TITLE OF THE LESSON: DESIGN THINKING

INTRODUCTION:
"The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you're trying to design for
Leadership is exactly the same thing-building empathy for the people that you're entrusted to
help."
-David Kelley, Founder of IDEO

These few years, the design thinking process has increasingly become well known Possibly, this
is due to the high success of big and global companies that made use of this process. Known also
as "outside the box thinking" said process is not just merely a process, but completely opens a
new way of thinking. Said process provides a pool of practical means to help apply this new
mindset. Design thinking helps improve the world through the generation of innovative solutions
from ordinary problems to the most complicated ones being experienced every day. Hence, design
thinking is now being taught in top colleges and universities globally and being promoted in all
business levels.

What is Design Thinking?

For the Chief Executive Officer, Tim Brown of IDEO, design thinking is "a discipline that
uses the designer's sensibility and methods to match people's needs with what is technologically
feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market
opportunity" IDEO is a consulting company founded in California in 1991 that uses the design
thinking approach to design products, services, environments. and digital experiences. Therefore,
design thinking is a combination of desirability, feasibility and viability based on the definition
of Brown.

Basically, design thinking is a constant process of trying to find innovative solutions to

problems through deep understanding and empathy of the target user. It seeks to develop complete
understanding of the people involved in the problem through solution-based approach and not
those common problem-solving methods. Design thinking offers a means of digging that bit deeper
to disclose ways of improving user experiences
Usually, design thinking involves the process of questioning. Simply, said process
involves enquiring about the problem, enquiring on the assumptions, and enquiring on what
the implications would be. Ideas are usually formed by brainstorming sessions to re-structure the
problem in human-centric ways.
Solving problems requires performing the appropriate type of research, forming prototypes, and
testing the products and/or services to discover new approaches in satisfying users' needs. This
thinking also involves experimentation and trying out concepts and ideas.

Airbnb made use of design thinking from the human insights that people wanted to
share and leverage their assets, hence the birth of "shared economy". Apple did design
thinking and made the phone a remote control of everyone's lives Due to the fact that design
thinking is problem-solving oriented, it becomes striking not only for corporations but also to
entrepreneurs, who want to run customer-oriented businesses and provide the best products to
their clients.

Here are some of the principles about design thinking to wit:

1. Human-centricity and Empathy- This is about providing solutions to problems that focuses on
human needs and user response. The drivers of innovations are people and not merely technology.
Hence, the process should really contain a step that considers the shoes of users and relate to
them with genuine empathy

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2 Collaboration - The purpose of design thinking is to form a pond of perspectives and ideas.
These ideas shall be used in innovation. Design thinking works well with diverse composition
of teams who would cooperate with each other.

3. Ideation-Ideation is a core design thinking principle at the same time a step in the
design thinking process. The focus of design thinking is to come up with as many ideas and
potential solutions as possible. As a step, participants are encouraged to produce many ideas
without first considering the quality
4. Experimentation and Iteration-Ideas are turned into prototypes. Said prototypes are
tested and feedback from users are taken. Design thinking is a continuous and repetitive
process to discover mistakes and defects of the initial versions until getting the preferred form
of the proposed solution.
5. A bias towards Action-Design thinking is an applied and practical solution-based
method that is more focus on action rather than on discussion. This method favors a faceto-
face engagement through "going out in the field" Instead of discussing on the possible
solutions, these solutions are turned into concrete prototypes and tested out in the real world.

The Origins of Design Thinking.

In the 50s and 60s onwards, design-thinking emerged because of the issues of collective
problem solving of significant societal changes by engineers, architects and industrial designers
at that time. In his 1969 book entitled "The Sciences of the Artificial", Herbert A. Simon first
mentioned about design thinking as a way of thinking. A cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize
laureate, Simon since then contributed numerous ideas in the principles of design thinking
Design thinking begun to combine the human, technological, strategic needs and
innovation technology in the 1970s. Across a wide range of industries, design thinking since then
continues to be explored and enhanced particularly in business. Simon outlined the first formal
models of the design thinking process consisting of seven major stages. In the 21st century, there
are many variants of design thinking that came out with different number of stages in the process.
Another famous design thinking model was that of the five-stage design thinking model
suggested by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. The design thinking process
has become popular because it was strategic to the success of many prominent, international
companies such as Google, Apple and Airbnb. These organizations have applied design thinking to
remarkable effect. This "outside the box thinking" is now taught at distinguished universities
worldwide and is promoted not only in business but to all types of organizations. The five-stage
design thinking would be the model that will be used in this book

The Design Thinking Process

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford provides a five-step process in design
thinking. In reality, the process follows a flexible and non-linear fashion, rather than sequential
steps. The process often occurs in parallel and be repeated iteratively.
It can be seen in Figure 2 that there is always feedback coming from the earlier step Information is
taken continuously in order to have a deep knowledge of the problem and the solutions. There is
an unending loop so that the designer can gain insights constantly, produce new ways of seeing
the product and its likely uses and understand deeply the users and their problems

The five phases of Design Thinking, according to d school, are as follows

Empathize: Research About Users' Needs
Using research, the first step in the design thinking process allows to obtain understanding of
the people who experience a problem before designing a solution to serve them. Empathy
describes the ability to put oneself in another person's shoes to really see the world through people
in a given context or situation. It involves observing engage to understand their experiences and

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motivations and immersing in the physical environment of users who will be affected by the design.
Since design thinking is a human-centered design process, it needs empathy to gain real insight
into users and their needs and the problems that underlie the development of a particular product
and/or service.

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