Aya Mostafa

Design thinking is a problem-solving framework that allows information and ideas to be organized, decisions to be made, situations to be improved, and knowledge to be gained in order to extract the optimal solutions.

“In short, design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem-solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and creative.” – Tim Brown, CEO and President of IDEO.

What characterizes this methodology?

This methodology is a human-centered, design thinking follows the approach used by first-class designers: it puts the needs of the customers first. Tim Brown, CEO of international design firm IDEO, once explained it like this: "Design is human-centered. It may integrate technology and economics, but it starts with what humans need."

So Why design thinking? 

• It saves a lot of time,effort and resources that can be consumed without studying customer needs. you can introduce the best product ever but client doesn’t need it  so when you study your customer needs well that will guarantee a strong long term relationship.
• Design thinking is about finding innovative, creative and out of the box solutions to solve the challenges that human meets. Did you know that Google formally allows 20% of their employees’ time to think? That says a lot about the value of thinking.
• “A problem well-stated is a problem half-solved.”
• By applying Design Thinking methodology, the success rate of project improve by 5-10x.
• Understanding how business users will interact and use the data insights, is key in reaching a successful solution.

I encourage you to check out the next video that explain the general idea of design thinking and why we use it.

Now let’s start with the main steps to solve problems by design thinking but before we start I want to declare that design thinking isn’t just sitting in front of your computer. it’s about interacting, observing, brainstorming, prototyping solutions,testing and refining until you get the optimal solution that meets your customer needs. So I'll just recap in this article the main concept of every phase but you have to know that every step has a series of hands-on activities to get the needed information. You can download this file that has all details about these activities and more 

Phases of Design Thinking

1. Understand:  The very foundation of Design Thinking is empathy. Sometimes referred to as “discovery” or “understanding”. empathy requires that we seek to understand and identify with the needs and challenges of the people (or users of a product), the experience or the system. you’ll involve all users that your challenge are related to including customers, sponsors,skeptics and observing their behaviors, feelings and their motivations also we are going to gather more data by surveys,interviews,research...  
2. Define: In this phase, you are going to construct a point of view based on customer needs and insights. What are their needs?
3. Ideate:  In this phase,we are going to brainstorm as many creative solutions as possible. Remember: all ideas are worthy,No judgment!!
4. Prototype and Test:  In this phase,we are going to build rough prototypes for our ideas to show to others in order to gather feedback and experiment forward. Remember: A prototype is not your final product. (It should be cheap and fast to build!).The prototype is not for you, it’s for your users. (It needs to be tested with real potential users!)
   
   The next video explains how prototyping was used to create one of Google's newest inventions, “Google Glass” 
    
5. Refine:  The philosophy of “design, test and iterate” is central to the process. It allows you to have those completely unexpected breakthroughs by creating several rapid prototypes and encouraging fast feedback from actual users and customers before spending too much time, effort or money on any one idea. From now on, your role will be to continue to revise and advance your idea until it effectively meets your user needs.