Design Thinking: Inspiration

Learning Outcomes
At the end of the lecture, you should be able to:

• Understand the concept of design thinking

• Describe the steps of design thinking
• Identify between Tame vs Wicked Problems
• Explain Framing The Challenge

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 What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to

understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and
create innovative solutions to prototype and test.

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 Why Design Thinking?

Human-centered design is uniquely situated to arrive at

solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable.

By starting with humans, their hopes, fears, and needs, we

quickly uncover what’s most desirable.

But that’s only one lens through which we look at our

solutions.

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 Why Design Thinking?

Once we’ve determined a range of solutions that could

appeal to the community we’re looking to serve, we then
start to home in on what is technically feasible to actually
implement and how to make the solution financially viable.

It’s a balancing act, but one that’s absolutely crucial to

designing solutions that are successful and sustainable

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 Example of Design Thinking
Embracing human-centered design means believing that all
problems, even the seemingly intractable ones like poverty,
gender equality, and clean water, are solvable. Moreover, it
means believing that the people who face those problems
every day are the ones who hold the key to their answer.

Human-centered design offers problem solvers of any stripe

a chance to design with communities, to deeply understand
the people they’re looking to serve, to dream up scores of
ideas, and to create innovative new solutions rooted in
people’s actual needs.
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 How is Design Thinking Done?

1. Adopt the Mindsets

2. Understand the Process
3. Use the Tools
4. Trust the Process Even if it Feels Uncomfortable
5. Create Real Impact

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
1. Adopt the Mindsets

Dream up lots of ideas and make the ideas tangible so that

it can be tested and then refine the ideas.

The approach amounts to wild creativity, to a ceaseless

push to innovate, and a confidence that leads us to
solutions we’d never dreamed of when we started.

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
1. Adopt the Mindsets

The philosophy of design and the seven mindsets are:

• Empathy,
• Optimism,
• Iteration,
• Creative Confidence,
• Making,
• Embracing Ambiguity,
• Learning from Failure.

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
2. Understand the Process

Human-centered design is not a perfectly linear process,

and each project invariably has its own contours and
character.

Design challenge goes through three main phases (3 I’s):

• Inspiration
• Ideation
• Implementation

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
3. Use the Tools

Maintain creativity
Thinking generative Iterate based on
Conduct interviews and energy working Share what is made
and sharp the feedback
in teams

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
3. Use the Tools
After a comprehensive set of exercises and activities that
will take you from framing up your design challenge to
getting it to market.

Some of these methods twice or three times and some not

at all as you work through your challenge.

Taken as a set, they’ll put you on the path to continuous

innovation.

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
4. Trust the Process Even if it Feels Uncomfortable
You’ll find yourself frequently shifting gears through the
process, and as you work through its three phases you’ll
swiftly move from concrete observations to highly abstract
thinking, and then right back again into the nuts and bolts
of your prototype. We call it diverging and converging.

But because the goal is to have a big impact in the world,

we have to then identify what, among that constellation of
ideas, has the best shot at really working. You’ll diverge
and converge a few times, and with each new cycle you’ll
come closer and closer to a market ready solution.
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 How is Design Thinking Done?
4. Trust the Process Even if it Feels
Uncomfortable

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
5. Create Real Impact
By starting with humans, their hopes, fears, and needs, we
quickly uncover what’s most desirable. But that’s only one
lens through which we look at our solutions. Once we’ve
determined a range of solutions that could appeal to the
community we’re looking to serve, we then start to home in
on what is technically feasible to actually implement and
how to make the solution financially viable. It’s a balancing
act, but one that’s absolutely crucial to designing solutions
that are successful and sustainable

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 How is Design Thinking Done?
5. Create Real Impact

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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

1.
2. Define 3. Ideate
Empathise

4.
5. Test  
Prototype
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users'

Needs

Empathy is crucial to a human-centered design process such as

design thinking because it allows you to set aside your own
assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and
their needs.

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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and

Problems
You then analyze your observations and synthesize them to
define the core problems you and your team have identified.

These definitions are called problem statements. You can create 

personas to help keep your efforts human-centered before
proceeding to ideation

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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and

Create Ideas
The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases
means you can start to “think outside the box”, look for
alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative
solutions to the problem statement you’ve created. 

Brainstorming is particularly useful here.

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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best
possible solution for each problem found.

Your team should produce some inexpensive, scaled-down

versions of the product (or specific features found within the
product) to investigate the ideas you’ve generated.

This could involve simply paper prototyping.

