Who are we doing “it” for, what do they really want, and what does good look like?
My definition of design thinking in a nutshell.
Design thinking has been long considered to be at the cross-roads of innovation around desirability for people, technical feasibility, and vitality for business.
Or as Andrew
Razeghi recommends: “try to solve a problem instead of trying to innovate.”
Generally, design thinking is an approach that encourages organizations to focus on the people they’re creating XYZ for - which in turn, is meant to guide better products, services, and processes.
Over the past
50 odd years, via iterations in cognitive science, furniture design, architecture, anthropology, sustainability to software - these three simple questions of “who is it for”, “what do they really want” and “what does good look like?”- have led to great leaps in the three key areas of innovation. Respectively, when these three simple questions were not asked, innovations tended to
flop.
Why?
Because this design process helps create focus around real pressing needs to help “solve the problems right in front of our noses” by viewing the issues at hand via the glasses of the ones most effected by the challenges. Thus, the design-thinking methodology has led to many in-vitro observations, customer interviews and Post-It splattered workshop walls.
More recently though, design thinking has been reduced to an essential Fix-For-All tool-kit via design
canvases,
personas, customer
experience journeys, to generate a quick output based on assumptions one has about a particular users needs rather than gaining an actual real understanding of those needs. In other words: talking about customers - not actually to them. Another problematic development has been designing around current individual symptoms or irritations - rather than what might be most helpful for achieving a particular end-in-mind on a broader issue or challenge. Which means we miss out on what good really can look like.
So, like my friend,
Mike Hruska says “If we want to do things differently, we need to start thinking differently.”
Which is why I want to bring the focus back on the principles of design-thinking and how they can really support the learning and understanding necessary to build better
organizations/products/services and outcomes.
