Course Notes: Design Thinking

Skillshare

Design Thinking: How to Use Creative Problem Solving for Better Design

1. What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is using design skills and thought processes to solve problems.

Benefits
- Establish a framework
- Break out of old thinking
- Work more strategically

Elements of Design Thinking

A) Abductive reasoning
B) Visual Thinking
C) Design Tools
D) Design Attitudes

A) Abductive Reasoning

Deductive reasoning

Starting with a hypothesis, then using evidence to prove (or disprove) it.

Come up with an idea. Test. See if it works. Move on.

Persona: Developers

Inductive reasoning

Using experimentation to form a hypothesis from a set of observations.

Start with research, statistics, data. Come up with solution to fill the gap.

Persona: Business, Marketing

Abductive reasoning

Making an educated guess based on an incomplete set of information

Make big leaps of thoughts to solve problems.

Ask lots of questions to form patterns.

Persona: Designers, Doctors, Detectives

B) Visual Thinking

Uses concrete visuals, like a map or diagram, to create a shared understanding.

Takes ideas out of people's minds and puts them in a physical space to make them concrete.

Author: David Sibbet

C) Common design tools

The tools designers use to solve problems, from simple exercises to complex research techniques.

1. Empathy maps, elevator pitches, research techniques.
2. Design games make meetings less opinionated. Book: Game Storming.
3. Create a toolbox and understand when to use which tool.

D) Design Attitudes

Show, don't tell

Focus on human values

Craft clarity (visualization)

Embrace experimentation

Mindful of process

Bias towards action (UI, business model canvases, prototyping service)

Radical collaboration

Phases...

2. Understanding the Problem

- Involve users in your research
- Don't just ask what users want
- Focus on behavior
- Understand needs and motivations
- Don't be afraid to pivot

Design Research Techniques
- Interview customers/users
- Ask open questions
- Ask "Why?" to encourage stories
- Listen, smile, nod
- Use silence to your advantage
- Gaining empathy and understanding
- Find problems, not solutions
- Co-Design
- "Design the Box" Game: An exercise that forces teams to make a concrete decision about abstract features. What would be on the cover, side, back, cost, look?
- Empathy Map
- A tool for understanding a user's motivations and environment
- User at the center: Says, Thinks, Does, Feels
- Share your findings
- It's important to gain credibility from all of the insights gathered
- Cognitive Walkthrough
- Walking through a process or question from the user's perspective
- Ask yourself open questions
- "Desk research" (looking things up)

3. Rethinking the Problem


Reframing Techniques
- Mad lib elevator pitch
- For [target customer], who [customer need], [product name], is a [market category] that [one key benefit]. Unlike [competition], the product [unique differentiator].
- Press Release from the future
- Write the story from the future.
- Gives a good articulation of the problem you are solving
- Put a flag in the sand and head towards that
- Business Model Canvas
- Template used to visualize the building blocks of starting a business
- Great exercise for building a new business
- The Five Whys
- Uncover the root cause of a problem
- Get to solve much deeper and meaningful problems
- Talk client through research and rational



5. Creating a Possible Solution
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Techniques
- 100 Designs
- Creating lots of designs in order to force creativity
- 6up, 1up
- Timed brainstorming exercise used to generate ideas
- Design Studio
- Brainstorming exercise to generate ideas in a large group
- 1, 1:1, 2:2, 4:4, 8:8

Prototyping
- An early model of what your end solution might look like
- Get stakeholder buy-in
- Gather immediate feedback
- Save time and money
- Catch problems early
- Interactive prototype
- Wizard of Oz Prototype: Users interact with product without knowing that responses are coming from a human, not a computer.
- Physical prototype
- Bodystorming: enacting the physical experience of using a product or service.
- Service Diagram
- Sketching exercise used to map out all the steps of a process.
- Day in the life, comic strip sketch.



6. Testing Your Solution
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Techniques
- Landing page test
- Stripped-down product to gather user feedback
- Show features, capture email addresses
- People usually only give email addresses if its very attractive
- Concierge
- Using humans to fake the user experience of your final products
- Temporarily fake technology
- Guerilla Usability Testing
- Testing prototype "in the wild" by asking members of the public for feedback
- Ask users to engage in three tasks (core functionalities), then watch them and take notes

When do you launch?
- Product will never be perfect
- After you've minimized large issues