

● Emotions related to each are presented as
smileys.
● Important areas are classified as
make-or-break moments.
● Additional data are captured to analyze user
behavior.
Detailed Map
This map captures the emotional journey of a potential gamer, who is also a
Finance Director.
Detailed Map
Thinking section captures the

customer’s mind.
Doing section anchors the

momentary activities of the persona.
Touch point section illustrates the

company’s touch points.
Detailed Map
Experience section lists the

major emotions of the persona.
Feeling section lists the dominant

moods of the persona.
Customer Experience Map
Sometimes the services do not change depending on the type of customer.

The customer experience map is based on a set of guiding principles.
Map opportunities for improvement Identify common friction points

The process map represents the journey for similar customer segments.
Process Map
The major emotions are laid out as sections and the journey is plotted on
top.
Brand Experience Journey
Brand Experience
Customer journey maps help brands identify their engagement with the
target persona.
Digital marketing and brand teams use this map to identify the journey of
potential shoppers.
This is a detailed journey map of the four customer segments.

● This map helps firms to analyze:

○ Customer experience at various touch
points
○ Customer’s interaction with the system as
well as other people
○ Complex business processes like tax filing
Graphical Representation of Maps
This is a graphical analysis of the experience of a couple planning their

vacation.
Graphical Representation of Maps
This is a graphical analysis of Lancome’s brand experience journey.

Journey Maps
Journey maps can help businesses view experiences from the customer’s
eyes and improve what they offer.
Journey Maps
Cultural probing, one-on-one interviews, and observations are all part of

the customer journey mapping methodology.
Journey Maps
This student is looking for a comfortable place to work and eat at with
fellow students.
He wants to place group orders in advance, but finds the mobile

app too complicated.
Journey Maps
This woman is having a tough day at work.
She wants to order food online and enjoy a relaxing time eating
healthy food.
Journey Maps
These senior citzens are feeling lonely at home.
They want to go out for a snack but find it confusing to

order food at the counter.
Journey Maps
These customer journeys help in:

● Serving as a source for inspirational ideas
● Understanding the customers better
● Developing new and improved ideas with the
customers
Case Study on MRI
Problems of MRI Testing
The process of MRI and CT scan get a patient wheeled

through into a complex machine.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) CT Scan

Patients face the following problems:
• They must lie down for 10 to 30

minutes.
• They feel isolated and vulnerable due
to the machine's loud noise.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/terrifying-terrific-man-redesigns-medical-machine-delight-children-instead-scare/
Children face the following problems:
• They get anxious while keeping still

during the procedure.
• About 80-95% of children under the
age of nine get terrified with the
machine.
https://www.goodnewsnetwork.org/terrifying-terrific-man-redesigns-medical-machine-delight-children-instead-scare/
According to Doug Deitz, lead designer at GE Healthcare:
“I see this young family coming down the hallway and I can tell
as they get closer that the little girl is weeping. As they get even
closer to me, I notice the father leans down and just goes
‘remember we talked about this, you can be brave’.”
Doug Deitz
https://urbanmilwaukee.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Doug-at-work_BW.jpg
User’s Perspective
The incident made Doug Dietz look at the process of getting an MRI with a child’s eye.
He realized how frightening it was for a

child, as he viewed the room where the
MRI machine was set up.
Doug Dietz observed that:

• The environment looked scary, even before the child sat on the MRI
machine.
• The machine looked like a large brick with a hole in it.
• The children felt terrified when they were left alone in the machine.
The designers brought in multiple perspectives to solve this predicament.
They invited people from the

children’s museum to help them
understand the perspectives of the
children.
Adventure Discovery Series
The MRI machine was redesigned to be more appealing and less frightening.
• The room was redesigned to feature the

adventures that excited kids.
• The adventures included aromatherapy,
calming decorations, and disco-ball bubbles.
• These adventures transported kids to a more
imaginative world.
Water Adventures
One of the adventures was called the canoe.
• Kids were told to lie down still and not to

rock the canoe.
• If they would lay still, fishes would come
upon a screen and play in the waters.
• It let the kids imagine that they were in a
yellow submarine.
Build a Customer Journey Map
● Use the Lego-based customer journey map as a reference to build a customer journey
map
● Pick your key persona first and place it at the center of the circle
● Think through the phases before they start facing the problem
● For each step, use a smiley to convey how the persona feels
● Repeat this for each stage of the problem or use current solutions as well as experience
post usage
● Once this is done, mark out the main make-or-break moments in the wheel with the (*)
symbol
● In case you find that you don't know enough about a particular stage or need more data,
mark it with an (i)
● Spend about 10 minutes each on before, during, and after stages, and the last 15 minutes
reviewing the stages and marking relevant states with (*) and (i)
Empathy Maps
Empathy Maps
● Empathy map helps to collect information

about users, make decisions, and uncover
hidden needs and insights.
● It helps to relate with ideal users in the right
way.
● It supports enterprises using design thinking
practices.
● It has common components and varied
formats.
Why Empathy Maps?
Empathy maps help to encapsulate information from:
User Persona
They are built after understanding the
goals of the user persona and major
friction points.
Current State Customer
Journey Mapping
If there is not enough knowledge about users to build a detailed empathy

map, iterate the empathy map as we learn more about users.
Why Empathy Maps?
Empathy maps help to encapsulate information from user persona and

current state customer journey mapping.
● They are built after understanding the goals of

the user persona and major friction points.
● They can be iterated as we learn more about
users.
● They talk about large issues, while customer
journey maps talk about the detailed steps.
● Together, these give us ideas to frame the
problem and opportunities better.
Empathy Map Canvas
Empathy Maps
Empathy maps were first proposed by David Grey.
Canvas: A large sheet stuck on a wall which allows different team

members to post stickies answering the questions
● Team reviews and consolidates the

points on stickies.
● Points of difference are kept aside to
collect more information.
● The empathy map can be built online.
● Initially, each member should think
about the points and consolidate
them.
Empathy Maps
Whom are we What do they need to

empathizing with? do?
What do these users What do they think or

What do they say?
see? feel?
What do they do and

What do they hear?
what are their lifestyles?
Empathy Maps
● Identifies the person and understands their

lives
Whom are we ● Captures information about their current
empathizing with? situation
● Captures information about their current
role
● Deals with the larger goals of the persona

● Captures details of what decisions they
What do they need to
need to make
do?
● Captures details of what they think a
successful outcome is
Empathy Maps
● Gives you details about the influences users

encounter
What do these users ● Lists sources of information related to the
see? problem that users encounter
● Captures any experiences they may have
had with competitive products
● Hear what they say

What do they say?
● Imagine them saying
Empathy Maps
● What the users currently do

What do they do and
● What you have seen them do, and also what
what are their lifestyles?
you imagine they could be doing
● Know what they hear about the situation

What do they hear?
from friends or media
● Lists pains they want to relieve, and gains

What do they think or they want to see in their lives
feel? ● Captures motivations that drive their current
behaviors
Empathy Maps
Source: Updated Empathy Map Canvas ©2017 David Grey, Gamestorming, Empathy Map Canvas,
http://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-006-PNG.png
Build an Empathy Map
● To build an empathy map, go through the sequence mentioned in the empathy map
● Spend more time on the Pains and Gains segment
● Mix the pain relievers and gains
● Ensure the pains and gains capture the most important points you would like to solve for
Key Takeaways
A customer journey map is a powerful tool in design thinking

as it focuses on user-centric goals and helps analyze user
experience.
The different types of customer journey maps are current

state map and future state map.
The segments of customer journey map include a user

persona or multiple personas and the scenario with respect
to that persona or personas.
Empathy maps are created by team members sticking notes

answering specific questions in each segment on a canvas.
These points are then reviewed and consolidated by the
team.
Problem Framing
Learning Objectives
Frame a problem
Construct a POV statement
Build an HMW approach to problem solving
Craft an HMW statement

Problem Framing
Problem Framing
People tend to rush to a solution when they identify an unmet need.
According to design thinking:

• Give space to soak in the problem and avoid
thinking of solutions
• Avoid getting attached to one idea and explore
different ways to solve the problems
Problem Framing
Design thinking is similar to other disciplines where experts often spend a lot of time
thinking through the problems before considering the best way to solve them.
Design thinking is about finding the problem than the solution.

Problem Framing
You will have a good idea of the user's context, pain points, and potential gains by:
Creating the user persona, mapping the current

journey, and building an empathy map
A key aspect of problem framing is to minimize the bias on what the problem
should be in a Point of View (POV) statement.
Case Study on America's Dog Adoption: Problem Reframing
America's Dog Adoption Problem
Almost 40% of American homes owned dogs.
● According to ASPCA, more than 3 million

dogs were given up to dog shelters for
adoption.
● The shelters were overwhelmed and
found it difficult to deal with so many
dogs.
Source:
https://hbr.org/2017/01/are-you-solving-the-right-problems
Most of the dog shelters were not adequately funded.
● They wanted to place dogs in new

families through adoption.
● They used posters to encourage
adoption.
● They managed to get about 1.4 million
dogs adopted each year.
Source:
https://hbr.org/2017/01/are-you-solving-the-right-problems
Challenges were:
● The current approach did not find families for over a million dogs.
● There was a shortage of pet adopters.
● The agencies were short on funds and managing the volume of dogs
was a constant problem.
Lori Weise, the founder of Downtown Dog Rescue in Los Angeles,

framed the problem in a different way:
● She focused more on understanding the issues of the existing
owners.
● She reframed the problem as Why are the existing owners giving up
pets to shelters?
After framing the problem, Lori tried to view the process with empathy.
People giving up dogs to shelters were considered ‘bad’ owners.
They were heavily criticized as people who discarded their pets like a
consumer good.
The root cause of the owner's surrender was different.
According to Lori Weise, “By and large, they are a poverty

problem. These families love their dogs as much as we do, but
they are also exceptionally poor. We’re talking about people
who in some cases aren’t entirely sure how they will feed their
kids at the end of the month. So when a new landlord suddenly
demands a deposit to house the dog, they simply have no way
to get the money. In other cases, the dog needs a $10 rabies
shot, but the family has no access to a vet, or may be afraid to
approach any kind of authority. Handing over their pet to a
shelter is often the last option they believe they have.”
Case Study on America's Dog Adoption: Problem Solving
Solving the Problem
Owner surrenders were painful for owners as much as for dogs.
● Lori collaborated with a shelter in southern

Los Angeles.
● The staff member would ask if the family
preferred to keep the pet.
● They would help them deal with the issues.
The new approach was a radical success. Almost 75% of the owners
agreed to keep the pet.
Solving the Problem
● The intake of dogs reduced significantly,

leading to lower medical costs and
healthier dogs.
● It fostered a strong sense of community
among dog owners and the shelter.
● It helped over 5000 families keep their pets
within the first year.
● It gained wide recognition and has helped
other shelters adopt similar approaches.
Point of View (POV) Statement
Point of View Statement
In the Define mode, an actionable problem statement is created and is known as the Point
of View (POV) in design thinking.
POV statement sets the POV statement is built on

tone and guides all the the foundation of
functions that follow it. empathize mode.
POV is one of the most The POV statement base has

important steps in design a much better
thinking process. understanding of the
customer.
Attributes of POV
POV should be meaningful and POV should not contain the actual
actionable. solution.
POV should be a guiding statement based POV should provide the team room to
on the results of empathize mode. explore various solutions.
Attributes of a POV
Point of View (POV) defines the right challenge to address in the upcoming mode of the
design thinking process.
POV allows team to ideate and solve design challenges in a goal and customer-oriented
manner.
POV keeps a focus on users, their needs, and team’s insights about users and

understandings from the empathize mode.
Why POV?
01 POV statement builds the foundation of the ideation process.
02 Without POV, team might end up generating on ideas that may seem
exciting, but not appreciated by users.
03 POV statement is the reference to see if team is solving the

right problems while prototyping.
04 POV statements can be redefined to generate new ideas

based on the results of validation mode that gives room
to the team to explore various solutions.
Creating a POV Statement
You can frame an actionable statement from the template in the following sentence:
<User – describe the persona> needs <need – verb> because <insight – compelling insight>
Users: Define the target user who is experiencing

the problem
Need: List the needs of the user as verbs
Insight: Synthesis of the gathered information

that provides more details of the need
Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/define-and-frame-your-design-challenge-by-creating-your-point-of-view-and-ask-how-might-we
Example
This is an example of a POV statement.
Source: https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/define-and-frame-your-design-challenge-by-creating-your-point-of-view-and-ask-how-might-we
Frame a POV Statement
● Based on your insights and research, frame your POV statement by referring to the
template
● Frame an actionable statement describing the users, needs, and insights
Case Study: How Oscar Used Customer-Centered
Thinking to Improve Telemedicine
Healthcare Industry
According to the World Bank, health spending in the US accounts for nearly one-fifth of
GDP. A key factor is that it is difficult for patients to get in touch with doctors.
This prevents them from seeking early preventive cure, which can be much cheaper for
everyone involved.
Healthcare Industry
According to a 2015 study by the US National Library of Medicine, 87.8% of people

who avoid early care do so because of bureaucracy, insurance issues, and price.
Through telemedicine, doctors and patients can connect directly and healthcare providers can cut
through bureaucracy and offer better care.
Oscar
One of the apps that is riding this wave is Oscar.
● In 2012, Mario Schlosser and his wife were going through

their first pregnancy in New York City.
● They were caught in a maze of insurance jargon.
● They had no idea how to identify the best obstetrician,
navigate care, or hold anyone accountable.
Mario Schlosser
CEO and cofounder
of Oscar
Healthcare Industry
A broken healthcare system often leaves people feeling overwhelmed and powerless.
They decided to take on the system and make things better for everyone.
Oscar
Oscar was founded in 2012 and was the first direct-to-consumer health insurer with
a mission of creating simpler health insurance experience.
It has expanded its footprint and services offering products for providers and
small businesses.
Oscar
The following points depict Oscar’s different approach to patients:
Oscar decided to do take a patient’s Point-of-view (POV).
They got to know their users and their needs better, and develop insights through
focus groups and interviews.
They realized that the point of healthcare is to connect people.
They realized that people just want to quickly talk to doctors or caregivers. Human
connection was more important than technology.
Case Study: How Oscar Rebuilt the User Experience
Rethinking the Experience
Oscar decided to use super clean online questionnaires, friendly tutorials, and an app.
They were looking to use apps and tech to help connect people, hence their app would have
to be more intuitive than innovative.
Rethinking the Experience
Their most interesting insight was a simple digital version of the customer’s healthcare ID.
“People didn’t want to carry it with them,” recalled one of the

main designers.
“It was so simple, but people felt like it was a huge
convenience.”
The result of all this focus on design and technology was that the team opened up the door
to more human connection.
Experience for Customers
Oscar prioritized on the core needs for the users like finding care or talking to the doctor.
According to one of the designers, “It’s hard to click

anything without being directed to talk to someone: be that a
nurse via text, a doctor via phone, or the concierge team via
the app. And this is very much the point.”
Experience For Customers
According to Regy Perlera, one of the key designers, “We consider ourselves successful if
people are able to find what they need and then log out a few minutes later.”
Product Marketing
The core principle of Oscar is our care is right-size-fits-you, never one-size-fits-all.
According to them, customers were facing the following challenges:
● Working two jobs

