How to guide: 5 Steps of Design Thinking

Discover the secret of great product design and development

Ever feel really frustrated when either a service or product is infuriatingly annoying?

Example: a banking app doesn’t alert you of a recent transaction? Grrrr. But Monzo dings at the point of a transaction. Brilliant! That was design thinking in their product development. 

Or you’ve confirmed with the hotel they have wheelchair access, but it looks like this pathetic effort I witnessed in Tulum, Mexico recently. Yes, there’s a ramp. But did anyone test it or show any empathy? (That’s a rhetorical question). That grill folds up over the ramp and all of a sudden it’s not accessible. That’s not design thinking. Undoubtedly a requirement sent down the ranks to be developed, and ‘box ticked’, the hotel has a wheelchair ramp. *Sad Face* 

Here are the key steps in Design Thinking, so you develop products and services that work really well. It’s a method with a human-centric approach, skillset and mindset used in development that serve customers with greater understanding of their needs; beit social, physical or emotional. It involves talking to real-life users, generating ideas quickly and testing them through prototypes and getting real users’ feedback. 

Here’s the headline (if TLDR) …

You may know a typical user you want to target with your product or service. Or it might be that you need to do some research to define them. You need to know what are the main attributes of your customer segment are. Plot them and give them a (made-up) name, age, employment status, what keeps them busy (work, kids, travelling etc). 

Key is to understand the problem they have and why they use your service or product to solve it. So interview them, run surveys, just make sure you’re hearing actual customers’ experience, not some stakeholder in your business making sweeping assumptions. 

Now you have your customers’ insights, work out their issues, frustrations and sticking points with your product or service. Articulate that, so hone in on the salient parts so you and your collaborators are very clear on the problem you want to solve. 

Now you’ve identified the problem to solve for example, with the guidance of a workshop facilitator, as cross-functional participants, create ideas on how to serve that persona better with that problem statement in mind and bring your ideas to life with sketches. Use a voting method from your facilitator to guide with prioritising ideas to take forward. 

The prototype, that’s not a solution but an idea that could be the solution, to solve your problem statement can be made of anything: a PowerPoint clickable deck, working software on or off-line, sticky notes or just A4 sketches on paper. The point is to define the user journey in a user interface context. 

Remember I said your prototype is a potential solution - well with testing you’ll get feedback from people using it and you’ll get data that either validates it as a problem solution or not. If it is working well you’ll know investing further has just become a lot less risky. If the test didn’t get the results you were hoping for, it’s time to revisit, reinterview customers and start the process again on a pivot. 

Subscribe if you want tips and how-to content specifically in the collaboration space of product design, development, management and coaching. If you need more guidance on running workshops, get in touch.