My Idea of Design Thinking
Introduction
Design Thinking: So, what exactly is design thinking? Well, design thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving. Professionals who use design thinking, attempt to create innovative solutions through empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. As a graphic designer, I comb through these steps for each of my projects. This allows me to create an effective design that will resonate with my audience.
Why is it important?
Design thinking is important because not only does it find a solution, but it finds the most effective solution. Effective solutions can lower risks, minimize costs, and save time. You can use design thinking in your everyday life as well! By simply following the steps of empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, you can participate in design thinking.
Empathizing
Empathizing is the first step in the design thinking process, thus it holds high importance. Now, make sure that you don’t confuse empathizing with sympathizing. Sympathy involves feeling pity or sorrow for someone else. Empathy is the ability to understand the feelings of someone else. See the difference?
“In design thinking, your goal is to understand the people for whom you design, not react to their current predicament in an emotional way” (Dam, Siang, 2020).
The practice of empathy is much more effective in solving problems than that of sympathy. By understanding how people are feeling, we can waste no time, and begin crafting human-centered solutions.
Defining
Once you understand your audience’s needs it is time to pinpoint the specific problem. In the define stage, you will take a moment to analyze your observations from the empathize stage. This is best done collaboratively, as different perspectives will lead you to more innovative solutions. While defining your problem, be sure to pitch it from a user perspective. In other words, rather than stating what is needed, articulate why something is needed. By doing this, your defined problem will be more user-centric.
Ideating
In the third phase of the design thinking process, you will begin generating ideas. There are many ways to ideate, and personally, I think this is where you can make things fun. Try your best to come up with a solution, and I mean any solution to your problem.
“Look at the problem from different perspectives and ideate innovative solutions to your problem statement” (Dam, 2022).
It does not matter how ridiculous or crazy it may seem… write it down. This is how the best inventions were made. Remember, there was no iPhone before Steve Jobs came along and dreamt it up! Just generate, generate, generate ideas. You may even create the next big invention.
Prototyping
This phase is experimental. The goal of prototyping is to identify your best ideations, and then visualize them. To visualize, try to create inexpensive and scaled-down versions of your product solutions. For example, if your product is a mobile app, simply create wireframes of your page designs. Make sure that your prototypes are well-functioning enough, as they will be important when moving on to user testing.
Test
Finally, the last stage in the design thinking process is testing. Here is where you will take your best prototype solutions and see if they are easy to use. Tell the user to complete a user goal, but try not to guide them in any way. By allowing the user to navigate the product on their own, you can note what parts of it are truly user-friendly.
“The ultimate goal is to get as deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible” (Dam, 2022).
The significance of the testing phase lies in the understanding that it doesn’t truly mark the end of the design thinking process. In actuality, the design thinking process functions as a continuous loop, not a linear sequence of steps. “Design thinkers” must proceed from the testing phase, back to the empathizing stage until the product is as optimal as it can be.
Conclusion
By empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing, you can greatly improve your problem-solving skills. Those who embrace design thinking can create the most innovative and effective solutions that best combine aesthetics with functionality.
Hi! My name is Kristin Ardese and I am a professional Graphic Designer and Marketing Strategist. I hope that by sharing some of my expertise, I can help offer valuable insights and build an engaging community.
