What is design thinking 2022-03-22
Design thinking is not the exclusive property of designers-all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So why is it called design thinking? What special design thinking designers' workflows can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these people-centered technologies to solve problems in a creative and innovative way-in our design, business, country and life.
Some world-leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and General Electric, have quickly adopted the design thinking method, and design thinking is being taught in world-leading universities, including d.school, Stanford, Harvard and MIT. But do you know what design thinking is? Why is it so popular? Here, let's cut to the chase and tell you what it is and why it is so popular.
Design thinking is an iterative process, in which we seek to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and try to find alternative strategies and solutions that may not appear immediately at our initial understanding level. At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based method for solving problems. This is a way of thinking and working, and it is also a collection of practical methods.
Design thinking revolves around the strong interest of people who understand the products or services we design for them. This helps us to observe and develop the target users. Design thinking helps us in the process of asking questions: asking questions, questioning assumptions and questioning their meaning. Design thinking is very useful in solving unclear or unknown problems. You can reconstruct problems with people as the center, brainstorm conversations, and study and test prototypes with practical methods. Design thinking also includes continuous experiments: sketching prototypes, testing and trying concepts and ideas.
There are many variants of the design thinking process used today, which have three to seven stages, stages or patterns. However, all variants of design thinking are very similar. All variants of design thinking embody the same principle, which was first described by Nobel Prize winner Herbert Simon in Artificial Science. 1969. Here, we will focus on the five-stage model proposed by Hasselblad-plattner School of Design at Stanford University. We choose d.school because they are at the forefront of applying and teaching design thinking. According to d.school, the five stages of design thinking are as follows:
It should be noted that these five stages, stages or patterns are not always continuous. They don't have to follow any particular order, they can often appear in parallel and repeatedly. In view of this, you should not understand the stage as a hierarchical or step-by-step process. Instead, you should think of it as an overview of the model or stage of an innovation project, rather than a continuous step.
& ltsmall style = " background:0px 0px； Border: 0px margin: 0px padding: 0px vertical alignment: baseline; Outline: 0px”& gt Author/Copyright holder: Pixaby. Copyright terms and license: free use
In order to help you understand the design idea, we divide the process into five stages or modes, namely: 1. Empathy, 2. Definition, 3. Ideas, 4. Prototype, and 5. Experiment. The uniqueness of design thinking is that the designer's workflow can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these people-centered technologies, and solve problems in a creative and innovative way-in our design, in our enterprise, in our country (finally, if things go really well or even better), in our life. However, a great artist like auguste rodin created this famous sculpture called "The Thinker", formerly known as "Le Pen Sai", and probably used the same innovative technology in his works. Similarly, all great innovators in the fields of literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced and are still practicing.
Sometimes, the easiest way to understand intangible things (such as design thinking) is to understand what it is.
Humans naturally develop a mode of thinking based on repetitive activities and common sense. These help us to apply the same behaviors and knowledge quickly in similar or familiar situations, but they may also prevent us from acquiring or developing new methods to observe, understand and solve problems quickly and easily. These thinking patterns are usually called plans, which are a group of organized information and the relationship between things, behaviors and thoughts that are stimulated and started in people's minds when we encounter some environmental stimuli. A pattern can contain a lot of information. For example, we have a model of a dog, including four legs, fur, sharp teeth, tail, claws and many other perceptible features. When environmental stimuli match this pattern-even if there is a weak connection or only a few characteristics exist-the same thinking pattern will enter the brain. Because these models are self-motivated, they may hinder a more appropriate impression of the situation, or prevent us from looking at the problem in a way that can realize new problem-solving strategies. Innovative problem solving is also called "thinking outside the box".
Thinking outside the box can provide innovative solutions to difficult problems. However, thinking outside the box may be a real challenge, because we naturally develop a thinking mode, which is based on repetitive activities and common sense around us.
A few years ago, a truck driver tried to pass under a low bridge. But he failed and the truck was firmly stuck under the bridge. Drivers can't continue to drive through or reverse.
The story is that when the truck got stuck, it caused a large-scale traffic problem, which led emergency workers, engineers, firefighters and truck drivers to gather together to design and negotiate various solutions to clear the trapped vehicles.
Emergency workers are debating whether to dismantle truck parts or bridges. Everyone talked about the solution that suits their professional level.
A boy passed by and witnessed a fierce quarrel. He looked at the truck, looked at the bridge, then looked at the road and casually said, "Why not just let the tire leak?" It surprised all the experts who tried to solve this problem.
When testing the solution, the truck was able to drive easily and freely, but it was damaged when it tried to pass under the bridge for the first time. This story symbolizes the dilemma we are facing. In these dilemmas, the most obvious solution is often the hardest to find, because we work in self-discipline.
& ltsmall style = " background:0px 0px； Border: 0px margin: 0px padding: 0px vertical alignment: baseline; Outline: 0px”& gt Copyright: Wystan Flickr. Copyright terms and license: CC 2.0
For us humans, it is often difficult to challenge our assumptions and daily knowledge, because we rely on the establishment of thinking patterns, so that we don't have to learn everything from scratch every time. We rely more or less unconsciously on doing daily things-for example, when we get up in the morning, eat, walk and read-but the same is true when we evaluate the challenges in our work and private life. Especially experts and experts rely on their solid thinking mode, and it is very challenging and difficult for experts to question their knowledge.
