Chapter 3

Design Thinking
 Learning Objectives:
The learners shall be able to:

• Define design thinking;

• Illustrate the design thinking process;
• Combine storytelling with the design thinking process;
• Adapt observation and insights in the design thinking process;
• Design interviews in the design thinking process; and
• Prepare experiments in the design thinking process.
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)

Design thinking is also known also as "outside the box

thinking”.

The said process is not just merely a process, but

completely opens a new way of 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 from the definition of Brown.
• Desirability refers to how much people want the
product and whether it meets their needs and
desires.
• Feasibility refers to whether it is technically
possible to create the product.
• Viability refers to whether the product is
financially sustainable.
•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.
 Principles About Design Thinking
1. Human-centricity and Empathy - This is about providing
solutions to problems that focuses on human needs and
user response.
2. Collaboration - Design thinking works well with diverse
composition of teams who would cooperate with each
other.
3. Ideation - The focus of design thinking is to come up
with as many ideas and potential solutions as possible.
4. Experimentation and Iteration - Ideas are turned into
prototypes. Said prototypes are tested and feedback
from users are taken.
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.

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.
•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.
•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 Design Thinking Process

• The Hasso Platter Institute of Design at Stanford

provides a five-step process in design thinking.
1.Empathize: Research About Users' Needs
• Research 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's in a given context or situation.
•Here are some key empathy-building methods to gain a
deeper understanding of the users' pulse:
1. Empathy interviews - to find out as much insight as
possible using an open conversation.
2. Immersion and Observation - users should be observed
in their natural environment or immersed in a certain
situation while they are in action.
3. Extreme Users - the needs of extreme users are usually
intensified that could help solve the problem.
4. Ask what, how, and why in curiosity – The what,
how, and why of users’ behaviour must always be
considered.
•One method that can be used to record efficiently the information from
the interview is the empathy map.
• The empathy map helps gather and organize the data from the
interview that could lead to surprising insights.

Four main components of the empathy map

1. Say - This quadrant covers what the user says loudly in an interview
or some other usability study.
e.g. "I am loyal to Jollibee because I never have a bad experience.“
2. Think - This quadrant captures what the user is thinking
throughout the experience.
e.g. A user's thought could be expressed as "This is really frustrating."
3. Do - This quadrant encompasses the actions the user
undergoes.
•Possibly the user "Shops around to compare prices“

4. Feel - This quadrant contains user's emotional state

such as his worries, excitement about a certain experience.
This is often represented by an adjective such as "confused
of too many contradictory prices"
2. Define: State Users' Needs and Problems
The first step towards defining a problem is to find
who the user is, what is his needs and then develop
insights from the answers.
The purpose of this problem statement is to
establish the core problems and generate tangible
and actionable ideas to solve the problems.
3. Ideate: Challenge Assumptions and Construct
Ideas
•Here entrepreneurs may now look for alternate
ways to view the problem and pinpoint
innovative solutions to the problem statement
created.
 Ideation Techniques
1. Brainstorm - This is a more relaxed and informal
way of solving a problem using imaginative
thinking.
2. Brainwrite - This is a serial process of asking
participants to write down their ideas about a
specific question or problem on sheets of paper.
Each participant passes his ideas on to someone
else, who reads the ideas and adds new ideas.