● Having a sick parent at home
● Making doctors’ appointments
● Refilling prescriptions
● Juggling children’s schedules
They took into account the members’ budgets, habits, challenges, and health issues to
meet the requirement.
Product Marketing
Oscar had a unique member-focused approach, in rebuilding the country’s broken

healthcare system and improve health outcomes for everyone.
By 2017, 23% of Oscar’s customers used telemedicine, compared with the national
average of 3%.
How Might We
Framing the Problem
Problem framing gives a good idea around:

● Who are our customers?
● What are their problems?
● Why are these important to them?
This help us to solve these problems using:

● Brainstorming
● Idea generation, prototyping
● Validation with customers
How Might We
● The first step to build a solution is to frame

opportunities for the problem by using a
structure called How Might We.
● It is a simple framework to help teams look at the
opportunities.
How Might We
Each problem can be divided into one or more questions

starting with How might we (HMW):
● How indicates that there are multiple solutions to
explore.
● Might acknowledges that the solutions may or may not
work.
● We reminds us that any solution needs to be
collaborative in nature.
HMW has been called the secret phrase top innovators use by Harvard Business
Review.
Case Study on P&G
Solving the Problem
In the 1970s, Colgate-Palmolive launched a new men’s soap called Irish

Spring.
● This was a revolutionary new product that

combined deodorant and soap.
● The ads showcased a rugged outdoorsman
cutting a green soap with a knife to reveal
the white stripes within.
● It showed a guy who was in an Irish
meadow, showering with the soap under a
spring.
Irish Spring was a big commercial success.

P&G’s Response
P&G became one of the largest players in the soap space.
● The product they designed had to beat the

competitor in a blind test with customers.
● The team realized that whatever combination they
tried, they could at most equal the perception of
Irish Spring, but never beat it.
● They went ahead and tried building soaps with
stripes.
● The team was worried about the product launch
without customer preference.
P&G’s Innovation
P&G had a series of innovation consultations.
The team reached out to Dr. Min Basadur, as they

felt their soaps were either the same or inferior to
that of Irish Spring.
Dr. Min Basadur
They hoped that some innovation could give them an edge.

Brainstorming
The P&G team started a brainstorming activity to solve this problem. The
team had a creative thinking session with Dr. Basadur.
“Are we working on the The challenge was to

right thing?—the problem make a better
definition setup.” green-striped soap bar.
Brainstorming
Dr. Basadur challenged them to reframe the problem.
● He pushed the team to think harder

● He asked team: Why did they want to and dig deeper on why they needed a
make a better green-striped bar? green striped bar.
● The team said: To gain market share ● The team said: We’d like to make people
feel more refreshed.
He then framed the question as How might we make a more

refreshing bar?
Power of Reframing
The team found that they had a lot more solutions by reframing the
question.
Converged to two ideas that

they felt had the most merit
Generated more Came up with beach as

than 200 ideas for the refreshing concept
a refreshing bar for the new soap and
invented a new bar
called Coast
Reframing the problem with the HMW approach helped the team unlock
innovative ideas.
Power of Reframing
People may start out asking, How can we do this? or How should we do that?
But as soon as you start using words like can and should, you’re implying
judgment: Can we really do it? And should we? By substituting the word
might you’re able to defer judgment, which helps people to create options
more freely, and opens up more possibilities.
Dr. Min Basadur

Innovation Consultant
Crafting an HMW Statement
HMW statements follow a simple structure:
HMW (intended experience) for (user

persona) so that (desired effect)
If the problem statement outlined:
Kids love getting ice-cream from a

truck, but on hot days, there is
spillage as kids get back to their
families.
A good HMW statement might be:
Redesigning the ice-cream

buying experience for kids
If the problem statement is to:
Redesign the ground experience at the

local international airport
The point of view is:
A hurried mother of three, rushes through the airport only to wait

for hours at the gate. She also needs to entertain her playful
children because the annoying little brats irritate the already
frustrated fellow passengers.
Here’s how we can frame a good HMW statement for this situation:
HMW use the kids’ energy to entertain the

Amp up the good
fellow passengers?
HMW separate the kids from fellow

Remove the bad
passengers?
HMW make the waiting hours the most

Explore the opposite
exciting part of the trip?
HMW entirely remove the wait time at the

Question an assumption
airport?
HMW make the rush refreshing instead of

Go after adjectives
hurrying?
HMW leverage free time of fellow

ID unexpected resources
passengers to share the load?
Create an analogy from a HMW make the airport like a spa or a

need or context playground?
Play POV against the HMW make the airport a place where kids
challenge want to go?
HMW make playful and loud kids less

Change the status quo
annoying?
The POV can be broken into pieces:
HMW entertain kids?
HMW slow a mom down?
HMW mollify the delayed passengers?

Creativity in HMW
Being creative can yield multiple HMW options for the same POV.
By changing the lens, we frame the problem differently and the potential
solution also changes.
Guidelines for HMW Statements
Guidelines for creating an HMW statement:
● HMW is human-centered, so the focus is on users.

● HMW statements are positive and inspirational.
● HMW suggests a solution is possible, without
specifying it.
● HMW statements are broad enough for a wide range of
solutions.
HMW Statement
Rules for HMW statement:
● Avoid broad questions like how might we solve

world hunger?
● Avoid narrow questions like how can we increase
profits by 5% next quarter?
● Discover the sweet spot between framing too
broad versus too narrow statements
● Get the team members to write down multiple
HMW statements for a few minutes
● Pick the most promising statements for
brainstorming
Draft an HMW Statement
● By now, you have a good sense of the different POVs of all associated personas, and are
able to identify the key POV statement that you want to tackle.
● All HMWs should relate to the POV statement
● Write different HMWs on your own, and then discuss as a team
Key Takeaways
Problem framing helps us get an understanding about who

our customers are, the problems they are facing, and the
importance of solving these problems.
The POV statement guides all functions that come after it. It
is built on the basis of empathy, and is one of the most
important tools of design thinking.
The HMW approach is a framework that helps the team

identify opportunities from the user’s problems.
The HMW is crafted by identifying the intended experience

for the particular user persona and the desired effect.
Ideation
Learning Objectives
Define brainstorming and ideation
List and describe the various brainstorming techniques
Define idea synthesis
Create the evaluation criteria for choosing the best set of

ideas
Brainstorming and Ideation
Brainstorming and Ideation
According to Linus Pauling:
The best way to get good ideas is to get a lot of

ideas, and then throw away the bad ones.
Role of Ideation in Design Thinking
Design thinking encourages users to think of creative ways to ideate for solutions.
● There are different techniques for ideation.

● These techniques use forms of individual
and group brainstorming.
Process of Brainstorming
Brainstorming is a method used by teams to generate numerous ideas rapidly to solve defined
problems and opportunities.
The term brainstorming was first cited by Alex

Osborn, CEO of BBDO.
In the book titled Applied Imagination, Alex Osborn argues

that:
● The traditional methods of thinking lead to subpar
results because we tend to look too much for workable
solutions.
● By keeping this as a constraint, we often fail to generate
genuinely innovative ideas.
Brainstorming helps tap the generative part of the brain and turn down the evaluative part.
Creative problem solving involves two kinds of thinking.
Generative Thinking Evaluative Thinking
• Thinking creatively about • Exercising judgment on

problems and solutions which solution works best
and producing fresh ideas
on how to tackle them
• Used in the second phase
• Used in the first phase of of brainstorming
brainstorming
Both of them play an important role in brainstorming.

Alex Osborn says that the thinking mind is mainly twofold.

According to him, it is easier to tone down a wild idea than think up a new one.
Analytical Approach Creative Approach
• A judicial mind analyzes, • A creative mind visualizes,

compares, and chooses foresees, and generates ideas
• Thinking too judicially will • Thinking freely will generate

stifle creativity ten times better ideas, and
focus on creating workable
concepts from these ideas
Group vs Individual Brainstorming
Group Brainstorming
Group brainstorming helps in leveraging the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each
other, listening, and building on other ideas.
● It helps take advantage of different team

members’ experiences, creativity, and world
views.
● It helps people feel their contribution to the
final solution.
● It is favored by most corporate teams as it is
easy to get started with.
Group Brainstorming
Many managers and leaders misinterpret brainstorming as a way to gather people into a
room and ask them to start ideating.
● Group brainstorming has a bad reputation

because teams engage in poor brainstorming
practices.
● Effective brainstorming requires planning and
house rules without which they will be sub-par.
Group Brainstorming
Brainstorming can be a great tool to generate innovative and exciting ideas if done the right way.
● The challenges of group brainstorming can be

mitigated with good planning.
● Teams are moving to individual brainstorming
to avoid the challenges of group
brainstorming.
Challenges of Group Brainstorming
Lack of Structure
● Brainstorming sessions start with a vague intention of just
brainstorming for ideas
● Sessions ramble on without clear results
Solution Bias
● Participants are biased to a previously built solution
● Instead of looking for new ideas, these sessions become
ratification sessions
Lack of Diversity
● Teams start brainstorming sessions with participants of
similar backgrounds
Challenges of Group Brainstorming
HIPPO (Highest Paid Person’s Opinion)

● Team members are reluctant to voice their opinions which
are different from leaders’ or managers’ opinions
Loudest Person Wins

● Brainstorming sessions end up being dominated by
extroverted people with strong ideas
● Silent members do not share their ideas
Cynical Viewpoints
● A common challenge is for someone to present an idea,
only to be told, Yes, but and the reasons why it will not
succeed
Individual Brainstorming
Individual brainstorming allows team members to first sit alone during the brainstorming session
and generate ideas based on cues, triggers, or questions.
They collate these ideas in a group, build on them, and finally vote on the best ones.
Benefits of Individual Brainstorming
These are the benefits of individual brainstorming:
Helps generate a greater quantity of ideas as team members must think

on their own
Helps silent members contribute better
Helps teams build better concepts by merging ideas

Necessity of Constraints
Necessity of Constraints
The absence of constraints hinders effective brainstorming since sessions often fail to converge.
Effective brainstorming requires a minimum set of enablers like:
Clearly Listed
Challenge for Teams
Structured Timing
and Techniques
Minimum set
of enablers
Effective Facilitation
and Note Keeping
House Rules
for Teams
How Might We (HMW) Statement
Brainstorming is most effective when the challenge is clearly articulated. An effective way of
doing this is by drafting a good How Might We (HMW) statement.
● HMWs reframe problems as

opportunity areas.
● They serve as good triggers

to guide brainstorming
sessions.
Structured Timing and Techniques
Brainstorming Participants are

sessions can be urged to generate
between 15 ideas, instead of
minutes to a few waiting for an elusive
hours. inspiration. Teams pick
The sessions are brainstorming
broken into techniques based on
smaller ones, the challenge and size
each one timed. of the team.
Effective Facilitation and Note Keeping
Brainstorming sessions require two roles to be effective: a facilitator and a note keeper.
Facilitator Note Keeper
● Structuring sessions ● Helping teams record

● Getting teams to their ideas during
respect house rules brainstorming
● Enabling everyone to ● Converging the ideas
participate post brainstorming
● Steering the sessions ● Outlining the
using triggers outcomes
Both of these roles can be played by any member, and should not be decided based on seniority.

House Rules for Brainstorming
Stay focused on the HMW

Set time limits
statement
Aim for quantity Be visual
Defer judgment and criticism Encourage wild and wacky ideas
Build on each others’ ideas One conversation at a time

● Brainstorming can be an energy-intensive exercise.

● Breaking up the sessions into shorter chunks of 15-30
Set time limits
minutes gives the best outcomes. This keeps the teams
engaged.
● The moderator should ensure that all the activities are

Stay focused on the HMW focused on a clearly defined HMW statement.
statement ● One of the best ways to do this is to write out the
statement on a whiteboard or slide.
● The goal is to generate different ideas.

● Focus energies on generating quantity, rather than
Aim for quantity
sticking to a single idea.
● This helps in synthesizing different ideas into concepts.
● An effective way to communicate the idea is to sketch

out a trigger or thought.
Be visual
● Another way of using visual senses to drive creativity is
to use the post-it notes of different colors on the wall.
● The two parts of thinking are generative and

evaluative.
● One of the most important rules is to defer evaluative
Defer judgment and criticism thinking to generate large quantity of ideas at the
beginning.
● The brainstorming session is about creating a safe
space for participants to put forth different ideas.
● The best ideas often come from people who think

differently and start walking down unexplored paths.
● In the beginning, these ideas may seem fanciful or
Encourage wild and wacky ideas
weird.
● At a later stage, analyzing wacky ideas gives interesting
workable perspectives.
● The classic saying 1+1=3 holds true for brainstorming.