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 The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

Although this is the final phase, design thinking is

iterative: Teams often use the results to redefine one or
more further problems.

Return to previous stages to make further iterations, alterations

and refinements – to find or rule out alternative solutions.

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 Tame vs Wicked Problems

Have you ever tried to solve a problem that defied you?

If so, it might have been a “wicked” problem and you might

have been approaching it with a “tame” problem mindset.

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 Wicked problem

• Wicked problems often crop up when organisations face constant change or

unprecedented challenges.
• They occur in a social context; the greater the disagreement among
stakeholders, the more wicked the problem.
• In fact, it’s the social complexity of wicked problems as much as their
technical difficulties that make them tough to manage.
• Not all problems are wicked; confusion, discord, and lack of progress are
telltale signs that an issue might be wicked.

Source: John C. Camillus (2008)

https://hbr.org/2008/05/strategy-as-a-wicked-problem
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 Wicked problem

Source: Jobst B., Meinel C. (2014) How Prototyping Helps to Solve Wicked Problems. In: Leifer L., Plattner H., Meinel C. (eds) Design
Thinking Research. Understanding Innovation. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-01303-9_8
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 Tame vs Wicked Problems
To understand the difference between wicked and tame
problems, consider that the typical approach to solving any
problem is a linear process such as:

1.identify the problem

2.brainstorm alternative solutions
3.select criteria for evaluating solutions
4.evaluate solutions
5.select best alternative
6.apply the selected alternative to the problem
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 Tame vs Wicked Problems Example
A tame problem is one that can be solved by choosing and applying
the correct algorithm.
For instance, suppose that you knew how to make strawberry
shortcake for 6 people, but needed instead to make it for 60.
Multiplying the ingredients and changing the logistics is a tame
problem.

A wicked problem, however, is one for which there is no known

algorithm to solve it. 
Examples include strategic planning, satisfying customers,
transforming organizations, or protecting the environment.

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 Framing The Challenge
Properly framing your design challenge is
critical to your success.

Getting the right frame on your design

challenge will get you off on the right foot,
organize how you think about your solution,
and at moments of ambiguity, help clarify
where you should push your design.

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 Framing The Challenge

Framing your design challenge is more art than science,

but there are a few key things to keep in mind.

First, ask yourself: Does my challenge drive toward

ultimate impact, allow for a variety of solutions, and take
into account context?

Dial those in, and then refine it until it’s the challenge
you’re excited to tackle
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 Steps in Framing Challenge

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 Steps in Framing Challenge
STEP 1
WRITING YOUR DESIGN CHALLENGE.

Start by taking a first stab at writing your design challenge.

It should be short and easy to remember, a single sentence

that conveys what you want to do.

We often phrase these as questions which set you and

your team up to be solution-oriented and to generate lots of
ideas along the way
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 Steps in Framing Challenge
STEP 2
FRAME THE DESIGN CHALLENGES
Properly framed design challenges drive toward ultimate
impact, allow for a variety of solutions

Take into account constraints and context.

Now try articulating it again with those factors in mind.

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 Steps in Framing Challenge
STEP 3
DO NOT GO EITHER TOO NARROW OR
TOO BROAD.
Another common pitfall when scoping a design challenge is
going either too narrow or too broad.

A narrowly scoped challenge won’t offer enough room to

explore creative solutions.

A broadly scoped challenge won’t give you any idea where

to start
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 Steps in Framing Challenge
STEP 4
ARRIVING AT A GOOD SOLUTION
Now that you’ve run your challenge through these filters, do it
again.

It may seem repetitive, but the right question is key to arriving

at a good solution.

A quick test we often run on a design challenge is to see if we

can come up with five possible solutions in just a few minutes.

If so, you’re likely on the right track.

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 Methods of Inspiration Phrase

• To create a Project Plan

• Build a Team
• Recruiting Tools
• Secondary Research
• Interview

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 Framing The Challenge
WORKSHEET
1) Take a stab at framing it as a design question. 

2) Now, state the ultimate impact you’re trying to have.

3) What are some possible solutions to your problem?

Think broadly. It’s fine to start a project with a hunch or two, but make sure you
allow for surprising outcomes.

4) Finally, write down some of the context and constraints that you’re facing.
They could be geographic, technological, time-based, or have to do with the
population you’re trying to reach.

5) Does your original question need a tweak? Try it again.

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 SUMMARY OF MAIN
TEACHING POINTS

 Understand the concept of design

thinking
Describe the steps of design thinking
Identify between Tame vs Wicked
Problems
Explain Framing The Challenge

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 QUESTION AND ANSWER

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