Why Design Thinking works?

Recently I joined a Design Thinking workshop and read an article about "Why Design Thinking Works"(written by Jeanne Liedtka and published on Sep-Oct 2018 Issue of Harvard Business Review). Design Thinking is related to innovation, if an organization or a brand wants to innovate and leads in the market, then it has to own the innovative mind-set in order to embrace change and transform.

Here I'd like to simply conclude what I have learnt from the workshop and the article.

First of all, what is Design Thinking? Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.

The five-stage Design Thinking model is proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). It includes: Empathise, Define(the problem), Ideate, Prototype, Test. Well, it looks like in a very logical and linear way, actually in practice, the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion. For example, different groups within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently, or the designers may collect information and prototype during the entire project so as to enable them to bring the ideas to life and visualise the problem solutions.

In essence, the design thinking process is iterative, flexible and focused on collaboration between designers and users, with an emphasis on bringing ideas to life based on how real users think, feel and behave. Design Thinking tackles complex problems by:

• Empathising: understanding the human needs involved.
• Defining: re-framing and defining the problem in human-centric ways.
• Ideating: creating many ideas in ideation sessions.
• Prototyping: adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping.
• Testing: developing a prototype/solution to the problem.

Talking about the human side of digital change, Personal Transformation is not equal to Digital Transformation. And there are 9 points to focus on to facilitate digital change from the human side.

#1. Put the people first:

Change management should accompany digital change.

#2. Acknowledge the elephant (fear) in the room unconsciously&sub-consciously

#3. Inspire through purpose.

Craft a vision&mission&help create cultural change incrementally.

#4. Gain momentum through easy&incremental wins.

#5. Manage vulnerability through sensitivity.

Because they are fear to evolve.

#6. Encourage empathy by acknowledging the ugly.

#7. Know who you're talking to: plot user journeys

#8. Help breed a culture of accountability and reduce fear of failure.

#9. Upskill the people, make knowledge accessible.

Just like a triangle, in order to implement the digital transformation within an organization, People must come first, and then the Data and Systems in the bottom to maintain the stability. The interior part is composed of Strategy, Technology and Psychology. From inside out, design your brand experience.

Now back to the main theme, why design thinking works? In terms of innovation, organizations frequently encounter new obstacles and trade-offs. To be successful, an innovation process must deliver three things: superior solutions(1.asking a more interesting question can help teams discover more-original ideas, risk is that some teams may get indefinitely hung up exploring a problem, while action-oriented managers may be too impatient to take the time to figure out what question they should be asking. 2. market research can help companies understand those user-driven criteria, but the hurdle here is that it's difficult for customers to know they want something that doesn't yet exist. 3. bringing diverse voices into the process can be difficult to manage), lower risks and costs of change(too many ideas dilute focus and resources), and employee buy-in(The involvement of many people with different perspectives will create chaos and incoherence). 

The beauty of design thinking lies in the structure, structure and linearity help managers adjust to those new behaviors that they aren't used to, like doing face-to-face research with customers, getting deeply immersed in their perspectives, co-creating with stakeholders, and designing and executing experiments.If you're trying to change people's behavior,you need to start them off with a lot of structure, so they don't have to think. It's often very hard to change habits, but having clear guardrails can help.

Design thinking is a social technology, adapted from the fields of ethnography and sociology, the best-know methods of the design-thinking discovery process concentrate on examining what makes for a meaningful customer journey rather than on the collection and analysis of data. This customer discovery entails 3 activities: immersion-identify hidden needs by having the innovator live the customer's experience. sense making-Gallery walk and alignment.

Once they understand customers' needs, then innovators can move on to generate ideas. The idea generation contains 3 steps: emergence-set up a dialogue, articulation-surface and question their implicit assumptions, the testing experience-pre-experience and learning in action. 

As the author Jeanne put in the conclusion part, "the structure of design thinking creates a natural flow from research to rollout. Design thinking emphasizes engagement, dialogue and learning. By involving customers and other stakeholders in the definition of the problem and the development of solutions, design thinking garners a broad commitment to change. And by supplying a structure to the innovation process, design thinking helps innovators collaborate and agree on what is essential to the outcome at every phase. It does this not only by overcoming workplace politics but by shaping the experiences of the innovators, and of their key stakeholders and implementers, at every step. That is the social technology at work.