● The participants can be most effective by listening to
Build on each others’ ideas
others and building on their ideas.
● It is easy to get excited and talk over others during a

brainstorming session.
● The facilitator would best serve the group by:
○ Encouraging the participants to have one
conversation at a time
One conversation at a time ○ Asking the other team members to note down
any thoughts on a post-it note and later share it
with the group
● The teams can build on creative ideas collaboratively
by noting down the individual feedback and then
sharing it with the team.
Tips for Better Brainstorming
According to OpenIDEO’s seven tips on better brainstorming:
Creative spaces don't judge. They let the ideas flow, so that people can
build on each other and foster great ideas. You never know where a good
idea is going to come from, the key is to make everyone feel like they can
say the idea on their mind and allow others to build on it.
Source: https://public-media.interaction-design.org/pdf/Brainstorm.pdf
We tend to look for flaws in the ideas presented since most of us are inclined towards
evaluative thinking. Here is how you can handle it better:
• The facilitator can help the participants defer criticism and

judgment by banning the word No.
• People use Yes, but either loudly or in their mind when they
listen to wild ideas.
• The facilitator should gently get people to use Yes, and when
someone starts criticizing an idea.
A wacky idea was recommended to solve a challenge with office parking congestion. Here is the
approach to solve this problem:
But this was tried two years earlier and it didn’t work
or
But given how people rush in to be in time for the first
meeting, I don’t see how this would work.
Yes, and… if we consider this other possibility, we

could also try this new way of dealing with this.
This approach helps participants feel safe to share ideas because they won’t get shut
down immediately.
Criticism can choke the funnel of interesting ideas. Here is an advice of what can be done instead:
• Write the phrase on the whiteboard
• Keep nudging people to look and think about it
Help everyone stay involved, energetic, and enjoy the session better
Preparing for a Brainstorming Session
Steps to Prepare for Brainstorming
Brainstorming works best when the facilitator gets the stage setting right.
● Many participants may start the

session feeling uncertain about how
things will turn out.
● Some may naturally be more
assertive or protective about ideas
they recommend.
● Others may be more guarded in
sharing their opinions.
As a facilitator, try creating a space and structure that gives everyone

confidence to participate and share ideas.
Two Phases of Brainstorming
Brainstorming is done in two phases.
Idea Generation Phase
This phase deals with getting a large number of ideas by using brainstorming techniques.
This is the generative part of the session.
Concept Building Phase
This phase deals with the team evaluating various ideas generated, combining some of the
interesting ones into concepts, and using techniques like dot voting to decide on what to
proceed with.
Two Phases of Brainstorming
Depending on the objective, you may have different cycles to brainstorming.
• Generate ideas
• Refine them into concepts
• Restart the process by generating fresh ideas
around the concepts you have built
• Iterate the process when breaking up a
problem into smaller pieces and looking to
combine these into a cohesive solution
Getting the Stage Ready
To get the stage ready, first and foremost, you must decide on the team size.
• You should have members from different functions

and world views contribute to brainstorming
sessions.
• Brainstorming is a collaborative exercise, it is
difficult to manage large teams working on a single
idea.
• It is better to break down teams with five to seven
members into smaller groups.
Plan sessions in advance so that team members can block time slots and avoid
conflicting appointments or priorities
• Brainstorming works best when people are fully

involved.
• It hurts the process if someone states that they will
step in for a few minutes, finish another call, and
then come back.
• Having to update the team on previous ideas
breaks momentum and slows the team.
• You must ensure that everyone is fully committed.
For teams spread remotely, pick a time that works across the participants’ time zones.
• Make people aware of different members’ time

zones in advance
• Offer two or more calendar slots to vote on
This makes the process more collaborative.

For teams in the same location, decide on an offline brainstorming session.
• Have remote brainstorming sessions
• Ensure you have the right tools in place
• Share details on how to use the tools

You must prepare the team.
• Brief the team on the challenge you are planning to

address
• Share background information to give them some
context
• Share house rules in advance so participants know
what the expected behavior is
Finally, you must decide on the techniques.
• Be aware of the techniques that help in

brainstorming
• Try limiting the sessions to one or maximum two
techniques to avoid confusion
• Choose the technique based on the challenge
being addressed, the objective of the session, and
the team size and composition
In-Person vs Remote Sessions
Facilitators should prepare differently for in-person versus remote sessions.
• It helps participants ideate in the same physical

In-person session environment.
• It helps them to ‘read’ the reactions of others.
• It involves teams collaborating on sessions from

Remote session multiple locations.
• It involves the use of digital tools.
How can you set up in-person brainstorming sessions?
● Try brainstorming in a large room

● Use a whiteboard to write down the key challenges and
house rules
● Get a set of differently colored post-it notes that teams
can use
● Try getting the team to sit across multiple tables and
have their own spaces
● Let them brainstorm as a smaller team and then share
with the large team
● Ensure there is a clock in the room, so participants have
a common reference for time
www.miro.com and www.mural.co are the tools that allow for effective remote
brainstorming.
These tools allow you to:

• Create ‘boards’ for activities
• Add digital sticky notes
• Keep teams on track using digital timers
• Conduct video calls to collaborate
• Add images and embed videos and links
To converge ideas post sessions in the evaluative part of brainstorming, you can use dot-voting.
Participants list their ideas on post-its and have

others ‘vote’ on these with stickers. It is called
dot-voting.
• Remote sessions have digital tools for this.

• In-person sessions have voting dot stickers ready in
advance.
Welcome the
• Running a five-minute ice breaker before getting started
Participants
State the Challenge • Writing out the challenge statement or HMW statement
• Getting people aware of house rules before starting the

State House Rules
session
• Creating smaller teams that can brainstorm and then

Get Teams converge
Structured • Asking teams to decide smaller teams of five to seven
members amongst themselves
Explain the
• Outlining the high-level plan for the session
Procedure
Explain the Tools • Explaining how to use in-person or remote tools

Outline the
• Walking the team through the brainstorming technique
Technique
• Having fun has a huge uplift on the quality and quantity of

Have Fun
ideas
Brainstorming Techniques
There are various techniques to generate ideas during brainstorming.
Each has some strengths which help in planning the session.

Some of the techniques used are:
Mind Mapping Role Storming
SCAMPER Charrette
Step Ladder
Brainwriting
Brainstorming
Rapid Ideation (Crazy

Reverse Brainstorming
8s)
Mind Mapping
Mind Mapping
Mind mapping aims to bring our thinking patterns onto paper by visualizing them as
linking components.
● Mind mapping originated in the 3rd century by Porphyry

of Tyros, Aristotle, and Ramon Llull mainly to visualize
ideas.
● In modern times, it was introduced by British psychologist
Tony Buzan as one of the thinking methods.
What Is a Mind Map?
Mind mapping techniques follow these guidelines:
Start with a single idea represented with text, color, or image
Present each idea with single word and use visual elements to categorize it
Branch ideas into subsidiary ideas that are linked by a connection to the main idea
Collate ideas around concepts to visualize their connection
Include sketches, images, and quotes

Why Use Mind Maps
Mind maps allow categorizing the ideas into visual hierarchies. It is easy to visualize the connection
between the ideas by grouping them in a map structure.
• Mind maps mimic how the human mind views

a topic
• It associates new ideas with what we already
know
• It presents a visual representation
• It is a powerful presentation tool
It is easy for others to walk through mind maps and get a quick sense of how ideas play out.
Individual Brainstorming Using Mind Maps
In Individual brainstorming, mind maps can be helpful to organize:
• Prior research on markets

• User needs
• Key details from the customer journey map
They serve as ideation triggers when thinking about the HMW statement.
Group Brainstorming Using Mind Maps
Mind mapping can be used :
● To organize information as a group at the beginning of the

brainstorming session
● To break down complex challenges (or HMWs) into smaller
components
● To see how the various pieces are related and choose one
branch
● To take notes during the brainstorming session
After the ideation session, mind maps can help organize ideas in a map form and build concepts in
the evaluation stage.
Mind Mapping in Remote Sessions
Online tools that help with mind mapping are:
Miro and Mural, which can host remote

brainstorming sessions
Xmind, GitMind, and Mindmeister
Online mind maps are great tools to organize information better as they allow participants to attach
images, links, videos, documents, and other media.
When to Use Mind Maps?
Mind maps are used to think about ideas, analyze them, and study topics related to them.
Mind mapping is used to:

• Take note during the brainstorming session
• Break down a complex challenge into components
• Analyze and link information
• Present information in a creative way
SCAMPER
SCAMPER
• SCAMPER is one of the most popular brainstorming

techniques
• It is one of the easiest and most direct methods to
drive ideation
• It is based on the philosophy what is new is a
modification of the existing idea
• First introduced by Bob Eberle
An acronym for the seven techniques: substitute, combine, adapt, modify, put to another use, eliminate,
and reverse
SCAMPER Usage
Use the existing solution for the problem
Navigate the list and ask related

questions
Use SCAMPER as an individual or group

brainstorming technique
Explore possible solutions from the

obtained results
Take the good ideas and explore further

SCAMPER: Substitute
The first element in the technique is S and it stands for substitute.

A question like what can you substitute in the problem, process, or product drives this element.
• What can be used as a substitute for improvement?

• How to substitute place, materials, or people?
• Can one part be substituted for another?
• Is it possible to replace an involved person?
• Can the rules be changed?
SCAMPER: Substitute
• Will changing names do the job?

• What other ingredients or materials can be used?
• Can other processes or procedures be used?
• Is it possible to change the shape, color, roughness,
sound, or smell?
• Will other project ideas work?
• Will the feeling or attitude toward it change?
SCAMPER: Combine
C stands for combine in the SCAMPER technique.

A question like what can be combined with existing products to get a new solution.
• Which ideas, materials, processes, or components

are used for combining?
• Is it possible to merge with other objects?
• Which combination maximizes the number of uses?
SCAMPER: Combine
• What must be combined to lower production costs?

• Where can the synergy be built?
• Which combination of elements can achieve
specific results?
SCAMPER: Adapt
A stands for adapt in the SCAMPER technique.

A question like what can you adapt in your product, problem, or process to get new results drives this element.
• Which part of the product can be changed?

• Can the characteristics of the components be
changed?
• With a different context, can inspiration be taken
from other products or processes?
• Is there any solution from the history?
SCAMPER: Adapt
• Which ideas can be adapted, copied, or borrowed

from other products?
• Which is a suitable process to adapt?
• Can the context or target group be copied?
• What must be adapted to get the desired results?

SCAMPER: Modify, Magnify, or Minify
M stands for modify, magnify, or minify in the SCAMPER technique. A question like what can be modified to
change the emphasis of a problem, product, or process drives this element.
• What can be magnified or made larger?

• Which are the aspects that can be toned down or
reduced?
• Is it possible to exaggerate buttons, colors, or size?
• Can the target group be increased?
SCAMPER: Modify, Magnify, or Minify
• Which aspects can be made higher, bigger, or

stronger?
• Can the speed or frequency be increased?
• Is it possible to add extra features and value?
• To reduce the size, what must be removed?
• What must be changed to achieve a specific goal?
SCAMPER: Put to Another Use
P stands for put to another use in the SCAMPER technique.

A question like are there any new uses for the existing product or service drives this element.
• What are the other uses?

• How will a child or an old person use the product?
• How will people with disabilities use it?
• Which target group is benefited from this product?
SCAMPER: Put to Another Use
• Which segment of customers needs this product?

• Can other segments of customers use this product?
• Are there any new ways to use the product with
current shape or form?
• If you perform any modifications, will it be usable?
• How can the product be reused?
SCAMPER: Eliminate
E stands for eliminate in the SCAMPER technique.

A question like what can be simplified in the product, design, or service drives this element.
• What can be removed without altering the

functions?
• Can the time or components be reduced?
• What would be the result if a component is
removed?
• Can the efforts be reduced?
SCAMPER: Eliminate
• Can the costs be reduced?

• What are the non-essential aspects?
• Is it possible to eliminate the rules?
• Can the product be split into two parts?
• What is removed when a specific action is
performed?
SCAMPER: Rearrange
The final element is R and it stands for rearrange in the SCAMPER technique.
A question like how to change, reorder, or reverse the product or problem drives this element.
• Is it possible to rearrange components, patterns, or

layout?
• Can the pace or schedule be changed?
• What to do if a certain aspect of the problem,
product, or process worked in reverse?
• What is the rearrangement required to achieve a
certain goal?
Benefits of SCAMPER
Benefits of SCAMPER
SCAMPER is easy to construct and has several built-in

triggers.
It maximizes the number of ideas by forcing individuals to

focus on one aspect.
It can be used by individuals for their own needs and by

large teams.
Running a SCAMPER Solution
Frame the Remind the Focus on the

Use dot voting
challenge team about the questions and
to select ideas
statement house rules generate ideas
Outline the Set the time Converge

existing for 4 minutes participants and
solutions per element build the concepts
When to Use SCAMPER
An initial check of the compliance can be performed with a few questions:
It works best when there is a clear idea of the problem

and alternative solutions exist.
SCAMPER can be used by individuals or by large teams.
It can be used alone or in conjunction with other methods

to generate large quantity of ideas.
Step Ladder Brainstorming
Step Ladder Brainstorming Method
Bring everyone
and share ideas
Allow one
person and
share ideas
Ask the two

people to
generate ideas
Share the
challenge with
everyone
Benefits of Step Ladder Brainstorming
Avoids being influenced and intimidated by others
Allows the junior members to start the brainstorming session
Lets people enter the room in the order of seniority
Results in generating a wide range of diverse ideas

When to Use Step Ladder Brainstorming?
Most effective in smaller Useful when the juniors are Useful when a few members
groups of people with hesitant to speak in front of subdue others to
differing seniority seniors acknowledge their opinions
Rapid Ideation
Rapid Ideation
Rapid ideation is about generating many ideas as quickly as possible.
The facilitator sets

up a time limit.
Individuals are required

to generate as many
ideas as possible.
The team
consolidates and
builds on ideas.
This method encourages creativity by placing a time constraint.

