Chapter 7: Design Thinking

Chapter 7 Learning Outcomes

After reading this chapter, you should be able to do the following:

  1. Define “Design Thinking”.
  2. Describe how a company might implement a design thinking approach to innovation.
  3. Provide examples of innovative products being designed today using Design Thinking.
  4. Discuss the importance of prototyping fast and often.
  5. Explain how to design parts for prototyping using 3D Print software.
  6. Explain the 3D printing process.
  7. Provide examples of innovative products being designed today using 3D printing technology.

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking encourages organizations to keep the user at the center of everything. The core of design thinking is about asking questions differently—a new way to look at problems. Play this brief introduction to design thinking from IDEO U.[1] Transcript for “What is Design Thinking?” Video [PDF–New Tab]. Closed captioning is available on YouTube.

The Five Stages of Design Thinking

As the world is changing at an accelerated rate, organizations look for solutions to grow with their customers or users, to do new things in better ways to improve their practices, retain and grow their customers, and expand their business. Innovation is a must for these organizations. Design thinking is one of several approaches to innovation and is a process for creative problem-solving. Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they are creating for, which in turn leads to better products, services, and processes. The design thinking framework helps inspire creative thinking and strategies that lead designers to create user-friendly products that solve real problems.

There are five stages to the design thinking process, shown below in Figure 7.1, which include empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing. They are not always completed in a linear fashion. They can be done in any order, and then redone as needed.  Different stages might spark new ideas or showcase new findings in the user journey that will inspire new iterations of phases that have already been completed.

 

5 Stages of Design Thinking: Emphasize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test
Figure 7.1 Five Stages of Design Thinking

Empathize

In order to deliver innovative, customer-centric solutions that customers want and will buy, begin with empathy. Put yourself in your customer’s shoes and try to imagine what the customer might be thinking or feeling, what needs they may have, and what their desires are.  To do this you might observe the customer, interview the customer, and put yourself in the customer’s shoes. How do they want this product to work? As designers (or design thinkers), we should always do our best to leave our own assumptions and experiences behind when making observations. Our life experiences create assumptions within us, which we use to explain and make sense of the world around us. However, this very process affects our ability to empathize in a real way with the people we observe. Since completely letting go of our assumptions is impossible, we should continuously and consciously remind ourselves to assume a beginner’s mindset. It’s helpful if you often remind yourself never to judge what you observe, but to question everything—even if you think you know the answer—and to really listen to what others are saying.[2]

Define

Designers will analyze their observations completed throughout the empathy stage, and work on synthesizing that information.  Forming a problem statement that is succinct is an important part of this phase that ensures a human-centered approach by focusing on the end-user. A problem statement is important to a Design Thinking project because it will guide you and your team and provide a focus on the specific needs that you have uncovered. A good problem statement should thus have the following traits. It should be human-centered, broad enough for creative freedom, and narrow enough to make it manageable.[3]

Ideate

The solution-finding stage is where the team comes together to brainstorm creative solutions to solve the defined problem(s). When facilitated in a successful way, Ideation is an exciting process. The goal is to generate a large number of ideas — ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas — that the team can then evaluate and reduce into the best, most practical, and innovative ones.

Ideation Will Help You:

  • Ask the right questions and innovate.
  • Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential of your solution.
  • Bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
  • Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
  • Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
  • Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.

In Ideation sessions, it’s important to create the right type of environment to help create a creative work culture with a curious, courageous, and concentrated atmosphere. Instead of using a boardroom with the CEO sitting at the head of the table, Design Thinking and Ideation sessions require a space in which everyone is equal. There are hundreds of ideation methods used to spark innovative ideas. Some methods are merely renamed or slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get a brief overview of some of the best methods:[4]

