What really is Design Thinking?
Coming up with an idea is easy. Coming up with the right one takes work. With design thinking, throwing out what you think you know and starting from scratch opens up all kinds of possibilities.
Rebecca Linke
Design thinking helps organizations and individuals to challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions, to empathize and ideate and implement this ideas for sustainable development.
Design thinking can be applied to product development, service development, process design, and remakes and even life decisions about your career.
What really is Design Thinking?
Steve Jobs famously said,
“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer – that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.”
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, the design company that popularised the term design thinking, says,
“Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.”
Design thinking draws on logic, imagination, intuition and systemic reasoning to explore the possibilities of what could be and to create desired outcomes that benefit the end user (the customer).
A design mindset is not problem-focused, it’s solution-focused and action-oriented. It involves both analysis and imagination.
Design thinking is linked to creating an improved future and seeks to build ideas up – unlike critical thinking, which breaks them down. Problem-solving is making something go away. Creating is bringing something into being. Design thinking on the other hand, informs human-centred innovation and begins with developing an understanding of customers’ or users’ unmet or unarticulated needs. The purpose of design, ultimately, is to improve the quality of life for people and the planet.
Why is Design Thinking Important?
Design is transforming the way leading companies create value. The focus of innovation has shifted from being engineering-driven to design-driven, from product-centric to customer-centric, and from marketing-focused to user-experience-focused. For an increasing number of entrepreneurs, design thinking is at the core of effective strategy development and organisational change.
“Design-thinking firms stand apart in their willingness to engage in the task of continuously redesigning their business… to create advances in both innovation and efficiency – the combination that produces the most powerful competitive edge.”
Roger Martin
What is the driving force behind design thinking?
The biggest driving force is the accelerated rate of change in business and society caused by advances in technology. As companies become more software-driven, and the rate of change increases, so does complexity.
Design thinking is our best tool for sense-making, meaning making, simplifying processes, and improving customer experiences. Additionally, design thinking minimises risk, reduces costs, improves speed, and energises employees.
Design thinking provides leaders with a framework for addressing complex human-centred challenges and making the best possible decisions concerning:
Redefining value; Re-inventing business models; Shifting markets and behaviours, Organisational culture change; Complex societal challenges such as health, education, food, water and climate change; Problems affecting diverse stakeholders and multiple systems.
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