•The process repeats that would last from 10 to 15

minutes. Once the sheets are collected, they are
posted for discussion.
Brainwrite
3. Worst Possible Idea - This is a technique
where members of the team look for the
worst solutions in ideation periods.
4. SCAMPER- The SCAMPER method is a concept that
aims to look for solutions to problems.
The SCAMPER technique is more engrossed on the
process of discovering unfamiliar and innovative
solutions to problems. The goal of also a improving a
product or service:
a.Substitute - A designer may look for something to
replace that will result in improvements of
concept, product, service or process.
 Product: A traditional light bulb
 Substitute: A light bulb that uses LEDs instead
of filament.
 Benefit: LEDs are more energy-efficient and last
longer than filament bulbs.
b. Combine- An idea might not work alone, but a
combination of some ideas, processes or products
could work best.
• Product: A toothbrush and toothpaste
• Combine: A toothbrush with built-in toothpaste
dispenser.
• Benefit: This would be more convenient and portable.
c. Adapt - Often, there is already the right solution to
a problem, but still unknown yet. Sometimes, an idea
could solve one or more problems.
d. Modify - At times, exaggerating a situation or
problem could offer a new insight or added value.
e. Put to another use - This is making the idea or
concept works into a different use compared to what
is originally planned.
f. Eliminate - In the same process
like the Lean Six Sigma, this
concerns eliminating waste due to
inefficient processes. Removing
ineffective procedures could
reform them.
g. Rearrange/Reverse -This is doing things that are
completely against the original purpose in order to
see something from a different angle.
Clothing: Reverse the opening of a shirt, placing
buttons on the back.
4. Prototype: Start to Form Solutions
A prototype is a low-cost, scaled-down quick working
sample of entrepreneurial ideas for new products or
particular features found in these products.
Benefits about prototyping:
1.Timely feedback
2.Prompt changes save time and cost
3.Validation prior to development
4. User research and user testing- User testing shall
reveal how the product would become functional
and valued by the final user.
• Essentially, a prototype is the foundation for what
will become the minimum viable product (MVP).
An MVP is a minimum viable product that was born
out of the lean mentality pioneered by Eric Ries
from his book "The Lean Startup".
5. Test: Try Solutions Out
• The complete product is tested in real life
environment using the best solutions in the
previous step.
 The Power of Storytelling
•Stories are about specific events of real people and
their respective lives that can inspire opportunities,
ideas and solutions.
•These stories offer actual details to be used in
picturing solutions to certain problems.
•Storytelling is the core of the structure and
functions of every human being to connect events as
a complete experience through time.
 Usually, every story has the following elements:
1. Domain/What
• This is the definition of the topic that is the concern
of the story.
• In the design process, it can be the problem of a
consumer that should be resolved.
2. Players/Who
• These are the people involved in a story.
• In the design process, the main player is the persona
who represents the demographic information of the
consumer who faces the experiences.

There could be other players involve in the story

such as those who are part of the support groups or
those employees that directly communicate with the
customers.
3. Story flow/How - There are three main chapters
for each story namely the beginning, middle, and
end.
• In every story there is problem that could be
part of the middle stage which is the target in
the design process.
 Storytelling in the Design Process
The Double Diamond
• The Double Diamond- a process that use both the
divergent and convergent thinking.
• The two diamonds represent a process of exploring an
issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking) and
then taking focused action (convergent thinking).
• Divergent thinking- solves problem by proposing
multiple possible solutions to identify the one that is
best.
• Convergent thinking- concentrates on finding the
single best solution to a problem.
• In the Double Diamond many ideas are generated,
then refine and confine to the best idea.
Double Diamond
1. Understand -The first diamond helps people
define what the problem is and involves talking to
and spending time with people who are part of the
issues.
2. Define -The understanding from the discovery
phase can help describe the challenge in a different
manner.
3. Develop -The second diamond inspires people to
offer multiple answers to the well-defined problem,
trying to find motivation from elsewhere and co-
designing with a variety of diverse people.
4. Deliver - Delivery includes experimenting
different solutions in a limited way, discarding those
that are not feasible and refining the ones that will
work.
 Double Diamond
• Discover (divergent thinking) - Exploring the problem
space broadly and deeply.
• Define (convergent thinking) - Refining the problem
and identifying the core challenge.
• Develop (divergent thinking) - Generating a wide
range of potential solutions.
• Deliver (convergent thinking) - Evaluating and refining
the solution to its final form.
 Steps in Story Telling
1. Problem Framing
Deals with exploring the problem to know exactly
the concern that needs a solution. Here
storytelling is used to identify the problem using
qualitative data from the consumers.
2. Solution Framing

• The designer needs to test and evaluate a number of

possible solutions to obtain the best solution based on the
standpoint of the user.