Prototype

Without testing a new idea, designers would have a tough time actually solving the problem comprehensively. At this stage, small-scale, inexpensive versions of the product are required. This sets the stage for decision-making conversations around what works and what doesn’t. Prototypes can be sketches, models, or digital renders of an idea. These scaled-down prototypes can then be used in order to observe, record, judge, and measure user performance levels based on specific elements, or the users’ general behaviour, interactions, and reactions to the overall design. For instance, when developing software, a design team may produce a number of paper prototypes that the user can gradually work through in order to demonstrate to the design team or evaluators how they may tackle certain tasks or problems. When developing tangible devices, such as the computer mouse, designers may use a number of different materials to enable them to test the basic technology underlying the product. With advances in 3D printing technology, producing prototypes is now often a more instant and low-cost process, and as a result, this has allowed designers to provide stakeholders with accurate and testable/useable replica models before settling upon a particular design.[5]

Test

Gather feedback from real users.  Because design thinking is iterative, many designers roll out multiple prototypes to test different change factors within their idea. Designers should expect to go through a series of changes, edits, and refinements during the testing stage. It is not uncommon for the testing phase to “restart” some other design thinking processes such as ideation or additional testing or an entirely fresh approach. In order to achieve the best learning results from each test, here are some areas of a test that you should take into consideration:[6]

  • The prototype
    Remember that you are testing the prototype, not the user. Your prototype should be designed with a central question in mind — a question that you will put to the test in the testing stage.
  • Context and scenario
    As much as possible, try to recreate the scenario in which your users are most likely to be using the product. This way, you can learn more about the interaction (or disruptions) between the user, the prototype, and the environment, as well as how problems might arise as a result of that interaction.
  • How you interact with the user
    Make sure your users know what the prototype and test are about, but do not over-explain how the prototype works.
  • How you observe and capture feedback
    While collecting feedback, make sure you are not disrupting the user’s interaction with the prototype. Find a way to collect feedback in a way that freely allows you to observe what is happening (for example, by having a partner in the test, or by recording an audio or video of the test).

Play the YouTube video below for an explanation of the five stages of the Design Thinking process.[7] Transcript for “What is Design Thinking?” Video [PDF–New Tab]. Closed captioning is available on YouTube.

Products Created Using Design Thinking

Can you think of a few products you enjoy using that most probably were created using the design thinking methodology?  Here are a few examples: shoelaces that don’t need to be tied (great for kids), velcro closures instead of buttons or laces (great for anyone, but specifically for older adults who may have difficulty with buttons or laces), and what about gel pads that are placed inside shoes (great for anyone with sore feet or people that stand for long hours in the workplace).

IDEO, lists 11 of their favorite products and services created with design thinking:[8]

  • Pillpack, a prescription home delivery system
  • Airbnb, the online platform that lets you stay anywhere
  • Willow, the first wearable breast pump
  • Uber Eats, an app that is redefining food delivery
  • Pay It Plan It from American Express, a feature to manage your money
  • Project Bloks, a Google project that helps kids learn to code
  • Besider, a birth control support network for women
  • Braun, Oral-B electric toothbrush, a better brushing experience
  • Moonrise, a platform that connects people with on-demand work
  • LA County Voting System, an intuitive and accessible voting device
  • Bendable, a community learning program for South Bend

Design for Delight

How do the best product managers build ideal solutions for their customers’ pain points? Intuit Inc. has crafted the Design for Delight (D4D) and Customer-Driven Innovation (CDI) principles to center customer empathy to build the best solutions for their customers.  “Customer-Driven Innovation is the lens through which we make decisions on what to pursue, and Design for Delight is our framework for determining how to pursue it.”[9] Intuit Inc. is an American business software company that specializes in financial software. The company is headquartered in Mountain View, California, and the CEO is Sasan Goodarzi. Intuit’s products include the tax preparation application TurboTax, the personal finance app Mint, and the small business accounting program QuickBooks.

Play the YouTube video below to see how a university taught their students the Design for Delight methodology in a two-day bootcamp.[10] Transcript for “Marshal University Design for Delight Bootcamp with Intuit” Video [PDF–New Tab]. Closed captioning is available on YouTube.

Design for Delight Course

Intuit offers a free course for students who may wish to learn the Design for Delight design thinking methodology.