Crazy 8s
Crazy 8s is a popular version of rapid ideation.
It is best used where there is a set of customer insights implying large

pool of initial ideas.
It is a visual technique and unlocks creative potential.
In the Crazy 8s technique, individuals are asked to sketch out eight different solutions
that the individual can then read out.
Crazy 8s
Crazy 8s is a popular tool used by Google Ventures and many other firms.
• The participants will initially hesitate if they are not

comfortable with sketching or drawing.
• The facilitator should remind them that the quality of the
idea matters more than the quality of the sketch.
• This technique forces the team members to propose
different solutions within time constraint.
Crazy 8s
Provide each Fold the sheet in equal

Unfold the sheet
participant an A4 sheet halves three times
The sketch should Running a Set the timer to 45s or

remind the participants Crazy 8s 60s
of their idea session
Repeat the process till

Sketch out a potential
Move to a new sketch there are eight
solution
sketches on the sheet
Crazy 8s
Crazy 8s encourages participants to use simple sketches instead of words for ideas.
• In response to a challenge on HMW improve patient

experience at a clinic
• A participant may sketch a chat window and a doctor,

indicating that they could have access to chat with a doctor
Crazy 8s helps to visualize solutions better.

Role Storming
Role Storming
Role storming was invented during the 1980s by business guru Rick Griggs.
The basic premise is simple:

• Brainstorm by playing the role of another person
• Likely to suggest out-of-the-box ideas
This experience helps them think about the problem in new ways.
https://www.griggsachieve.com/Brainstorming-is-Dead/
Advantages of Role Storming
Reduces bias: You play the role of another person, so it reduces bias as you mentally
evaluate how the ‘role model’ sees the issues
Reduces anxiety: Being ‘in character’ helps participants offer wild suggestions as they
are less anxious about being judged
Makes sessions lively: Allow participants to play roles or observe others playing the
roles to unlock creative potential
Role Storming Session
Run different role storming sessions by getting participants to ‘try on’ different personas
For instance:
• A difficult or demanding customer
• A historical figure with a well-known quirk
• A superhero or supervillain
• A senior manager or CEO
• A competitor’s strategist
Participants can brainstorm individually, and then collate the ideas in teams.
You can play two different roles to interact or discuss the HMW challenge.
Facilitators can start by getting participants to randomly

select roles from the slips that are placed in a basket.
Once everyone gets a role, show the group a list of

questions about their character, and give 5 minutes to
prepare their answers.
Questions can range from:

● Why does your character want to solve this issue?
● What are your character’s superpowers?
Ask everyone to speak about the topic at hand.
● Bob is superman
● He explains how he would solve client ● Jane is a customer
problems by using X-Ray vision to find the ● She may rant about the late arrival of
problem with the product, and then tells the product, bad performance of product, and
team how to fix it. late replacement.
● The note taker may jot down the idea and ● The note taker may jot down the problems
efficiently find and fix the technical that Jane has identified.
problems.
Role Storming: Rules and Usage
Rules of Role Storming
Role stormers should:

● Know or decide what role they will be playing
● Describe their character’s personal qualities and motivations
● List their character’s strengths and weaknesses
● Speak in character, using I when referring to their character
● Avoid referring to real circumstances or limitations
The purpose of the exercise is to get past the day-to-day conundrums, and to come up with
creative ideas that don’t reference lack of funds, supplies, or staff.
Usage of Role Storming
Role storming can be used in the following instances:
In individual or group brainstorming sessions
In association with another technique
When participants run out of ideas or are tired of thinking
The team can use traditional techniques like dot voting and concept building.
Charrette
Charrette
The word Charrette comes from a French word meaning cart.
In the 19th century, architecture students used little carts to rapidly move
their drawings from one place to another to get their work approved.
Students were desperate to finish their work before the deadline.
They would apply the finishing touches to their work as the cart was being
wheeled away to collect the work of the next student (en charrette).
Charrette
In the Charrette technique of brainstorming, teams are split into smaller groups.
● The challenge or How Might We is broken into

smaller pieces and each piece is handed over to
a team to brainstorm.
● After 5 minutes, the team is asked to move the
piece of challenge and their ideas to the next
team for them to build on.
● Each team builds on the ideas of others, and
brings fresh perspective to pieces of the
challenge.
Charrette
The Charrette procedure works by:
Organizing people into smaller groups
Brainstorming ideas groupwise
Using the output from one group as input for the next meeting
Moving the topic for discussion from one group to another
Collecting, analyzing, and prioritising the final ideas

Charrette
The Charrette procedure is used in the following instances:
Charrette is a great technique to break bigger teams with

For large teams more than 15 members into smaller ones so the team
members can converge on solutions.
When there is a Charrette allows multiple teams to work simultaneously, and it

time limit is useful when there is limited time for brainstorming.
To explore more Charrette can also be used if the HMW can naturally be broken
than one into smaller pieces, or if the team wants to pick more than one
challenge HMW statement to brainstorm.
Brainwriting
Brainwriting
The brainwriting technique harnesses individual brainstorming to drive ideation

for different members of the team.
Brainwriting is a great tool to build on others’ ideas.

Brainwriting Session
A brainwriting session runs in the following ways:
● Each team is up to six members strong.

● In the beginning, it encourages individuals to
brainstorm different solutions for the given
HMW statement.
● Participants write down each idea on a post-it
and place them at the center of the table.
● Post this, the brainwriting session starts.
● These sessions are typically for about five
minutes each.
● In brainwriting sessions, teams place a pile of

individual ideas at the center of the table.
● A timer is set for 5 minutes.
● When the timer goes off, each person has to
write three complete and concise ideas in a
row.
● They can refer to the pile to borrow inspiration
from any of the earlier ideas.
● At the end of five minutes, the sheet is passed

on to the next person, who can reflect on the
earlier ideas that were written down, and
generate three new ideas in five minutes.
● This process continues till everyone has had a
chance to fill in their ideas in the sheet.
● Since each person is building on a previous set

of ideas, this technique helps generate a
quantity of ideas.
● Approximately, 18 ideas per sheet, with six
sheets in total equaling to 108 ideas
● At the end of 30 minutes, the team can then
discuss and build on the ideas generated.
Advantages of Brainwriting
Here are the advantages of brainwriting:
It is structured and timed. The five-minute limit for three ideas gives participants enough
time to think, but also brings in a sense of urgency to complete the ideas.
Since the sheets are passed around, the later ideas are progressively built on earlier ones
that are listed on the sheet.
Brainwriting combines the best of individual brainstorming with group brainstorming.
For effective brainwriting, the facilitator should impress the Yes, and philosophy and
encourage participants not to criticize ideas on the sheet, instead to build on them.
Brainwalking
Brainwalking is a variant of brainwriting.
● In brainwalk, each participant writes a single idea

on a flip-chart, which is placed on a wall.
● The other participants then visit the flip-charts
and silently develop the ideas further or add
new ones using post-its.
● It is based on cross-pollination.
● The participants can build upon each other’s
ideas in a structured way.
● They can utilize all the knowledge and creative
input of other participants in the room.
Brainwriting
We can use brainwriting in the following instances:
If your HMW contains a set of related challenges, brainwriting is a

A set of related
great way to get team members to focus on different challenges,
challenges
and then collaborate on finding a solution.
To encourage Team members who are generally silent find brainwriting a

silent members safe technique, as they can ideate independently, yet
collaborate on others’ ideas.
When inspiration There could be cases where regular brainstorming techniques do

runs low not yield results. Following these with brainwriting helps individuals
reflect on ideas generated earlier and build on them later.
This technique helps in solving problems by combining brainstorming and
reversal techniques. Follow these steps in this technique:
● Start by reversing some of the questions you

generally ask
● Ask how might we cause this problem? instead of how
might we solve this problem?
● Reframe the question to ask what could bring
about the opposite effect
● Solve the reverse challenges by generating ideas
and solutions
● Reverse the solutions and ideas for the original
challenge statement
The following example explains the concept of reverse brainstorming:
● For instance, suppose you were looking to

improve patient satisfaction at a health clinic.
● Rather than asking, how might we improve patient
satisfaction?, frame the question as how can we
make the patient more dissatisfied?
This may startle some of the team members, but as they start listing solutions,
some surprising results may come up. For instance, they may cite ideas like:
Increase hold time when patients call for appointments
Double book appointments
Discuss the problems in public
Don’t have sufficient parking

When the session completes, look at reversing some of these solutions like:
Of course, we don’t double book appointments.
But what about cases where the patients call, and others
book online?
Yes, I remember that happened three times last month. The

two calendars were not in sync.
Maybe we should have the call center update the same

calendar so we can avoid conflicts.
Maybe we should reserve some slots for patients who call

and not show these for online bookings
A reverse brainstorming session can be run in the following ways:
01 List your challenge or HMW statement
02 Reverse it and write it down
03 State the house rules
04 Start the timer and give everyone five minutes to ideate individually
05 Ask the teams to read out their ideas and get others to build on them
06 Now reverse the solutions and ask teams to list down the solutions
07 Move to the evaluation phase to build concepts

You can use reverse brainstorming to:
Familiarize the team with the problem at hand
Produce results when regular brainstorming fails
Tap into negative feelings, hostility, frustration, and anger for positive problem solving
Think of opposites, which often unlocks creativity
Look at actively destroying a customer’s experience or handling a challenge
Get people excited

Case Study on Breakfast Cereal
Background of Breakfast Cereal
Breakfast cereal has long been considered a staple American diet.
● Almost half of the baby boomers feel

nostalgic about breakfast cereal.
● The younger consumers don’t take to
cereal as much as the older crowd.
● Sales of cereals, which totaled $13.9
billion in 2000, dropped to $10 billion in
2015.
Exploring More Behind the Phenomenon
Market research by Mintel shows the following interesting facts

about younger consumers:
● Most of them don’t eat breakfast at all or eat away

from home.
● They like hot grains, smoothies, yogurt, or
sandwich for breakfast.
● Many believe that eating cereal is too much work
for them, especially cleaning up after a meal.
Dealing with the Shifting Market Preferences
The cereal category is certainly, shifting, said Melissa Abbott, director of culinary
insights for the Hartman Group.
● Consumers overall are less interested in

industrially processed grains as a meaningful start
to their day.
● Younger customers have niche preferences, some
prefer to look at the specific grain and their origin.
● Many are inspired by claims of health, nutrition,
and the environment for their foods.
In 2016, Kellogg’s claimed that being on top of customer preferences and innovation has helped to
grow market share by one or two percentage.
● Brands have adopted different approaches to win

over new segments.
● They considered strong customer preferences and
formulated new products for them.
● This involved deeply analyzing customer
preferences, looking at their values, and what
influenced them.
Many brands have launched a new category called Overnight Oats.
● They are sold in single-serve packs.

● Customers are required to add milk the day before
and leave overnight.
● They can eat oatmeal the next day right from the
container without having to clean up.
Brands like Maker offer products in glass packaging and in various flavors, which appeal to
niche tastes as well as appear eco-friendly to customers.
New Ways of Consumption
● The brands have tied up with younger food

influencers.
● The people love the flavor and texture of cereal
and vintage nature.
● They tied up with influencers who try out new
recipes with cereal.
The consumption methods are important for the cool cachet and visibility,
critical in the age of social media.
New Ways of Consumption
The following points describe the impact:
● Quaker Oats reported first-year success with its

Overnight Oats product line.
● A publication reported, Bob’s Red Mill Natural
Foods’ sales jumped 13% in 2017.
Idea Synthesis
Idea Synthesis
Try out one or more brainstorming techniques based on

HMW statements and derive actionable insights
Brainstorming gives a wealth of ideas
Ideas can be conservative, wacky, and wild
Once you have a collection of ideas, the next step is idea synthesis.
What Is Idea Synthesis?
Idea Synthesis
Idea synthesis refers to combining, clustering, merging, and organizing the

ideas to create synthesized concepts.
● Principle of idea synthesis is that the sum of the

parts is greater than the whole.
● Combining the ideas generated earlier can help us
build interesting concepts.
Affinity Diagram
The affinity diagram helps to collect large amounts of information and organize them
into groups based on relationships.
● The ideas with higher affinity are grouped.

● The cluster of related ideas can be analyzed
better.
● It can be used for other phases like clustering
user research or information regarding a
problem.
Affinity Mapping
Affinity Mapping
Affinity mapping is a synthesis exercise where the entire group is involved in

analyzing and grouping the ideas.
During affinity mapping, the team may:

● Discuss the ideas
● Identify other ideas
● Add the other ideas to groups where they fit
best
Affinity Mapping
During the exercise, build different bundles of ideas.
● A bundle may contain only one or two ideas that

are wildly different.
● This should also be part of the process.
Affinity Mapping
Do not discard the different ideas
If the ideas are similar, you may overlay them on

top of the previous ideas.
Running Affinity Maps
Affinity mapping requires participation from the entire group.
● Collect all the post-its with ideas generated

while brainstorming
● Copy each idea that is written on a book or
paper onto a post-it note
The sticky notes allow the team to easily stick up and move pieces of data around to
create clusters of similar:
Themes
Groups
Patterns
Pick a large wall where you can paste all the ideas
● Start at one corner of the wall

● Pick the post-it containing the first idea
● Paste it on the wall
If required, ask the team member who came up with the idea
to explain what it is about.
Pick the next post-it and ask, is this similar to the first one or is it different?
If Yes If No
Place it in the Place it in its

same group own group
● Keep doing this for all the ideas generated till

you create multiple bundles of post-it notes.
● You should have three to ten groups of ideas to
name the clusters based on the ideas.
Running Affinity Maps Remotely
The process remains similar for a remote session.
● Use digital notes instead of physical post-its

● Group ideas in a shared document in case of
conventional tools
Running Affinity Maps Remotely
Discuss the idea placement with your remote group mates so that everyone is
involved in this process
The result is three to ten cluster of ideas.

