Design Thinking:
Improves Innovation, Efficiency & Connection!
According to Charles Kettering, a renowned engineer, inventor,
businessman, and owner of no fewer than 186 patents, "If you have
always done it that way, it is probably wrong." There are times when a
new process of organising work produces remarkable improvements.
By combining a variety of tools & with the realisation that workers on
the shop floor could perform much higher level work than they were
typically required to, Total Quality Management achieved this in the
manufacturing industry in th
e 1980s. When used in a work process, that
combination of instruments and knowledge can be referred to as social
technology.
Design thinking came into being as a method for developing
cutting-edge & elegant new products and technology. It is a method of
problem-solving that places the needs of the customer above all else. It
relies on empathetically observing the way individuals engage with
their surroundings and uses a hands-on, iterative process to develop
creative solutions.
The goal of design thinking is to approach complex problems from a
user-centric perspective. It is not only an ideology but also a process. It
is concentrated on achieving realistic outcomes and solutions that are:
Technically possible: They are capable of being transformed into useful products or procedures
Economically feasible: The company can afford to put them into practice;
User-desirable: They satisfy a genuine human need
The philosophy behind design thinking holds that one must embrace a
designer's worldview and approach the issue from the perspective of
the user to formulate novel solutions. How
ever, design thinking is all
about doing; the goal is to quickly translate your concepts into
real-world, testable products or processes
.
The concept is "human-centered," which means it makes use of data
about how users actually interact with a good or service, as opposed to
the way another person or a company believes they will interact with it.
Designers must obs
erve how users interact with a product or service in
order to be truly human-centered. They must then make adjustments
to the design to enhance the user experience. This is where design
thinking becomes "iterative." It prefers action over incessant study or
rumination, favouring moving forward in order to get prototypes out to
test.
Organizations are able to provide consumers with lasting value thanks
to design thinking. Any complex system can benefit from the process
because it:
Seeks to meet specific human needs
Focuses on ambiguous or challenging-to-define issues
Results in inventive solutions
Helps businesses operate efficiently and proficiently
Design thinking is frequently criticised by seasoned designers as being
too linear and structured. And that's unquestionably true for them.
However, managers on innovation teams are frequently not designers
and aren't accustomed to conducting in-person customer research,
immersing themselves in their viewpoints, co-creati
ng with
stakeholders, or planning and carrying out experiments. Managers can
try to adapt to these new behaviours with the aid of structure and
linearity.
As stated by Kaaren Hanson, who was formerly Facebook's design
product director and was previously Intuit's head of design innovation:
“Anytime you’re trying to change people’s beh
avior, you need to start
them off with a lot of structure, so they don’t have to think. A lot of what
we do is a habit, and it’s hard to change those habits, but having very
clear guardrails can help us.”