The methodology focuses on the following three key concepts:

  1. Deep Customer Empathy
  2. Go Broad to Go Narrow
  3. Perform Rapid Customer Experiments

Design for Delight Innovator Certification

Design for Delight Certification Badge
Design for Delight Certification Badge

Through Certiport.com students may complete a certification exam for Design for Delight (there is an exam fee for this exam). The Intuit Design for Delight Innovator certification helps individuals validate their knowledge of design thinking principles and the tools needed to identify problems, gain customer empathy, brainstorm solutions, run experiments, test assumptions, pivot, and much more. This type of thinking promotes creativity, critical thinking, complex problem solving, and other skills that are much needed and valued in today’s workforce. [11]

Prototyping and 3D Printing

Prototyping

As mentioned above, a prototype is a mini design of the actual product. It can be a sketch, a low-quality, or a high-quality copy depicting what the real product will look like. It is important for companies to prototype fast and often in order to produce innovations at the right times–when customers demand them and before competitors beat them to market. The main benefit of prototyping is that it results in a faster and more effective design cycle (accelerated development). Because prototypes allow companies to test their design in the “real-world” environment, it is easier to identify potential problems and prevent costly mistakes down the road (better products).[12]

Play the YouTube video below for an explanation of how Intuit Inc. builds prototypes.[13] Building Prototypes Ready to Test with Customers Transcript. [PDF–New Tab]. Closed captioning is available on YouTube.

3D Printing

3D printing is an inexpensive way to make a prototype. Today 3D printing, or additive processing for manufacturing, has become a standard.  In previous years many manufacturers, automakers, jewelry makers, sculptures, etc., were using a subtractive processing method.  With subtractive manufacturing, there is much waste. Think about sculpting a statue out of a tree, you would whittle away the parts of the tree you don’t need to make the statue appear.  With additive manufacturing, there is little waste because the statue would be built layer upon layer from the ground up in the exact shape and design you specify.

Acumen Research and Consulting forecasts the global 3D printing market to reach $41 billion by 2026. The adoption of 3D printing is ever expanding and companies who have yet to integrate additive manufacturing somewhere in their supply chain are now part of an ever-shrinking minority. Where 3D printing was only suitable for prototyping and one-off manufacturing in the early stages, it is now rapidly transforming into a production technology. Most of the current demand for 3D printing is industrial in nature.  As it evolves, 3D printing technology is destined to transform almost every major industry and change the way we live, work, and play in the future.[14]

A few examples of 3D printing used in various industries:

  • consumer products (eyewear, footwear, design, furniture)
  • industrial products (manufacturing tools, prototypes, functional end-use parts)
  • dental products
  • medical and health products

Play this YouTube video from Mashable, “What is 3D Printing and How It Works?”, to learn more about the 3D Printing process.[15] Transcript for “What is 3D Printing and How Does it Work? Video [PDF–New Tab]. Closed captioning is available on YouTube.

Key Takeaways

  1. Design thinking is one of several approaches to innovation and is a process for creative problem-solving. Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the people they are creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. The design thinking framework helps inspire creative thinking and strategies that lead designers to create user-friendly products that help solve a particular problem.
  2. There are five stages to the design thinking process which include empathizing, defining, ideating, prototyping, and testing.
  3. There are hundreds of ideation methods used to spark innovative ideas.
  4. There are many products created using design thinking such as shoelaces that don’t need to be tied (great for kids), velcro closures instead of buttons or laces (great for anyone, but specifically for older adults who may have difficulty with buttons or laces), and what about gel pads that are placed inside shoes (great for anyone with sore feet or people that stand for long hours in the workplace).
  5. How do the best product managers build ideal solutions for their customers’ pain points? Intuit Inc. has crafted the Design for Delight (D4D) and Customer-Driven Innovation (CDI) principles to center customer empathy to build the best solutions for their customers.
  6. The Intuit Design for Delight Innovator certification helps individuals validate their knowledge of design thinking principles and the tools needed to identify problems, gain customer empathy, brainstorm solutions, run experiments, test assumptions, pivot, and much more.
  7. A prototype is a mini design of the actual product. It can be a sketch, a low-quality, or a high-quality copy depicting what the real product will look like. It is important for companies to prototype fast and often in order to produce innovations at the right times–when customers demand them and before competitors beat them to market.
  8. 3D printing is an inexpensive way to make a prototype. Today 3D printing, or additive processing for manufacturing, has become a standard.