• Storytelling is used in this stage to confirm the efficiency

of the solution by creating a two-way communication with
the consumer. Here the designer must know if the
solution really works best for the consumer.
3. Solution Implementation
• The consumer feedback about the product or the
service can be collected as basis for improvement.
• Storytelling can be used as an instrument to discover
how the end product is used by consumers in their
everyday lives. From the feedback sessions, the
information gathered could become useful in
enhancing a better version of the product in the future.
Example: A good example of the use of storytelling happened
with the Coca-Cola's Happiness Machine campaign. It featured a
Coca-Cola vending machine converted to deliver astonishing
"doses" of happiness to unsuspicious college students. The
machine was placed in the center of the student cafeteria at the
Queens, NY, campus of St. John's University. The apparently typical
Coke machine, something very familiar to most people was in
complete sight of five intentionally positioned unseen cameras.
The candid camera angles capture the joy and happiness of those
in the video. The video revealed unpretentious surprise and
delight on the students' faces when they interacted with the Coca-
Cola 'Happiness Machine.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fC8VrqFCNLM
 Observation and Insights

•Knowing what customers think or feel is the initial

step towards making innovative products and
services that they want and need.
Example: The everyday task of floor mopping.
Procter & Gamble made observations of people cleaning
floors. From the observation, generated insights such as people do
not like washing floor with water using mop and water does not
help in eliminating dirt. Hence, from these insights a new product
with the brand name Swiffer was born. The Swiffer brand is a
waterless mop that cleans surfaces easier and conveniently. The
researchers here were able to identify the unexpected pattern the
troublesome mopping with water and a product that makes
mopping easier. From a different angle, coming from those
meaningful insights given the primary need of avoiding messy and
dirty water was resolved because of Swiffer mop.

Source: https://swiffer.com/
Observation
 Interview
• Interviewing is an important tool to identify and empathize
with customers’ needs, form fresh ideas and find out new
opportunities.
• An expert interviewer should be open-minded, a skilled
listener, a keen observant, flexible and exhibits patience.
• Most business owners interview their customers right after
purchase for feedback. However, entrepreneurs also interview
people for ideas and insights in addition to the identification of
needs during the design thinking process.
 Experiments
• Experiment is an approach of approving or
disproving the soundness of an idea or
hypothesis.
• For majority of entrepreneurs, it is through
experimentation that new innovations, initiatives,
ideas and opportunities are revealed.
• Entrepreneurs in the food venture may experiment
with recipes and flavors to come up with new
menus.
• Those in the fashion industry may possibly
experiment with designs, fabrics and distributions
to create a stylish brand.
• A concept prototype may perhaps be a good
experiment for a technology company.
 Art and Science Applied to
Entrepreneurship
• As an art, an entrepreneur must have a creative
thinking skill to make some ingenious ideas and
make the entrepreneurial process a great success.
• Science, on the other hand, calls for combining
new information into prevailing models, or
adding new models to a superior body of
knowledge.
•The scientific method was used by tech giants such
as Uber or Facebook.
•Facebook, for example, originally released their site
only with Harvard students. Later it was opened for
students from all universities. After two years,
Facebook was available to everyone else.
•Likewise, Uber did the same thing. The service was
tested initially with the founders' friends. After a
few months, the app was launched in San Francisco
then later to other large cities in the United States.
After three years, the startup raised enough money
to grow globally. Today it is present in more than
 Activities
1. Problem Worth Solving( ½ sheet of paper)
In this exercise you are to think of several solutions you will develop using
design thinking.
a. Think of a problem in your environment/community that you believe is a
problem worth solving. Make a description of your “problem worth solving”.
b. Based on the standpoint of the users, form various solutions using design
thinking to your identified problem. Fill out the template below.
Idea No. Description of the Idea

1.

2.

3.
2. Article :“How Indra Nooyi Turned Design Thinking
into Strategy: An Interview with PepsiCo’s CEO” and
answer the questions below it.
 Critical Thinking Questions
1. What is a good design to Ms. Indra Nooyi? Do
you agree with her? Explain your side.
2. How does Ms. Indra Nooyi describe women
when they eat their snacks? So how was the
findings here put into use by Pepsi on a stacked
chip it introduced in the market?
3. Based from the experience of Pepsi, is design
thinking really important? Why?