How Real Is Design Thinking?

DESIGN THINKING is not new; the term was mentioned by Nobel Laureate Herbert A. Simon way back in 1969 in his book, The Sciences of the Artificial.

- Jayesh Shah

As Sarah Gibson of Nielsen Norman Group has written, there were innovators like Charles and Ray Eames, whose moto was learning by doing” and who looked at needs and constraints before getting down to designing the famous Eames chair which is in vogue even today. The concept has evolved over the years and the credit for bringing it into the mainstream should go to Tim Brown of IDEO, a global design and consulting firm. But what exactly is Design Thinking? Itis an approach to solving problems and creating innovative solutions. It is considered to be very useful for problems that are not well defined, aka wicked problems. Wicked” problems, is a term introduced by Horst

Rittel and Melvin Webber in 1973 to define social and cultural problems that are complex and difficult to solve because of their inherent nature.

The process of Design Thinking consists of five steps:

Phase1: Empathise

Understand the problem domain through empathy with the target group and focus on their needs.

Phase 2: Define

Analyse the information gathered and define problem statements and create personas.

Phase3: Ideate

Start brainstorming and looking for alternatives and possible solutions.

Phase 4: Prototype

Experiment, find possible solutions and build low-cost prototypes.

Phase5: Test

Test the prototypes, refine them ifnecessary, retestand find the best solution.

The above phases are not sequential, as is evident from the diagramme and will be repeated till the ideal solution is found.

In short, it is an iterative process which emphasises n the need to empathise with the User/System, articulate the problem at hand clearly, think of various solutions, build prototypes and test them to figure out the best fit.