Tips for Idea Synthesis
Be open to suggestions from team members in the following ways:
Do not fall in love with your own idea
Analyze the idea
Build on the idea
Come up with your own ideas

As a group exercise, give credit where due in the following ways:
Let the team build on your idea
Do not hold on to your idea
Allow the team to explore the idea

Talk less and sort more in the following ways:
Do not fall in love with your own idea
Make the exercise more about sorting
Keep less explanations and make them to the point
Use the time to group ideas

Be ready to iterate in the following ways:
Start with grouping the ideas
Regroup, split, and merge different clusters of ideas
Use post-it notes to be flexible in arranging the ideas
Keep iterating over the grouped ideas

Don’t kill the wacky ideas in the following ways:
Do not tone down the wacky ideas
Do not lose these ideas to conformity
Keep the wacky ideas in a separate group for further

discussion
At the end of the affinity mapping and idea synthesis, you should have a broad outline of
ideas, grouped together by themes.
This makes it easier to draft and evaluate the concepts.

Choosing the Best Set of Ideas
In brainstorming, we generated a large quantity of ideas.
In idea synthesis, we grouped the ideas into various

themes.
Now, we will choose the best themes to build the concepts.
● Identify what an ideal solution should look like

● Rank the themes by dot voting
Evaluative Thinking
During brainstorming, we engaged in generative thinking where we did not map

any constraints to ideas or themes.
In evaluative thinking, we follow these steps:

● Analyze the themes generated on desirability,
feasibility, and viability
● Determine whether a solution concept will be
worthwhile to pursue or not
Design Thinking Solution
An ideal design thinking solution meets the trifecta of desirability, feasibility,

and viability, originated from IDEO in the early 21st century.
● While testing with customers, we need to think

of all the three factors right from the concept
building stage.
● Implementing the solution becomes riskier and
costlier in case you missed any of these.
Here are the three types of design thinking solutions:
Feasible One that can be realistically built in a definite time-frame
One that ensures there is a market for what you build, with a
Viable
sustainable business
Desirable One that customers need and would appreciate

To ensure we keep this as the north star of our solutions, we need to:
● Ideate on what an ideal solution should do for

customers and businesses
● Map any constraints in building these
● Flesh out concepts based on the themes that we
generated earlier
This phase follows the idea generation and synthesis.

Viability Factors
Viability factors may change depending on the domain. If you are using design thinking to
solve a social problem, there may be no business viability involved. However, you could
consider factors like:
Cost Constraints Social Impact Score

This exercise maps an ideal goal to aim for, which:
● Satisfies user needs for desirability

● Considers existing constraints for feasibility
● Makes money for viability
To achieve this, we first need a set of evaluation criteria for our ideal final goal.
Building the Evaluation Criteria
Evaluation Criteria
Brainstorm the criteria for evaluating an idea or solution by stating:
A good idea or solution would have the

following characteristics.
Evaluation Criteria
Factors to consider while thinking of evaluating an idea or solution:
Are there budget constraints that you need to factor in?
Are there specific needs of the users to be factored in?
Are there elements in the current way of doing things that need to be retained?
Are ergonomics important?
Is there a time frame in which you need to get the solution ready?
Evaluation Criteria
In the generative part of design thinking, the HMW played the role of an anchor
for any new ideas developed.
The evaluation criteria helps in:

● Deciding on an idea to pick
● Building concepts and prototypes
● Testing this with potential customers
Evaluation Criteria
Without a clear evaluation criteria of an idea or solution, it is easy to tilt towards:
Desirability Feasibility Viability
● An ideal evaluation criteria can have eight to ten paramount characteristics.

● While prototyping and customer validation, you may realize that some of the
criteria are not more effective than others.
● You can come back and modify the criteria so that it stays fresh.
Map Your Ideal Criteria
● Brainstorm on the idea criteria for your product or service

● At this point, the criteria may be high level. You can refine this with concept building or
customer validation.
● List around five to eight criteria based on desirability, feasibility, and viability
Dot Voting
Dot Voting
The high-level criteria is used to pick the best idea themes that can work.
● Dot voting involves team members voting on idea themes

with colored dots or marker pens.
● Each participant is given three to five dot stickers.
● Participants vote using the stickers.
● All the participants can participate at the same time, but
without talking to each other.
● The number of stickers is counted per solution and a
winner is decided.
Variants to Dot Voting
The variants of dot voting are:
● Participants can use green stickers for solutions that they like
and red for those that they dislike.
Stickers for attitudes ● This method offers a chance for participants to comment on
solutions they think are unfeasible.
Variants to Dot Voting
● Corporates run dot voting by giving different color stickers to

management and other staff.
● The team members vote first, then the management votes later
Stickers based on rank
in order to be effective.
● The facilitator can decide on the weightage for a management
sticker vs. a regular one and tabulate the results.
Benefits of Dot Voting
The benefits of dot voting are:
It is a democratic and highly engaging process
It is cognitively less demanding
It helps avoid long explanations and documentation

Parking Lot
Parking Lot
After dot voting, you can:
Pick the theme that will work the best for you
Refine this into a concept and a prototype
Save all the other options in a parking lot

Parking Lot
A parking lot is a repository of ideas and themes that are not chosen immediately.
By saving these, we can return and study them in more detail later.
Need for a Parking Lot
Here are the reasons why we need a parking lot:
● Take inspiration for later stages

● Pick a theme that will work in the
prototyping stage
● Borrow ideas from the idea generation
stage
The parking lot is a ready repository for all ideas and can be mined for inspiration later.
Need for a Parking Lot
Here are the reasons why we need a parking lot:
● Correct the course if context changes

● Start with a set of assumptions on the context
of operation
● Monitor the changes in the original plan and
the context
● Come back and evaluate the other themes from
the parking lot
Context Change
Some factors that may cause a context change are:
● A competitor launches a new product or

service.
● An underlying condition for the product or
service changes.
● For example, we have a service to help retail
stores reconcile faster, but there is large scale
adoption of digital payments, making the
service redundant.
Context Change
Some factors that may cause a context change are:
● Users’ preference change due to an external

reason
● For example, we have a new restaurant service
planned, but people don’t venture out due to a
pandemic.
Dot Voting for Idea Themes
Duration: 5 minutes
● Dot voting is a silent voting technique that gets participants to prioritize their ideas and
concepts.
● Perform it within your team. Each person will get three dots to vote with. Think a bit before
you place them on the ideas or concepts.
● Once everyone is done, you can discuss the main ideas voted on as a team and decide to
take one forward.
Key Takeaways
Brainstorming is a method used to rapidly generate ideas to

solve problems and identify opportunities.
Ideation is the process of thinking in a creative manner

to find solutions.
The different brainstorming techniques are Mindmapping,
SCAMPER, Step Ladder Brainstorming, Rapid Ideation, Role
Stroming, Charrette, Brainwriting, and Reverse
Brainstorming.
Idea synthesis is the process of clustering, merging, and

combining ideas that were generated in the brainstorming
step.
An evaluation criteria helps pick ideas to build on, on the

basis of a few factors and constraints.
Concept Building
Learning Objectives
Build concepts from ideas
Write a future press release
Craft future state maps

Concept Building
Forge Concepts from Ideas
Concepts are forged from ideas that are clustered into bundles. They are larger solution
ideas with a basic business structure.
The phase involves listing down the assumptions for feasibility and viability of ideas.
Forge Concepts from Ideas
Once done, you can:
Prototype the solution
Validate assumptions with real users
Shape the idea into a final narrative structure

Final Narrative Structure
One way of building the narrative is to use customer journey mapping. It aids the discovery of pain
points of customers.
The research then folded into:
Crafting the HMW statement
Brainstorming the ideas
Grouping the most promising ideas

Working Backwards
Working Backwards
Working backwards begins by trying to work backward from the customer, rather than starting
with an idea for a product and trying to bolt the customers onto it.
The team envisions a future press release.

Working Backwards
The team envisions a future press release.
Product or Service Pricing Details Competitive Insights
Mock Customer Internal Leader Quotes

Working Backwards
Amazon uses this technique for launching new products and services.
Working backwards helps in planning the product or service.

Press Release
Heading Names the product in a way the target customer will

understand
Describes who the market for the product is and

Subheading
how it will benefit the users
Summary Gives a summary of the product and the benefits
Problem Describes the problems that your product solves
Solution Describes how your product elegantly solves the

problems
Press Release
Quote from You Comprises a quote from a spokesperson in your

company
How to Get Started? Describes how easy it is to get started
Provides a quote from a hypothetical customer that

Customer Quote
describes how they experienced the benefit
Closing and Call Wraps up the press release and gives pointers
to Action on where the reader should go next
Tips for Future Press Release
Talk to lay users
The aim of the exercise is to build a press release, something lay users will relate to.
According to Ian McAllister, Director of Amazon Day and former Director of Amazon Smile:
Part of keeping it simple means writing for mainstream customers, a technique called
Oprah-speak. Imagine you're sitting on Oprah's couch and have just explained the product
to her, and then you listen as she explains it to her audience. That's Oprah-speak, not
geek-speak.
Don’t make it a spec
Cut out the details and stick to the main highlights. Keep the press release interesting.
According to Ian McAllister:
Internal press releases are centered around the customer problem, how current
solutions (internal or external) fail, and how the new product will blow away existing
solutions. If the benefits listed don't sound very interesting or exciting to customers, then
perhaps they're not and shouldn't be built.
Build a FAQs sheet
This can answer all the questions related to business and execution, so that the press release is
focused on the customers.
Benefits of a Press Release
The press release can be used as a guiding light.
When developing the product or service, the team can

ask themselves:
Are we building what is in the press release?

Benefits of a Press Release
● The team needs to ensure that they are building things

that are in the press release.
● This keeps the product development focused on the
customers and not building extraneous stuff that:
○ Takes longer to build
○ Takes resources to maintain
○ Doesn’t provide real benefit to the customers
Write a Press Release for Your Product or Service
Fill in the following details in the press release for your product or service:
● Heading: Name the product in a way the reader (your target customers) will understand
● Subheading: Describe who the market for the product is and what benefits they will get.
This is one sentence underneath the title.
● Summary: Give a summary of the product and the benefits. Assume the reader will not
read anything else so make this paragraph good.
● Problem: Describe the problem your product solves
● Solution: Describe how your product elegantly solves the problem
● Quote from You: Include a quote from a spokesperson in your company
● How to Get Started: Describe how easy it is to get started
● Customer Quote: Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they
experienced the benefit
● Closing and Call to Action: Wrap it up and give pointers where the reader should go next
Case Study: Swiggy POP
About Swiggy
Swiggy was founded in 2014 and is

based in Bangalore, India. It is now
the largest online food ordering and It recieved heavy external
delivery service company. investments in 2015. The first
round was for $2 million which
increased to $15 million the
next year.
Naspers led a funding round

in 2017. Swiggy also received
$100 million from China-based
Meituan-Dianping.
The company’s valuation
became $1 billion in 2018.
Swiggy’s Marketplace
Aims to have 100 million customers

transacting 15 times a month in the next
10-15 years
Estimated to have more than Has over 140,000 restaurants

1.5 million active users in May and about 210,000 delivery
2020 agents across 500 cities
Swiggy’s Marketplace
Swiggy believed there was a customer need which they were not solving.
Scroll through a list of restaurants to find just one

1
Look through the entire menu to select the dish

2 that you want to eat
Follow the same process even for ordering one item

3 or for one person
They realized this was difficult, especially for a single person trying to make an order with the
numerous options available on Swiggy.
Swiggy POP
After multiple iterations, they came up with Swiggy POP which:
Curates 20-30 different, Lets customers order

single-serve meals from various meal-for-one, at a flat price, free
restaurants within a fixed radius of delivery, taxes, and packing
around the customer charges
Analyzing the Existing System
Analyzing Challenges
Challenges of the existing platform:
• Complications of ordering for one person
• Delivery fee was a hindrance for people

ordering for themselves
• Generating predictable orders from specific

restaurants
• Maximizing earnings for delivery executives

in a day
• Paradox of choice
• Unpredictable demand for restaurants

Analyzing Challenges
The theme that came out strong which everyone wanted to solve for was:
How might we improve the experience for people ordering meals only for themselves, by removing
the paradox of choice so that it is an affordable and quick experience?
Analyzing Further
The Swiggy team began looking at existing customer data to understand if there was a market for
single serve meals. They found various data points.
Average item count in a typical Swiggy cart
Percent of orders which fit into the meal-for-one definition and

were made from a restaurant offering free delivery
Percent of orders which fit into the meal-for-one definition
Percent of order flows which fit into the meal-for-one definition,

but had a delivery charge applicable and were abandoned at the
cart
Analyzing Further
To build further on these insights, they conducted an experiment by giving free delivery coupons
to users who were ordering a “meal-for-one”, to see if they would come back and order.
The repeat order rate for these users went up by a sizeable percentage.
Breaking down the Problem
To understand how customers were solving these problems, they did several user
interviews.
• They also interviewed restaurant partners to get

their perspective on how these problems could be
solved.
• They asked several questions from people

regarding their likes and dislikes when it comes to
cuisines and restaurants.
• They asked restaurant owners about how much

time to delivery they can provide.
They also looked at the food-tech space and tried to understand how others were solving
these problems.
• They tried to first look at the competitors in the

food industry.
• They also observed how regular food deliveries

are done across the city.
• They analyzed the time-to-delivery for every

restaurant.
• They analyzed the frequency of online orders

through their website or application.
• But they found that none of the competitors were

solving the issue for single-person meals.
Swiggy needed more pointers to make sure that they hit the market hard
with something innovative.
• Product Managers imagined their product in the future already

being launched.
• They wrote a Press Release on the product, the way they

imagined newspapers will cover it.
• They also added quotes from their ideal customers and the
business and ops team at Swiggy.
• They put down things like value proposition, price-point, GTM

plan, and areas of launch.
POP was conceived as a dish-first product offering a menu full of single-serve meals at a flat
price inclusive of all charges. Through POP, Swiggy wanted to solve for:
Affordability Selection
Discovery Ease of Ordering