End-of-Chapter Exercises

  1. Design Thinking Innovations. Search the Internet to locate a company that is using design thinking to develop new innovations. Share your findings with the class and/or professor.
  2. Ideation Methods. Search the Internet to research one of the many ideation methods.  Describe how it is done and the benefits of this method.  Share your findings with the class and/or professor.
  3. Ideation Session. In a group or with a partner use one of the ideation methods listed in this chapter to ideate some innovative concepts. The problem you are trying to solve is for older adults. Foot problems are common in older people, for a variety of reasons. Feet lose cushioning as they age, and the skin and nails can grow dry and brittle. Many older adults have poor circulation, and this can slow the healing of foot sores. Older adults often have very dry feet with cracked heels, an inability to reach their feet to apply needed lotions, and stubborn athlete’s foot. When feet are very dry and cracking, they can be painful to walk on and are more likely to get infected.  They may have bunions, toenail issues, corns, and calluses on their feet. So what ideas can you and your team come up with during an ideation session that might help reduce or solve these problems associated with aging feet? After your ideation session make some notes and share them with the class and/or professor.
  4. Practice Writing a Customer Problem Statement. Review Intuit’s Design for Delight video, Choosing the Right Problem to Solve with the Customer Problem Statement.  In a group or with a partner consider a problem you have observed or experienced as a student, an employee, or a customer.  Is there something at your school that could be improved?  Is there something at your place of employment that can be improved? Have you had a negative experience when interacting with a company? You might come up with a new or improved product, service, or process. If you have observed more than one problem, then write a specific customer problem statement for each one. Alternatively, your professor may choose to assign a specific problem or opportunity to your group. Use the model and technique shown in the Intuit video above. Optionally, if assigned or desired, your group might try using the MURAL free online collaboration tool to support your team in writing a customer problem statement (as shown in the Intuit video). Share your problem statement with your class and/or professor.
  5. Practice Storyboarding. Review Intuit’s Design for Delight video, Aligning Your Team with Collaborative Storyboarding. In a group or with a partner consider a problem you have observed or experienced as a student, an employee, or a customer.  Write a problem statement or use one from the previous exercise. Brainstorm with your team to come up with a solution you would consider testing. You might come up with a new or improved product, service, or process. Alternatively, your professor may choose to assign a specific solution to your group. Using the model and technique shown in the Intuit video above, diagram a simple storyboard that answers key questions about how your idea works in the real world, such as how customers engage with your idea, how it works technically, and what the key moments are in the experience. Optionally, if assigned or desired, your group might try using the MURAL free online collaboration tool to support your team in storyboarding a potential solution (as shown in the Intuit video). Share your storyboard with your class and/or professor.
  6. Hands-on 3D Print. Try creating a 3D printed object. You can use TinkerCad, a free software tool online, used to design 3D print objects.  You can view other people’s objects as well both at TinkerCad and Thingiverse, and you can reuse many of these designs.  Choose either someone else’s design to start with then modify it by adding your initials to the design, or create an object from scratch.  You will end up with an STL file type.  This file can be sent to any 3D printing shop to get a physical copy.  Many libraries offer 3D printing services now and they are not very expensive. Share your TinkerCad editing screen as well as your printed 3D model with the class and/or professor and describe the experience, the difficult parts, and the rewarding parts.
  7. 3D Printed Products. Search the Internet to discover what things can be 3D printed.  Can a car be 3D printed? Can a house be 3D printed? Can teeth be 3D printed? Can body limbs be 3D printed? Can food be 3D printed?  What other products did you discover can be 3D printed? Share your findings with the class and/or professor.
  8. New 3D Print Businesses. Search the Internet to find new businesses that are now offering 3D Print services for individual consumers. Were there many?  What services do they offer?  How do they create 3D objects (e.g. software CAD or photo scanning, etc.)? What material(s) are used to create these 3D printed objects (e.g., metal, plastic, food, etc.)? Share your findings with the class and/or professor.
  9. Personal 3D Printer. Search the Internet to find the most commonly used type of 3D printer for home use.  How much does it cost? Do you foresee 3D printing becoming a common thing used by individual consumers?  Why or why not? Share your findings with the class and/or professor.

