The slogan 'innovate or die' stands true to its words as brands can only survive in the market if
they are constantly innovating and offering something new. That said, innovation and creativity
don't come easy.
Thinking in design empowers the designers to create the right features for the right people. It
defines the user experience clearly as a whole not merely in terms of interaction and visual
design.
It ensures that designers deal with real user problems and thus avoid creating something that is
undesirable.
Building features are simple; however, the real trick lies in forming the right features for the
right people. The concept allows the designers to pose the right questions, create the right
features and engage with the clients effectively.
Design Thinking is a systematic approach to handling problems and generating new opportunities.
The concept is pertinent to any field and purpose. Say, if you want to build a new product or
customer experience or even take the business to the next level, this approach touches everywhere.
It is seen that the design principles contribute significantly in elevating the success rate for
innovation.
The five stages of Design Thinking are as follows:
Empathize. The first stage of the Design Thinking process demands gaining an empathic understanding
of the problem you're trying to solve, typically through some form of user research. It highlights
the significance of listening to the requirements and wants of our customers, relative to the
particular problem.
Empathy is crucial because it allows you to set aside your own assumptions about the world in order
to gain insight into users and their needs. This stage involves entering the realm of the users and,
as far as possible, "becoming" them so as to begin work on custom-designing a solution.
Define. Here we combine all the insights collected at the time of listening and observing people.
You analyze your observations and synthesize them in order to define the core problems you and your
team have identified so far. That means we start to define a problem.
An aspect that design thinking proves vital at is framing a problem in a clear manner so that we
end up devising solutions and exploring opportunities. This is where you ensure that what you are
addressing sits in sharp relief before you, its properties known in full.
Ideate. The process's third stage finds you ready to start generating ideas. So, now as the problem
or the opportunity is clearly framed, we can search for methods to handle it. We should spur as
many ideas as possible. Yes, we brainstorm or ideate.
Design Thinking stresses that during this phase, we shouldn't ignore ideas that seem obvious or
easy. Any idea can sprout a brilliant concept. So, make sure to look into each and very idea with
a fresh mindset. To finalize this stage, we shortlist the best and leave the rest.
Prototype. In the Prototype phase of Design Thinking, your design team produce a number of
inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product or specific features found within the product so
you can investigate the problem solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototyping brings the
solutions into vision. No matter whatever method you opt, the core purpose of this stage remains
the same, that is, we intend to create rough drafts of solutions to decide if these will prove
beneficial for the problem.
Test. In the Test phase of Design Thinking, you rigorously test the completed product using the
best solutions identified during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage; however, in an
iterative process, the results generated during the testing phase are what you will often use to
redefine one or more problems.
We must understand the dynamic concept of Design Thinking that fully caters to the user-oriented,
prototype-centered process of innovation ideally suited for product, service and business design.