Design thinking is a process to arrive at a solution to a problem in an iterative manner. In a business environment, it includes starting by putting oneself in the shoes of a customer to try and see the problem from the customer’s point of view. This leads to an exploration of a solution that may now solve the problem. Prototyping and testing the solution with real customers then leads to further understanding of both the problem and solution. If done iteratively in a “fail fast” way leads to an iteratively improved solution. At some point the solution then is probably the best that you can arrive at given other constraints of time and resources. That is when as a business team you have arrived at your goal.
Design Thinking: Principles
- Visualize the problem from the point of view of someone other than yourself.
- Arrive at a probable solution from that person’s point of view.
- Get early feedback and improve the solution in parts, to arrive at a best solution.
Design Thinking : Adopted to remote working
So how does Design Thinking need to change in a Post Covid-19 world? Well, one of the biggest changes in the way teams around the world have adopted to the pandemic situation is to work remotely yet collaboratively. Virtual meeting/Conferencing solutions like Zoom, Adobe Connect, Cisco WebEx are being increasingly used. But frankly these tools just offer newer ways to follow the basic principles of Design Thinking. Infact some of the tools make it even easier.
The first step in DesignThinking is to be able to put yourselves in the shoes of a customer. Using remote working/collaboration, you can now ask the customer to share in real time some of the pain points they have. Sharing screens or Webcam videos make it so that you can almost experience what the customer is experiencing.
The act of coming up with a solution together as a team can be arrived at over ‘whiteboarding’ solutions over Virtual Meetings. Adobe Connect for one has a solution that provides such a facility. Such solutions can then be shared early with potential customers and their feedback can be solicited at regular iterative stages.
This way Design Thinking can be even more iterative and ‘fail fast’ in a “virtual work place.”
Here is another great article talking about the same