Many people have been in situations wherein Design Thinking presented itself as a pathway to a great solution, yet may have seemed a little too much like “common sense.”
Design Thinking is a framework that heavily influences the development of a product to make it human-centric. It helps you find the true underlying problem, rather than jumping the gun and “getting it done”, It suggests a deeper understanding of the situation of your users – allowing you to create a stronger relationship with them – which is one of the most important things to build first between yourself and your customers.
Building a product or service with humans in mind is quite obvious. Sometimes, it’s even seen as trivial due to its obviousness. The truth is, Design Thinking isn’t the pointless theory that it is sometimes viewed as and here are five reasons why Design Thinking is actually as powerful as it sounds.
It’s unbiased.
Design Thinking is powerful because it is not only applicable to certain demographics or specific people. It can be used to connect practically to anybody in order to truly understand their situation. This allows you to collect critical data that can make and break your product, as well as help you build a bridge to the customers that you’re so eager to serve.
Though it takes context into account, it isn’t a limiting factor; it’s an empowering one. Design Thinking becomes useful because it uses all these different backgrounds and cultures in order to understand them rather than put them aside.
It’s not superficial.
The framework of Design Thinking begins with identifying the underlying problem. Rather than tackling the superficial and minor ones, Design Thinking makes you and your team identify the deeper roots of all the problems. It emphasizes the importance of finding the true problems of your customers, in order to create something significant and relevant to their situations.
It makes you avoid wasting time (and a lot of resources) solving “surface” problems caused by bigger and more important ones. It hits the root cause in order to prevent it from happening again.
It becomes second-nature.
Design Thinking, if constantly used, becomes second-nature. It easily embeds itself to your daily practices, because it just makes that much sense. Whenever a problem arises, you’ll eventually catch yourself thinking, what problem am I really solving? You’ll begin to see how other products don’t really solve their user’s problems, and you’ll think of ways they could help their customers. You’ll learn to understand people more, and why they think and act the way they do, instead of judging them from the get-go.
It heightens your creativity.
Whether you’re a product developer, service provider, or even part of the HR and Admin processes, you are a designer.
Although the “everybody is a designer” statement has become controversial, it’s definitely true to an extent. Everybody has to design something. You could be designing how to make a process more efficient, or what your product would look like, or even how you’re going to sell your product to the market. Everybody is a designer.
And in order to thrive in your industry, you need to be creative. Design Thinking helps give you new perspectives, while applying what you’ve learned from your old ones. Eventually, you’ll realize that it’s so powerful because its only limit is your creativity and your willingness to empathize with the user.
It makes the world a better place.
The best thing about Design Thinking is that you must first learn to understand other people before doing anything else. You must get to know their context, their environment, their situations when they engage with this or their reactions when they experience that. It forces you to get out of your comfort zone and truly understand the experience before doing whatever it is you plan to do.
Imagine if everybody took a few moments to understand one another before doing anything. Imagine if everybody went out of their own ways to design something that could make the lives of others better. Imagine if we always tried to solve the real cause of the problem.
Design Thinking isn’t a scam. It’s the complete opposite. The framework is so powerful because it has the ability to influence things greatly. It requires a deep understanding of what the situation is really like before taking any actions. The world will definitely be a better place.
In the end, there are no definitive equations when it comes to solving real problems. But there are powerful guides available to help you solve it.