During brainstorming a key theme that emerged was limiting the area from which a user can
order to a radius less than 3 km.
They manually curated orders from restaurants from one area and
this showed that:
● Choice making became easy

● Restaurants got predictable orders and were better prepared
● Reduced wait time for delivery executives
● Probability of batching two to three orders together went up
How It Helped
For Restaurants
• POP gave dedicated

space to showcase
For Customers dishes For Delivery Executives
• Restaurants build
predictability for
dishes
• POP took away the • They could deliver
paradox of choice more in an hour
• No extra charges • They could do
made options more than one
affordable order in single trip
• Reduced wait time
Sketching a Solution
The team began sketching out a prototype solution once the concept was in place.
Auto-Picked
Big Button Visuals
Payment Method
The team decided on what the Minimum Viable Product (MVP) would be.
Two things that helped scope the MVP right:

• The PR-FAQ became a blueprint for the prioritization process.
• The team identified whether a particular requirement would make
the lives of customers better.
Early testing with customers showed that they loved the concept.
The team opened POP for just five percent of the customer base on the day of launch.
POP went on to be a huge feature across key cities with much customer love.
Future State Mapping
The Swiggy POP example shows the journey from:
Problem Identification Launch

The team worked on:
Future state mapping for key stakeholders
Understanding key constraints and assumptions
Prototyping the solution

Benefits of Future State Mapping
Future state mapping helps us:
● Envision the world as our customers see it

● Analyze each step of the journey carefully,
assume the customer’s emotions at the
step, and see how we can keep the
customer delighted
● Understand enablers, assumptions, and
business constraints
● Build a future customer journey map based on the conceptual solution that you have
designed
● Map the different steps and keep track of the customers’ emotional journeys
● After building the map, list underlying assumptions and constraints that you need to
validate in prototyping and customer validation stages
Key Takeaways
Concepts are built by forging ideas together. They are larger

ideas to solutions with a basic business structure.
A future press release is written by managers to provide

customers something to relate to before a product is
launched.
Future state mapping helps us understand customers’ world,

analyze each step of their journey, and understand enablers,
assumptions, and business constraints.
Working backwards is a technique to work backward from

the customer, rather than starting with an idea for a
product and trying to bolt the customers onto it.
Prototyping and Validation
Learning Objectives
Build prototypes
Describe different prototyping methods
Create storyboards
Validate a product for user convenience

Prototyping
Prototype
A prototype in design thinking is a simulation or sample version of the final product.
● It is used for testing prior to launch.

● The goal of a prototype is to test products and
product ideas before creating the final version of
the sellable product.
Prototype
Depending on the nature of the project and the investment that the firm can make,
prototypes can be abstract or detailed. These are the common qualities of prototypes:
Prototypes can be high It refers to the sketches, storyboards, or physical

level representations that customers react to.
Physical prototypes may also This tests whether the product is comfortable for users
be built to test ergonomics to carry or operate over periods.
Digital Prototypes
Digital prototypes or wireframes are especially useful while building apps,

websites, or digital solutions.
Prototype
The following prototyping tools help teams build interactive prototypes that let
customers click through to complete a predefined task.
Balsamiq Adobe XD Sketch
These prototypes are useful to understand the usability of products.

Prototype
Sometimes, firms also build prototypes to quickly learn about a concept. Here is
an example to depict this better:
● Early architects used to build small

prototypes of buildings that they were
designing.
● This helped them understand various
forces that would operate on the building.
● These prototypes were discarded when the
project was complete.
Prototyping
These are some common methods of prototyping:
Sketches
Wireframes
Mockups
Physical models
Wizard of Oz
Sketches
Sketches
Sketches are the simplest and lowest cost prototype.
The process involves manually sketching out solutions on paper and

asking users to perform a flow as if they are touching different parts.
These are very helpful during the conceptualization and initial visualization
phase of your design process.
These are used predominantly while designing user interfaces.

Sketches
As per Universal methods of design: 100 ways to research complex problems, develop
innovative ideas, and design effective solutions, Hanington, B. M., and Martin B. (2012):
Users are presented with pages representing interface screens. In

completing a task or working toward a goal, the participant indicates
what he or she would do on each screen page, while the researcher
swaps the subsequent page to simulate the interface response.
Source: https://medium.com/@xinyicui/ui-ux-strategy-a-guide-to-paper-prototype-sketching-3c475ce560f9
Sketches
You don’t need to be an artist in order to draw simple UI sketches. Sketching is a

fundamental part of a design process.
● It can be as simple as drawing basic lines and

shapes on a piece of paper.
● There is no right or wrong way to sketch out
your ideas.
● The main purpose of sketching is to visually
convey your design ideas and goals.
● This approach is low fidelity as the users only
see outlines, not shapes or colors.
● This offers quick results to test if users
understand the basic interactions available in
the design.
Sketches
Here are some elements in building sketches:
Start on the left-hand side with a squiggle, and then become

Text Lines
straight
Draw a bunch of text lines together to create a body of text in

Body of Text
your interface
Emphasize it by bold lines so that it is distinguished from the

Heading
texts
Sketches
Add small bullets on the left side of each text line to have a
Checklist
checklist
Images Represent images by a rectangle filled in with an X
Draw a rectangle and put a small right-facing triangle in the

Video Player
middle
Create it by drawing a semicircle at the bottom of a larger circle

User Profile or
(which represents the body), and add a smaller circle on top of
Avatar
the semicircle (which represents the head)
Sketches
Form Field Represent it by a skinny horizontal rectangle
Represent it as a rectangle and darken the shadow of the bottom

Button
borders for a 3-dimensional look
Put a magnifying glass on the left corner of a form field to get a

Search Bar
search bar
Principles of Sketching
Start from the ● Sketch the outline of your interface first interface
general layout ● Explore a variety of layouts and show basic app structure
● In terms of details, complex shapes are usually just combinations of

Start with the basic shapes.
largest element ● The key is to start with the largest element and outline the shapes
before you add details.
● The different levels of hierarchy help people understand your sketch

quicker and faster.
Use highlights ● A good way to approach the hierarchy is to use colors and you can
intentionally do it with highlighters.
● When the rest of the sketch is in black and white, the colors become
a great indication for users.
● Ensure consistency across the prototype

Maintain good ● Similar interactive elements must be highlighted using the same
consistency color to reduce cognitive load when the user interacts with your
prototype.
Adding a Digital Touch
Tools like Marvel POP help transform paper sketches into simple interactive prototypes.
Ensures easy customer Enables sharing the

validation while they prototype with others to
interact on a device test it with different
users
Wireframes
Wireframes
Wireframes are low-fidelity design artifacts that represent essential elements of the UI.
● They appear to have been designed

with wires.
● They act as skeletons for design by
depicting basic UI and becoming a
blueprint for the product.
Using Wireframes
Wireframes are most relevant in the initial stages of the product design process.
They are useful for:
Evaluating the Understanding how Preparing a detailed

structure of individual related screens or project requirements
pages or screens pages work together document
Wireframes are drawn with a pen and paper or digital tools like Balsamiq are used.
Building Wireframes
Do not add too many details to wireframes
● Wireframes are the barebone structure of the product

● The goal of wireframing is to evaluate the design
● The essential elements that would feature on a page or screen are added
Use color to draw attention
● Wireframes are created in black and white

● Limited number of colors can be used to create visual accents
Building Wireframes
Add short to the point annotations
● Include annotations if the plan is to present a wireframe to the team

● They assist in creating context and quickly provide key ideas
Create clickable wireframes from static wireframes
● Clickable wireframes let others better understand your idea

Mockups
Mockups
Mockups are higher fidelity prototypes that are used to test how users react visually to designs.
They can be used while designing a new product and redesigning an existing product.
Mockups
Mockups are useful when a team wants to:
Evaluate visual design

See how colors, typography, and imagery work together
decisions
Experiment with various Try different color combinations and see what color scheme
styles works best for users
Evaluate the visual Ensure that all screens in your product look like parts of the
consistency of the design whole product, rather than a collection of individual screens
Mockups
Mockups are useful when a team wants to:
Evaluate the accessibility Allow users the abilities to navigate, understand, and use your
of your design product and focus on color contrast
Present the user Sketches and wireframes often require clarification, while
interface to stakeholders mockups are much easier to understand for people.
Mockups
Mockups can be created in the following ways:
Sketch Figma Adobe Photoshop

Tips While Building Mockups
These are the tips which will help you to build interactive prototypes:
● Be careful with Lorem Ipsum

● Most of the designers fill the mockups with
dummy text.
● This approach causes many problems when
designers replace dummy content with real
content.
● Under this approach, the content containers
might not be designed to fit the actual content
and may lead to unplanned work with layouts.
Tips While Building Mockups
These are the tips which will help you to build interactive prototypes:
● Don’t settle on a single design idea for your

mockup
● Don’t fall for the first idea that seems to be
the right one and start refining the mockup
● Experiment with different solutions as we
develop a new product
● Try various ideas and choose the one you like
Interactive Prototypes
An interactive prototype is a working model of an app or webpage.
● The prototypes enable developers to simulate user

interaction.
● The goal is to simulate the interaction between the
user and the interface.
Prototypes can help you to:
Evaluate the user Journey Test usability
Prototypes help the product

By testing your design with
team identify potential issues
users, you can build
with interaction flow.
confidence before coding.
Tools like Adobe XD and Invision help create interactive prototypes.

Tips for Building Interactive Prototypes
These are the tips to build an interactive prototype:
● Select the right fidelity for your prototypes

● Some designers believe that prototypes are always
objects of high-fidelity artifacts
● The fidelity of the prototype must match the fidelity of
thinking and the prototype can be low, mid, or high
fidelity
Tips for Building Interactive Prototypes
Use high-fidelity prototypes to Hi-fi prototypes are great when you need to show an
visualize complex transitions animated state transition.
The more your design resembles a real product, the more

Use high-fidelity prototypes for
detailed feedback you will receive from your test
testing concepts with users
participants.
The technical feasibility issue arises with almost any

product but the risk of facing problems with technical
Create coded prototypes
feasibility is lower when designers code and create native
prototypes.
Wizard of Oz Prototype
Wizard of Oz
The wizard of oz is a variant of an interactive prototype.
● It takes its name from the story of the wizard of

oz.
● It involves faking responses to actions by users
manually or through some automation.
● The user thinks the response is driven by the
system, whereas it is usually done by a human
actor, or some basic automation.
● It can be used in both digital as well as physical
fields.
Examples of Wizard of Oz Prototypes
The wizard of oz gives an easy way to test user reactions without

having to build complex functionality. Here are some examples:
Test how users react to a new interface on a vending

machine without creating complex mechanics, but by having
someone perform the required tasks in the background
silently
Drop the drink that a user chooses into the required slot so
that the user remains unaware that the machine is not
operational, but the firm can test how well they understand
the interaction.
On the digital front, the wizard of oz technique is often used for

elements like chatbots.
An early company in the space was Aardvark, which was later

acquired by Google. Here are some of Aardvark’s activities:
Connected people with questions with people best-qualified to

answer via a digital interface over the internet
Created the network and algorithm by testing the user's reaction

to the interface well before the coding was completed
Used an instant messaging system and a team of people behind

the scenes to physically reroute questions and answers to the
right people
Learned a lot and developed their concept notably without

investing coding resources
Benefits of Wizard of Oz
The following are some of the benefits of wizard of oz:
It helps test user reaction without having to invest in

building complex functionality.
It is low-cost and often easy to set up.
Its different functionalities can be tested by changing

the actions humans do.
Physical Prototype
Physical Prototype
A physical prototype can be anything from a simple handmade

model to a fully operational model.
● It represents how the conceptual design will

correspond to real-world conditions.
● Rapid prototyping uses 3D printing and other
techniques.
● It allows firms to quickly build and test various
physical prototypes in real world conditions.
Types of Physical Prototype
These are the types of physical prototype:
This is a physical prototype which represents all the features

Working
Prototype of the conceptual design. A working prototype is functional
and corresponds to real-world conditions.
This is a physical prototype which is only developed to depict

Visual
the appearance, dimensions, and shape of the conceptual
Prototype
design.
This is similar to working prototype except that the functional

Functional prototype may be developed with a different scale and
Prototype
technique as that of the original product.
Uses of Physical Prototype
The first use of physical prototype is to determine the

production cost and issues.
The development of a physical prototype before the actual production enables

the manufacturers to take a look at any difficulty that could arise during the
manufacturing operations.
The second use of physical prototype is to evaluate and

test the products.
● A conceptual design can differ from the actual

product which can create many problems for the
manufacturer.
● This can be solved by first creating a physical
prototype by any rapid prototyping technique.
● The conceptual design can be tested in real-world
conditions.
● The manufacturer can review all the parts and
amendments in the design according to the
real-world conditions.
The third use of physical prototype is to enable better

sale of the product.
● A physical prototype will attract more customers

as compared to a mere design.
● The customer will get a better explanation of the
product with the prototype as compared to the
design.
● The customer will get to know the hidden
features of the product by a functional
prototype.
● The aesthetics of the physical prototype
developed with rapid prototyping techniques
can easily attract more customers.
The fourth use of physical prototype is to enable the

patent.
● A new design or product can easily be patented.