Self-Check Exercise – Drag the Words – Design Thinking Innovations

 

Additional Resources

  1. Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process: Empathy
  2. Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define
  3. Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate
  4. Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process: Prototype
  5. Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test
  6. 5 Game-Changing Design Thinking Examples to Learn From
  7. 12 Great Design Thinking Examples You Can Use to Seek Inspiration
  8. Game Storming for Innovative Ideas
  9. Designing for Delight in Product Management – Intuit YouTube video
  10. Design for Delight Foundations Course – Intuit Open Course
  11. Ideation and Planning Skills for Employment Success – UofT Open Course
  12. Toolkit for Design Thinking – IBM (Temporary Free Access)
  13. History of 3D Printing: It’s Older Thank You Think
  14. 20 Products That Are Now Being Made Using 3D Printing
  15. The Importance of Prototyping in UX Designing
  16. 3D Printing History and Overview – Wikipedia
  17. 56+ Coolest Things to 3D Print

References

(Note: This list of sources used is NOT in APA citation style instead the auto-footnote and media citation features of Pressbooks were utilized to cite references throughout the chapter and generate a list at the end of the chapter.)

Media Attributions

  1. IDEO U. (2021, May 26). What is design thinking? [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QWdgcpAHRlM&t=37s ↵
  2. Mortensen, D. (2020). Stage 1 in the design thinking process: Empathize with your users. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-1-in-the-design-thinking-process-empathise-with-your-users ↵
  3. Dam, R. & Siang, T. (2021). Stage 2 in the design thinking process: Define the problem and interpret the results. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-2-in-the-design-thinking-process-define-the-problem-and-interpret-the-results ↵
  4. Dam, R. & Siang T. (2020). Stage 3 of the design thinking process: Ideate. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate ↵
  5. Dam, R. & Siang T. (2021). Stage 4 of the design thinking process: Prototype. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-4-in-the-design-thinking-process-prototype ↵
  6. Dam, R. & Siang, T. (2021). Stage 5 in the design thinking process: Test. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-5-in-the-design-thinking-process-test ↵
  7. The Strategy Group. (2017, December 7). What is design thinking? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/TtgegZfk5ZU?si=KGjRkQW0pSKfl6Hc ↵
  8. IDEO U. (n.d.). 11 products & services made using design thinking. https://www.ideou.com/blogs/inspiration/11-products-made-using-design-thinking#:~:text=Here%20are%20some%20of%20our%20favorite%20examples%20of,to%20take%20medications%20can%20be%20challenging%20and%20time-consuming ↵
  9. Intuit. (2023, February 16). Designing for delight in product management. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ZHtIYaKokI ↵
  10. Intuit Labs. (2017, December 22). Marshall University Design for Delight Bootcamp with Intuit. [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/ybswFQex6vQ ↵
  11. Certiport. (2023). Intuit design for delight innovator certification. https://certiport.pearsonvue.com/Certifications/Intuit/Certifications/Certify/Design-for-Delight ↵
  12. Erickson, A. (2019, May 14). The importance of prototyping. https://www.cati.com/blog/2019/05/the-importance-of-prototyping/#:~:text=The%20main%20benefit%20of%20prototyping%20is%20that%20it,problems%20and%20prevent%20costly%20 ↵
  13. Intuit. (2022, February 11). Building prototypes ready to test with customers. [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ySx-S5FcCI ↵
  14. 3Dprinting.com. (n.d.). What is 3D printing? https://3dprinting.com/what-is-3d-printing/#:~:text=Examples%20of%203D%20Printing%201%20Rapid%20Prototyping%20%26,Consumer%20Products%20...%206%20Healthcare%20...%207%20Food ↵
  15. Kwestyon. (2014, May 8). What is 3D printing and how does it work? [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/Vx0Z6LplaMU ↵
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Leading Innovation, 2nd Edition Copyright © 2023 by Kerri Shields is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.

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