Why should we tell you this story? Storytelling can help us stimulate opportunities, ideas and solutions. This story revolves around real people and their lives. Stories are important because they are descriptions of specific events, not general statements. They provide us with specific details and help us imagine solutions to specific problems. When we do this, please watch this 1 minute video to help you begin to understand what design thinking is.
Design thinking is often called "outside the box" thinking. The child showed us the importance of challenging our assumptions and finding new ways to solve problems.
Design thinking is often called "out-of-the-box" thinking, because designers try to develop new ways of thinking without following the dominant or more common problem-solving methods.
The core of design thinking is to improve products by analyzing and understanding how users interact with products and investigating their running conditions. The core of design thinking also lies in the interest and ability to ask important questions and challenge assumptions. One element of thinking outside the box is to tamper with previous assumptions-that is, it is possible to prove whether they are valid or not. Once we ask a problem and investigate the conditions of the problem, the solution generation process will help us generate ideas that reflect the actual constraints and aspects of the specific problem. Design thinking provides us with a way to dig deeper; It helps us to conduct correct research, prototype design and test our products and services, so as to find new ways to improve products, services or designs.
Don Norman, an old man of user experience, also coined the word "user experience" to explain what design thinking is and its special features:
This design process usually involves different people in different departments; Therefore, it may be difficult to develop, classify and organize ideas and problem solutions. One way to keep the design project on track and organize the core ideas is to use the design thinking method.
Timothy brown, a famous innovative design company IDEO, shows in his successful works that changing "design thinking" according to design is based on the understanding of the integrity and empathy of the problems people face, which involves vague or inherent subjective concepts, such as emotion, demand, motivation and behavioral driving factors. This is in contrast to the pure scientific method, which has a greater distance in the process of understanding and testing users' needs and emotions, such as through quantitative research. Timthy brown concluded that design thinking is the third way: design thinking is essentially a problem-solving method, which is concrete in the field of design. It will combine the overall view of user-centered with rational and analytical research, aiming at creating innovative solutions.
Some scientific activities will include analyzing how users interact with products and investigating their operating conditions: studying users' needs, collecting the experience of previous projects, considering the current and future conditions of products, testing the parameters of problems, and testing the practical application of alternative problem solutions. Unlike pure scientific methods, most of the known qualities, characteristics, etc. Test the problem to find a solution to the problem. Design thinking investigation includes fuzzy elements of the problem to reveal previously unknown parameters and find alternative strategies.
The selection process is reasonable after finding many potential solutions to the problem. Encourage designers to analyze and create solutions to these problems, so that they can find the best solution for each problem or obstacle at every stage of the design process.
Considering this, perhaps it is more correct to say that the design thinking is not outside the box, but under the corners, flip cover and bar code of the box, just as Clint Runge said.
& ltsmall style = " background:0px 0px； Border: 0px margin: 0px padding: 0px vertical alignment: baseline; Outline: 0px”& gt Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: cc by-NC-sa 3.0
Clint Runge is the founder and general manager of a famous young competitor and an adjunct professor at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
With a solid scientific and rational foundation, design thinking seeks a holistic and empathetic understanding of the problems people face. Design thinking tries to resonate with human beings. This involves vague or inherent subjective concepts, such as emotions, needs, motivations and behavioral drivers. The essence of generating ideas and solutions in design thinking means that this method is usually more sensitive and interested in the user's operating environment and the problems and obstacles that may be faced when interacting with products. The creative elements of design thinking exist in the method of generating problem solutions and insight into the practices, actions and ideas of actual users.
& ltsmall style = " background:0px 0px； Border: 0px margin: 0px padding: 0px vertical alignment: baseline; Outline: 0px”& gt Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: cc by-NC-sa 3.0
Design thinking is an iterative nonlinear process. This simply means that design teams continue to use their results to review, question and improve their initial assumptions, understandings and results. The results of the last stage of the initial workflow inform our understanding of the problem, help us determine the parameters of the problem, enable us to redefine the problem, and, perhaps most importantly, provide us with new insights so that we can see any alternative solutions that may not be provided by the previous level of understanding.
Timthy brown also emphasized that design thinking technology and design strategy belong to all levels of enterprises. Design thinking is not only applicable to designers, but also to creative employees, freelancers and leaders, who seek to integrate design thinking into all levels of organizations, products or services to promote new choices for enterprises and society.
& ltsmall style = " background:0px 0px； Border: 0px margin: 0px padding: 0px vertical alignment: baseline; Outline: 0px”& gt Copyright: Daniel Lobo, fleek. Copyright terms and license: CC 2.0
Design thinking is essentially a problem-solving method, which is embodied in the design field. It will combine the user-centered view with rational and analytical research to create innovative solutions.
In essence, design thinking is a problem-solving method specifically for design, including evaluating the known aspects of the problem and determining the vague or marginal factors that lead to the problem situation. This is in contrast to the more scientific method, in which specific and known aspects must be tested before a solution can be obtained. Design thinking is an iterative process, in which knowledge is constantly questioned and acquired, so it can help us redefine a problem and try to find alternative strategies and solutions that may not appear immediately at our initial understanding level. Design thinking is often called "thinking outside the box" because designers try to develop new ways of thinking instead of following the dominant or more common problem-solving methods like artists. The core of design thinking is to improve products by analyzing how users interact with products and investigating the running status of products. Design thinking provides us with a deeper way to find ways to improve the user experience.