DESIGN THINKING & IT'S IMPORTANCE | B-SCHOOL

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What is Design Thinking and Why is it Important?

3 Apr 2022
- admin
- Innovation & Design Thinking
#DesignThinkingShowcase

Design Thinking is a way of life which enables you to take creative approaches to problem solving. It is process where we try to understand the user, get his perspective and redefine the problems for finding creative solution. Let’s not confuse creative solution with highly innovative solution, the core of design thinking is understanding the problem and coming up creative and easy solution. Though design thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems, it is not about generating solutions or alternative solutions but more about understanding the user and getting to know his part of problem. Design thinking is practiced in five stages:
- Empathize
- Define
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test
It is important to note that the five stages are not always in sequence. They do not need to follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and repeat iteratively.

1. Empathize – Before you begin with anything you need to understand your user

Empathy is an important starting line for successful creative solutions. Though you solve problem for businesses, but they don’t come as your first priority as they are not the consumer. This can sound harsh, however deeply understanding the consumer is the most important for assuring success to business. It is the only way to unlock new solutions that identify blind spots and identify emergent opportunities. This means observing and engaging with consumers on an emotional and even psychological level. One must keep aside the preset assumptions aside and derive real insights.

2. Define: What is the problem?

Once you have been through the empathizing stage, you would have the fair idea about the problems, hinderances and issues of the consumer, you will analyze your observations & insights and built them together to define the core problem in a human centered manner. A great creative brief, built with both strategic focus and creative inspiration, is the key to unlocking the best solutions and building consensus along the way.

3. Ideate: What if?

As soon as we’ve formulated the problem right in clear expression, we move into the ideation stage where we challenge the existing assumptions and create ideas for innovative solutions. We must align on where the problem could take us and check the creative legs and durability of the opportunities we see in problem. Brainstorming, mind-mapping, are all viable tools to complete this brilliant but consuming phase. The key is to create an environment where divergent and provocative options are embraced and assessed, with the eventual goal of converging on a few strongest pathways to pursue.

4. Prototype (What wows)– to start creating solutions

In this stage, proposed ideas and solutions are improved, redesigned again and again through a series of reviews and feedback from the team. This brisk reiterating process provides many benefits: It allows prototypes to be imperfect and promotes collaborative efforts while gathering ideas from a variety of sources and customizes critical design process in a way that empowers teams.

5. Test (What works) – solutions

Testing stage is where the creative solutions you come up with is tested in the real world. Often it is said that testing is the last stage of design thinking, but it is not the end of Design thinking process as you collect feedback from the customer and have to go to the Define, Ideate, or prototype stage as per the requirement.

Design Thinking is not an academic concept but a way of life. Embracing design thinking as a way to organize your artistic development and solutions will create cooperation within teams and create potentially creative and user-friendly solutions that improve the lives of other human beings.

Abhinav
PGDM, Class of 2023

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