● With a physical prototype in hand, it is easy to see
which features of the design can be patented and
which parts need to be edited.
● This protects the manufacturers from any lawsuit
that can be filed against them in case of any
similarity with an already patented product.
● It is much easier to describe the key features to a
patent attorney with a physical prototype rather
than a conceptual design.
Case Study on Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia
Over 50 million people suffer from schizophrenia. About half of them get
treated after visible symptoms like hallucinations and paranoia.
It causes stressful symptoms like:

• Social anxiety
• Lack of motivation
• Memory challenges
Researching Needs
A digital health research group at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)
approached IDEO to help identify digital means to help these patients. They
wanted to know the following:
● Unmet needs in the patients’ life

● Interactions that impact young people
with mental illness
Researching Needs
PRIME is a digital tool that helps people with schizophrenia achieve their goals.
PRIME designers conducted comprehensive interviews to understand

the life of their patients, not just the symptoms and treatment.
Researching Needs
According to Dr. Danielle Schlosser, researcher at UCSF:
“It showed us that in order to engage our users, we

needed to provide a safe and supportive community
that directly catered to their needs. The insights we
gained enabled us to create an experience that
inspires patients to improve their quality of life by
emphasizing their strengths.”
Dr. Danielle Schlosser
Patient's Issues
People living with Schizophrenia feel

overwhelmed while:
• Socializing
• Spending time outdoors
• Exercising
Patients become isolated. Their physical health and quality of life

deteriorate. So, they drop out of their treatment.
Impact of PRIME
By the end of the depression study, 90% of participants achieved their

treatment goals, they became happier, and felt less lonely.
Schizophrenia: PRIME App
The PRIME App
PRIME: Personalized Real-time Intervention for Motivational Enhancement
• It was developed to improve patients’ quality

of life.
• This was created after an extensive user
interview.
• Prototypes and mockups were tested with
research participants.
The PRIME App
“I wish you could have witnessed my daughter’s first response to seeing the
faces and profiles on her phone. She looked at me, smiled, and said, ‘Everyone
looks normal. Everyone looks like people you see every day.’ It was as if she
looked into a mirror that reflected possibility and hope”.
The Importance of Daily Goals and Community
Users can set daily goals and connect with the community on the PRIME app.
• Users can try more than 500 small challenges.

• They can see their progress tracked through incremental
successes over time.
The Importance of Daily Goals and Community
Motivational coaches are on hand to provide cognitive behavioral therapy coaching

and encourage patients to achieve their goals.
• PRIME taps into the social network to help patients feel less
isolated
• It prompts users to snap photos of happy moments
• It highlights important events in their lives
• It shares challenges they’re proud to have accomplished
PRIME is a closed community where users can talk

freely about their challenges.
Impact of PRIME
PRIME helped patients with severe depression to reduce the

symptoms to 50%.
It was faster than it takes for traditional medication and

therapy to yield improvements.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding
According to the nature of the project, the prototype method can be chosen. The most
critical part of the prototype is storyboarding.
● Storyboarding sets the context for users to relate to the

prototype and gather inputs in the customer validation
phase.
● You can use storyboarding without a solution prototype
and sketch out key visual elements.
What Is Storyboarding?
A storyboard is a linear sequence of illustrations, arrayed together to visualize a story.
● Walt Disney Studios is credited with popularizing

storyboards since the 1920s.
● Storyboards enable Disney animators to create film
before actually building it.
What Is Storyboarding?
A storyboard helps customers visualize how they will go through the

Visualization
process easily. This makes it easier for them to state their reactions.
Storyboards can have multiple characters and talk of interactions between

Context them. This helps build empathy and give an idea of the context of
operation.
Stories capture attention. People are hardwired to respond to stories as

Engagement our sense of curiosity immediately draws us in and we engage to see what
will happen next.
When to Use Storyboarding
● Storyboards are useful when you want to test a new

concept with users.
● By depicting the journey of a prospective user and their
interactions like a visual story, you can get them to
connect with the key persona in the story.
● Storyboards are very useful in early stages of
prototyping and customer validation.
Common Myths About Storyboarding
● Storyboard need not be visually rich; it can be simple

sketches.
● Often a simple napkin sketch, presented after
explaining part of the context to the user helps
them visualize the story better and offer their
opinion.
● Storyboard is rarely used in isolation.
● It can be used after creating a story structure.
Working on a Story Structure
It is important to have a story structure in mind. A few elements that

matter in the story are:
Character Scene
● Behavior, expectations,
feelings, and any ● This is the environment
decisions of your inhabited by the
character are very character.
important. ● It should have a
● Revealing the character’s real-world context.
mind is essential to
illustrate the experience.
A few elements that matter in the story are:
It should start with a specific event and conclude with the benefit or
Plot
the problem.
The narrative in a storyboard should focus on a goal that the

Narrative
character is trying to achieve. Avoid getting into too much detail.
Making a Powerful Story
Clarity
● Everything happening around the character

should be clear as possible.
● While communicating an existing problem,
end with the full weight of the problem.
● While presenting a solution that will make
the character’s life better, end with the
benefits of that solution.
Authenticity
● The real experiences of the people for whom

you are designing
● The more realistic the storyboard is, the
better will the outcome be.
Simplicity
● Each detail in the story should be relevant to

experience.
● If a picture or phrase doesn’t add any value
to the overall message, it should be
removed.
Emotion
● It is important to bake emotion into the

story.
● Emotional state of the character can be
communicated throughout their experience.
Moments
● Break the story into key moments

● Each should provide information about the
situation and decision of the character.
Storyline and Story Frames
Storyline for Mental Health App
Tom lives alone. He’s suffering from depression

having just lost his job.
Tom’s friend Susan noticed something is wrong

with Tom, but she’s not sure how to reach out to
him.
Susan downloads Heartline app onto her phone

and adds Tom.
Periodically the app will remind Susan to check in

on Tom.
Susan checks in with Tom and lets him know how

much she cares about him.
Add Frames to the App
Once the high-level structure is ready, add frames to the story.
Roughly sketch a thumbnail in each frame of the storyboard
Emphasize each moment and think of how your character feels
Use visuals wherever possible
Comment on the back of each frame to give more context

Storyboarding
Airbnb created a list of the emotional moments that comprise an Airbnb stay.
The insight the team gained from

storyboarding is:
• Their service isn’t the website: most of
the Airbnb experience happens offline.
Thus, they started focusing on the mobile app as a medium that links online and offline.
Get Your Storyboard Ready
● For this exercise, work out the story structure where you want to get reactions from
prospective users.
● Don’t worry about the fidelity of the sketches. For now, focus on the narrative structure,
the characters, situations, and problem solving.
● Use simple sketches to add a visual element to the storyline. These could be stick figures
or paper sketches that add to the story.
● Once this is ready, test these with prospective users, along with some of the assumptions
and enablers we had listed down earlier.
Minimum Viable Product (MVP)
A common technique product firms use to test value proposition with users is
the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).
MVP is defined as that version of a new product which

allows a team to collect the maximum amount of
validated learning about customers with the least effort.
● The MVP approach suggests that instead of investing

in a full-fledged solution, we test the prototypes with
customers for feedback and product refinement.
● The focus on evaluation involves testing prototypes
with customers, learning from their feedback, and
tailoring our product or service.
Case Study on MVP for Drones to Improve Farm Yields
Drones over the Heartland
A startup at Stanford wanted to fly drones with a camera over farms to gather

hyperspectral images. These images would tell the following things to the farmers:
● Plant’s health
● Presence of bugs and diseases
● Adequate fertilizer
● Sufficient water
The information from the images would make farms better forecast their crop production.
The information gathered would help farmers improve their returns and lower their
costs by using less water, fertilizer, or chemicals.
The plan was to be a data service provider in an emerging business called precision agriculture.
They started raising funds to build a prototype minimum viable product.
● They would visit farmers’ fields on a weekly basis

● Fly the drones
● Collect and process the data
● Share data with the farmers
Happy early customer who recognized the value of their data and is willing to be
an evangelist is the key goal of MVP.
MVP Plan
The team concluded that the only way to get a delighted early customer was
to build a minimum viable product. They believed that MVP needed to:
Demonstrate a drone
flight
Ensure their software stitches

Present the data to
all the images of a field
the farmer
MVP Plan
The teams’ plan was to:
● Buy a drone and a hyperspectral camera

● Buy the software for image processing
● Spend months of engineering time integrating the
camera
● Demonstrate the Platform and software together
Key Findings
Here are the key findings by the team:
● The team confused the goal of the MVP with the process
of achieving the goal.
● They had the right goal, but the wrong MVP to test it.
Reframing the Goal
The farmer couldn’t care less whether the data came from satellites, airplanes, drones, or magic as long
as they had timely information.
● Buying a drone, camera, software, and integrating it

all was wasted time and effort.
● The team needed to spend time testing whether
farmers cared about the data.
Reframing the Goal
Steve Bank, a Silicon valley entrepreneur asked:
“Would it be cheaper to rent a camera and plane or

helicopter, and fly over the farmers field, hand
process the data and see if that’s the information
farmers would pay for? Couldn’t you do that in a day
or two, for a tenth of the money you’re looking for?”
Reframing the Goal
The startup team said:
“We’re engineers and we wanted to test all the cool

technology, but you want us to test whether we first
have a product that customers care about and
whether it’s a business. We can do that.”
Validation
Validation
The final step in the design thinking process is to:
Validate core assumptions on business feasibility
Test the solution with customers
Identify all make-or-break factors in the concept

Validation
The two key parts of validation are:
● Testing fundamental assumptions

● User research and validation
Fundamental Assumption Testing
Testing Fundamental Assumptions
During the future state mapping for our solution, we had identified various assumptions to
support our solution. These include:
● Is there a demand for the solution?

Business models and ● What kind of models are in place to support this?
viability ● Will we be able to charge enough to cover our costs
and make a profit?
● Are there elements in the current context that are likely

to change?
Context and competition ● If there are competitors in the space, are they likely to
make some moves that will affect our solution’s
acceptance?
During the future state mapping for our solution, we had identified various assumptions to
support our solution. These include:
● Are there major challenges in getting a solution ready?

● Do we know enough about these or do we have to research
Feasibility
further?
● If so, are there any critical points we need to keep in mind?
● Are there any fundamental assumptions we have made

Desirability
about users that may not be true?
We can test the fundamental assumptions by getting the team to

highlight major assumptions around:
Desirability Feasibility Viability

We can test the fundamental assumptions like a group

brainstorming session:
Give everyone five minutes to write down various assumptions made

01 around viability and potential challenges on post-its
Post this, spend five minutes each repeating the exercise on

02
desirability and feasibility
Stick the notes in three sections on a wall. If required, you can

03
classify various points into clusters that are related
04 Identify the most critical make-or-break assumptions
Assign team members to research further on these and set a date to

05
reconvene and discuss these
Need for Assumptions Testing
Assumption testing is needed for the following reasons:
● While many of these questions seem

simple enough, ignoring them leads
to wasted effort, and potentially huge
costs.
● Assumption testing helps identify
problems before investing in
solutions.
Need for Assumptions Testing
Though this appears simple, teams often miss this step. Some
reasons include:
Strong solution If you have already decided the solution will work, it is often
bias difficult to ideate about why it won’t.
The most common reason is to assume users would love your

Hubris solution, and there is no need to test it.
Risk of going Many teams often fear that if some assumptions are proved
back to the wrong, they will have to rework the process. It is the benefit of
drawing board the iterative process that design thinking recommends.
Case Study: The Cautionary Tale of Quibi
Quibi
Quibi (which stands for quick bites) was founded by Disney veteran Jeffery Katzenberg in 2018
and signed up Meg Whitman (former CEO of HP) as its CEO.
Jeffery Katzenberg Meg Whitman
They were to provide original Hollywood quality content targeting a younger demographic. The
content would be only 10 minutes long, so that users could see it when idle for a few minutes.
Early-Stage Startup
Quibi raised $1 billion in funding in the year 2018.
The initial investors were well known Hollywood studios. The tech investors included
China’s Alibaba Group.
Fundamental Premise of Quibi
Quibi was started for consumers

to entertain themselves with short Their series was stitched together
chapter content, which was made as shorter chapters.
with Hollywood quality graphics.
The core need they wanted to

To build relevance, they
address was people wanting to be
commissioned original shows by
entertained when waiting in line
Hollywood A-listers .
or having a few minutes idle.
Doubling Down on Quality
Quibi claimed its differentiator was the quality of content it could provide. It claimed to spend up to
$6 million per hour of programming, licensed from Hollywood A-listers like:
Steven Spielberg Antoine Fuqua Reese Witherspoon Guillermo del Toro

The content ordered by Quibi was all created in mobile view with episodes of less than ten
minutes.
The three types of content on the service were:

• Movies, which were broken down into chapters
• Unscripted short-form series
• Daily essentials like the news, weather, and
talk shows
The problem section describes the problems that the product solves. The solution section describes
how the product solves these problems.
Quibi spent up to $100,000 per minute on production

budgets for originals.
Quibi paid a 20% profit margin to creators and

studios.
Creator partners have the right to reassemble the episodes

into a single movie for distribution in another window.
One of the features was the ability for the content to

show up differently in landscape and portrait modes.
In landscape mode, users could see more of the background

and in the portrait, they would get a close up of the scene.
Quibi believed this was a unique experience and would be a

big hit with consumers.
Quibi Launch
Business Pricing
Quibi planned to launch about 50 original short-form titles.
The service had two price tiers:
$4.99 monthly for the service with ads
$7.99 per month without ads
In the first year, Quibi planned to launch 175 original series with 8500 episodes, and it sold
out its first-year ad inventory with $150 million in commitments from advertisers.
Quibi’s Set of Critics
Many industry observers questioned whether the concept and product hit the
sweet spot given the huge fundraising.
Desirability
• Youngsters were willing to pay a premium for high-quality content

built exclusively for the mobile
• Quibi was competing with a variety of video providers
• Huge amounts were spent on getting the best quality shows
• It was not clear that the money spent was an advantage when
platforms like TikTok and YouTube provided engaging content
Feasibility
• Looking at the CEO, founder, and the talent that Quibi enlisted,
feasibility was not a challenge for them.
Viability
The biggest questions were raised on the viability front:

• Quibi had raised a large sum at huge valuations
• Quibi didn’t count the likes of TikTok, YouTube, Netflix, or Amazon as
competition
• YouTube and TikTok were go-to platforms to find interesting content
and were free
• The bigger question was if customers would have to pay a
subscription fee
• Raised $1.4 billion by Jan 2020, but records showed that it would
spend $1.5 billion on producing content and marketing.
Launch Numbers Looked Good
Quibi launched on April 6, 2020 in the US and Canada amid the pandemic. An ad-free
US version of the app was made available in:
United Kingdom Australia
Ireland Germany
On its launch day, Quibi hit number 3 in the App store with 300k downloads.
In Google Play Store, Quibi ranked Number 11 for most downloaded apps as of April 16.
Drop in Numbers
Quibi's app fell out of the list of the 50 most downloaded free iPhone apps in the United States a
week after it was released. According to the analytics firm Sensor Tower, by early May, the app was
ranked 125th.
Everything has gone wrong due to coronavirus.
Jeffery Katzenberg
• The app was designed for users to use when on the go and between errands.
• Due to the pandemic, people weren’t stepping out, there was no value in the app’s offering.
• There were many other elements that were holding it back.
Quibi: Shutdown
User and Business Challenges
Challenges faced by Quibi:

• The initial version of the app had prevented users from taking screenshots, making them unable to
share content on social media to generate buzz around the service.
• Quibi had touted the ability to showcase content differently in landscape and portrait modes to be an
advantage.
• Quibi was competing with players like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney+, each of whom already
had a strong catalog of content that drew users.
• They did not have a free plan.
• They had promised to have 7 million active users, but the real numbers were much lower.
Statement given by Whitman:

• Ultimately, Katzenberg and Whitman acknowledged that the product
market fit was wrong and that their efforts weren't going to be enough.
• "Over the summer we started to see a slow down in our momentum and we
tried many different things, many different packing models. We changed our
marketing, we changed the app around many different times, but it was clear
for whatever reason that this wasn’t going to be as successful as Jeffrey and I
had hoped," Whitman said on CNBC on Thursday.
Meg Whitman
According to Katzenberg:
• "We had a new product and we asked people to pay for it before they
actually understood what it was. I think we thought there would be
easier adoption," Katzenberg said. "In the end, we didn’t get the support
of consumers and customers in the way we had to to make this a
successful business."
Jeffery Katzenberg
Reasons given for the shutdown in an article in the Wall Street Journal include:
• Misjudging which programming and technology features would appeal to young
consumers.
• Waiting too long to make the service available on televisions and not just phones.
• Spending on advertising that "left little financial wiggle room when the company was
struggling.“
Quibi was shut down around December 1, 2020, six months after its launch. It failed basic tests
on desirability and viability.
Customer Validation
Customer Validation
The final stage in the design thinking process is customer validation or testing.
Testing can be done throughout the process after prototyping and storyboarding.
Preparing a User Test
We can prepare for a user test in the following ways:
Get your prototype and story structure ready
Identify a context in which the product will be used
List down any fundamental assumptions around

desirability that you would like to validate
Prepare an intro script and a closing script

Intro Script
The introduction script gives the prospective user an introduction to what to test and prepares them
for the interview. Here are some points to note about the intro note:
Give them context but make it short
• Give the prospect a little bit of context to the problem you’re looking at, what you have tried, and
what you need from them in about 30 seconds
• People are uncomfortable going to restaurants due to the pandemic. However, they are still keen on
enjoying great meals.
Intro Script
Give them a timeframe
• Tell users that the discussion will take about 10-15 minutes of time.
Explain the nature of the test
• Tell users you would like to quickly walk them through the service and get their feedback.
• Give them a high-level description of the test you want to conduct, like we are looking at couples
who love eating out, but cannot due to the pandemic.
• Observe their reaction to the product and get their honest opinions, as it will help to improve the
product.
Guidelines for the Test
Here are some important guidelines for the test:
Let your users compare alternatives
● Create multiple prototypes, each with a change in variable, so that your

users can compare prototypes and tell you which they prefer.
● Users often find it easier to elucidate what they like and dislike about
prototypes when they can compare, rather than having only one type of
prototype to interact with.
Let your users experience the prototype
● Avoid over-explaining how your prototype works, or how it is supposed to

solve a problem.
● Outline your story, then let the users’ experience in using the prototype
speak for itself, and observe their reactions.
Ask users to talk through their experience

● When users are exploring and using the prototype, ask them to share their
thoughts.
● Some users may take time to get used to it, so it may be a good idea to chat
about an unrelated topic, and then prompt them by asking them questions
such as what are you thinking right now while doing this?
Observe
● Observe how your users use your prototype either correctly or incorrectly,
and try to resist the urge to correct them when they misinterpret how it’s
supposed to be used.
● User mistakes are valuable learning opportunities.
Ask follow-up questions
● Always follow up with questions, even if you think you know what the user
means.
● Ask questions such as what do you mean when you say ___?
● How did that make you feel?, and most importantly why?
Handling Negative Feedback
You can handle negative feedback in the following ways:
If users experience difficulties, there may be elements of the

solution that they find difficult to use.
Do not fear negative feedback; it helps in improving your

product.
Be sure to ask underlying questions that drive their feedback.

Closing Script
A closing script could include:
Gratitude to the
Thank them for taking the time to help you improve your
users for taking
product
time to engage
Check if they are willing to give feedback later, especially if they

A request to come
have given valuable feedback that challenges some of your
back for feedback
assumptions or plans
Closing Script
How many tests do you do?
● Plan to do at least three to five validations of the

same test with different users to avoid bias from a
single user
● Collate the feedback as a team
● Observe the patterns that emerge between different
users to address the core issues
● See if there are interesting insights or any major
challenges to your assumptions
● Choose to go back to any of the previous stages of
the design thinking process
Case Study on Airbnb
Origin of Airbnb
In 2007, Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky began Airbnb as two cash-strapped
roommates in San Francisco.
Joe Gebbia Brian Chesky
In order to pay the rent, they loaned rooms in their apartment to designers visiting the
International Design Conference.
Origin of Airbnb
Joe Gebbia sent an email to Brian Chesky, mentioning an idea of providing

bed and breakfast to designers and making a few dollars.
Almost nine years later that idea is worth $25 billion.

Origin of Airbnb
They called their new endeavor Air Bed and Breakfast, a reference to the
air mattresses that guests stayed on.
The guests loved the breakfast and the city tours organized by the pair.
Initial Traction
They approached the investors after finalizing the Air Bed and Breakfast website.
Investors weren't convinced and introductions to 15 angel investors left them with eight
rejections, and seven people ignored them completely.
Initial Traction
They decided to relaunch Air Bed and Breakfast during the 2008 Democratic National Convention in Denver.
● They knew a lack of hotel rooms meant that

people would be looking for alternatives.
● They were not sure how to grow the business,
although the service was successful initially.
Joining Y Combinator
Paul Graham, the founder of Y Combinator, invited the founders of Air Bed and
Breakfast to join his startup.
● It was a prestigious startup accelerator that

doled money and training in return for a small
portion of the company.
● The company spent the first three months of
2009 at the accelerator, working to improve its
product.
● The investors rejected them even during this
period.
Fred Wilson of Union Square Ventures admitted in 2011 that he had failed
to look beyond the name and see the business.
Wilson wrote, "We couldn't wrap our heads around air mattresses on the living room floors as
the next hotel room and did not chase the deal. Others saw the amazing team that we saw,
funded them, and the rest is history."
Despite being part of Y Combinator, the company was about to bust.
Their rental revenue had peaked at $200, and they ran out of ideas on how to
grow the business.
Spotting an Issue
The team reviewed their research results for the New York City listings with Paul Graham,
trying to understand what was not working for them. After spending time on the site using
the product, the founders realized that:
● The similarity between all the forty listings was

that the photos were not good.
● People were using their camera phones and
pictures from classified websites.
● People weren't booking rooms as they couldn't
see what they were paying for.
Spotting an Issue
The initial response to good photos showed promise, so the team wanted to test it further.
They decided the following:
● Travel to New York

● Rent a camera
● Spend some time with customers listing
properties
● Replace amateur photography with beautiful
high-resolution pictures
The team grabbed the next flight to New York and upgraded all the amateur
photos to beautiful images.
Case Study on Airbnb: Doubling down on the Hunch
Doubling down on the Hunch
The improved images doubled the weekly earnings to $400 a week.
It was the company's first financial improvement in over eight months.

They were looking for a software to solve their problems and the solutions had to be scalable,
as that is where code helps.
● Choosing a non-scalable on-ground concept

proved to be very useful in understanding
customer issues.
● Ideating on solutions without thinking about
today’s constraints proved to be advantageous
as well.
Joe Gebbia
According to Joe Gebbia, “We had this Silicon Valley mentality that you had to solve
problems in a scalable way because that's the beauty of code. Right?
You can write one line of code that can solve a problem for one customer, 10,000, or 10
million.”
Doubling Down on the Hunch
Joe Gebbia
According to Joe Gebbia, “For the first year of the business, we sat behind our computer
screens trying to code our way through problems. We believed this was the dogma of how
you're supposed to solve problems in Silicon Valley.”
Doubling Down on the Hunch
Joe Gebbia
According to Joe Gebbia, “It wasn't until our first session with Paul Graham at Y
Combinator where basically the first time someone gave us permission to do things that
don't scale, and it was in that moment, and I'll never forget it because it changed the
trajectory of the business.”
Progress of Airbnb
Airbnb raised a $600,000 seed investment from Sequoia Capital in April 2009.
They hit the accelerator on growth and learned a bunch about their business.
Progress of Airbnb
Brian Chesky lived in Airbnbs to understand how consumers experienced their

product first-hand.
As a policy, every new designer they hired had

to use their product on the first hand.
The policy also encouraged rapid ideation with designers and a better understanding of
customers and their aspirations.
Progress of Airbnb
An Airbnb designer was assigned the task to re-evaluate the star function.
In the original Airbnb product, users could star properties to add them to a wish list.
Progress of Airbnb
Gebbia recounts the story, “Our new designer comes back and says I have it. I go what do you
mean you have it? You only spent the day on it. He goes, well, I think the stars are the kinds of
things you see in utility-driven experiences. He explained our service is so aspirational. Why don't
we tap into that? He goes I'm going to change that to a heart. I go, wow, okay. It's interesting, and
we can ship it so we did.”
Progress of Airbnb
They set the code to monitor and see how users’ behavior changed.
The simple transition from a star to a heart increased engagement by more

than thirty percent.
Progress of Airbnb
These are the statistics of 2011, four years after the first air mattress guests:
● Airbnb was present in 89 countries.

● It had hit one million nights reserved on the
platform.
Some of Silicon Valley’s biggest Venture Capitalists invested $112 million into the startup,
valuing it at over $1 billion.
Write a Customer Validation Script
● Collaborate as a team and list down questions you would like to check with customers
● Write the intro script and describe the context in which you would like to validate your
product
● List down the major assumptions that you want to test and weave the questions into the
flow
● Write the closing script for the validation session
Key Takeaways
A prototype is a sample version of an actual product used

for testing before the launch.
The different prototyping methods are Sketches,

Wireframes, Mockups, Interactive Prototypes, Wizard of Oz,
and Physical Prototypes.
Storyboarding presents the larger narrative of a user’s

journey and sets the context for the user or users to relate
to the prototype.
A product is validated to make sure that all the factors that

affect the success of a product are identified and the
solution that is built is tested with customers.

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Design Thinking

Design thinking focuses heavily on understanding the users, their needs,

The importance of design thinking is pretty evident today, with the

Taking Timely Decisions

Traditional businesses are seeing huge changes in the following:

The Covid-19 pandemic has driven ﬁrms to think diﬀerently.

Twilio is a cloud communications provider that enables communications technology for

Their Chief Customer Oﬃcer claimed, “Over the last few

Changing User Preferences Adoption of an Leadership Awareness

By the end of this course, you will be able to:

Understand what design Appreciate the need for

Look at case studies on how Practice critical design thinking

Course Introduction 09 Prototyping and

Customer Journey Mapping

Self-Paced Learning Hands-on Exercises

The course features are right mix of the following:

This course is aimed at anyone who wants to:

Understand the theory of

Apply this human-centered

This course is suitable for:

Innovators Product, Growth, or Marketing Managers

Product Heads, Consultants, or Executive

Designers UX, Graphic, or Web Designers

Educators Professors, Corporate Trainers, or Researchers

The following components are included in this course:

Downloadable e-books for quick reference

Break-out exercises for applying the

The following components are included in this course:

HBR case studies to witness real-world

Spotlight videos to refresh the concepts you

The following set of assessments is included in this course:

One course-end assessment One course-end project

By the end of this lesson, you will be able to:

Deﬁne design thinking

Describe the ﬁve stages of design thinking

Build an engaging story

Describe the design thinking models

It was adopted by businesses to describe the context they operate in.

According to Rupert Murdoch:

“The world is changing very fast. Big will not beat

Most businesses use design thinking techniques to adapt to the changing

● Many of the regular assumptions of doing

Advantages of design thinking:

Helps companies to Keeps strong focus on Drives future goals for

● Nokia was the market leader in mobile phones.

● Kodak was a market leader in ﬁlms.

● Xerox was the ﬁrst to develop a graphical user interface.

Oral-B is a leading dental care organization.

IDEO was involved to help understand user preferences.

● Kids’ toothbrushes were like those of adults, only smaller

IDEO was involved to help understand user preferences.

● They observed that kids hold toothbrushes diﬀerently than

● The toothbrush was easy for kids to

BMW realized that customers’ needs are changing.

In US, BMW experimented by oﬀering a subscription service through an app.

● The app-based service called Access is designed to allow

It enables you to:

The following are the concepts of design thinking:

● It is not the exact replica of design

Design thinking involves:

Keeping users in sharp focus

Generating and prototyping the

Validating the ideas with target