Framework library · Innovation and product

Design thinking

Design thinking starts from the people who have a problem rather than from the solution a business would like to sell. Its five modes (empathise, define, ideate, prototype, test) move from watching users, to a need stated in their terms, to rough prototypes that real users try. What makes it work is that a cheap prototype in a user's hands teaches more than a long debate in a meeting room.

LevelIntermediate
TimeTwo to six weeks for one problem, with a few days in each mode
Who to involveA small team with a designer or researcher, someone from operations and the person who owns the product, all of whom can spend time with users rather than only in workshops.
Also calledhuman-centred design, human-centered design, design thinking process, empathise define ideate prototype test

Use it when

  • The problem is about how people experience a product or service, such as installation, billing or reporting a fault, and the numbers say something is wrong without saying why.
  • Earlier fixes were designed from the inside and did not move the measure they were meant to move.
  • You need several candidate solutions to compare, not one proposal to approve.
  • The users are unlike the people designing for them, for example field engineers, small business owners or older customers.

Avoid it when

  • The problem is technical and well specified, such as a capacity shortfall on a route. Engineering analysis will be faster.
  • The decision is which market to enter or where to put capital. Use market sizing, a business case or the Ansoff matrix.
  • Nobody can spend time with real users. Workshops built on assumed needs produce the ideas the team already had. Run interviews first, or frame the need with jobs to be done.
  • The solution has already been chosen and the exercise is for show. Users notice, and so does the team.

How to run it

  1. Watch the people who have the problem

    Go where it happens: the living room during an install, the van with an engineer, the shop counter. Record what people do, not only what they say, and note every workaround.

  2. Write the need as a point of view

    One sentence naming the user, what they need to do and the insight that explains why it is hard today. It must not name a solution.

  3. Generate many ideas before judging any

    Aim for quantity first, then cluster and choose two or three that differ in kind. Include at least one that changes the process rather than the product.

  4. Build the cheapest prototype a user can try

    A printed card, a clickable mock-up, a colleague playing the part of the app. It should take days, cost little and be easy to throw away.

  5. Test with real users and watch

    Five to eight users usually reveal the main problems. Let them use it without help, note where they hesitate, change the prototype and test again.

  6. Decide what goes forward and how to measure it

    Carry forward what worked, with the measure you expect it to move, and hand the evidence to the team that will build it.

Work through it

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Mistakes to avoid

  • Running the empathy work as a survey. Observation finds the workarounds that people do not think to mention.
  • Defining the problem as the absence of a favoured solution ("customers need an app"). A good point of view allows several solutions.
  • Polishing the first prototype. The more it costs, the less willing the team is to throw it away.
  • Testing with colleagues or friendly customers, who forgive what real users will not.
  • Treating the five modes as a one-way sequence. Most projects loop back from testing to defining at least once.

Where it comes from

No single originator: design researchers used the phrase in the 1980s (Peter G. Rowe, Design Thinking, MIT Press, 1987), and Tim Brown of the design firm IDEO set it out as a method for business in "Design Thinking", Harvard Business Review, June 2008. The five modes used here are those taught by Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school). The UK Design Council's Double Diamond (discover, define, develop, deliver), developed between 2002 and 2004, describes the same movement from understanding a problem to testing solutions. Source.

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