DESIGN THINKING

DEFINITION

Design Thinking is a human-centred approach to innovation that employs multidisciplinary teams, flexible environments and a creative process to generate user-focused products, services or experiences. It has been used successfully by organisations as part of their business strategy and is also a challenge-solving tool for creating user-centric solutions.

5 STEP DESIGN THINKING PROCESS

Design thinking is a process used by design thinkers to design solutions for users starting from understanding users experiences to testing.

NO	PROCESS	WHAT IS?
1	EMPATHISE	Understand users experiences
2	DEFINE	Focus on insights/issues to solve
3	IDEATE	Explorer ideas that helps
4	PROROTYPE	Create prototypes that visualize ideas
5	TEST	Experience the prototype and iteration.

1. EMPATHIES

Empathies is a process to understand stories and experiences shared from identified users that related to challenge given. To understand the users, the using of various framework to find out their point of views and comments from them. The examples is  to conduct the interviews and make observation. 3 empathies steps are:

PRE-OPP MEETING

a) Brief description of Project Partner (PP) and project challenge.

b) Describe the frameworks and tools used, clarify why and how they were used.

c) Findings and outcomes of these frameworks and tools.

OPP MEETING

a) Who was present in the meeting and what was discussed?

b) After have unpacked the Pre-OPP kick-off meeting, report the insights that was gathered.

c) Record the challenge reframing and choice of user. Share how you arrived to a decision here.

FIELD OBSERVATION

During field observation, capture in your report:

a) Location, target users.

b) Rationale of location and target users, what you are trying to find out.

c) Photographs of location, people, and your immersion attempts.

d) Outcomes

     i) Ask & Listen: What were your questions? Who are the people interviewed? What did they say and do?

     ii) Watch & Observe: Where did you go? Why did you choose these places? What did you see?

     iii) Try & Do: What were your immersion experiences? What did you find out?

As a conclusion, summarise your experiences and the learning outcomes of the Empathise step.

2. DEFINE

Define is a focus on insights/issues to solve. During this step, an Empathy Map was used to gather back all information that gotten during interviews session and unpack all observation to look for the actual needs of user and deeper understanding of the problem based on the user say, feel, done, and might be thinking. 5 define steps are

EMPATHY MAP

a) Briefly explain empathy map and your process of unpacking your interviews.

b) How did you get to tensions, surprises, contradictions, and insights?

SYNTHESIS FRAMEWORKS

a) Record the frameworks you have used. It could be geographic map, Venn diagram, 2-by-2 matrix, and others.

b) Why did you choose a certain framework?

c) How did it work and what did it reveal?

INSIGHTS

a) List down the insights you have gathered from the different frameworks and activities.

PERSONA

a) Explain briefly about the purpose of a persona.

b) Who is your persona? Why did you choose him or her?

POINT OF VIEW

a) What is your point of view?

Summarise the learning outcomes from this step.

3. IDEATE

Ideate is Explorer ideas that helps. 3 ideate steps are:

HOW MIGHT WE (HMW) QUESTIONS

a) List down your HMW questions.

b) Briefly explain if you have clustered or how you selected your HMW questions to ideate on.

IDEATION

a) Record the tools you have used. It could be Nature, Superhero, Associational Thinking, Associational Object, and more.

b) Why did you choose a certain tool?

c) How did the tool work?

d) What are your ideas? Did you cluster them into something different?

e) Why did you choose a certain idea? How do you tie it back to your Point of View at Define step?

f) What were the Radical, Quick Win, and Delightful ideas?

IDEA DASHBOARD

For each selected idea, lay out more details according to the Idea Dashboard.

Summarise the learning outcomes from this step.

4. PROTOTYPE

Ideas for prototype covers the concept of job experience, life and feel. 4 prototype steps are:

a) List down your selected ideas to prototype.

b) Describe how each prototype works.

c) What materials did you use? What out-of-the-box method of prototyping did        you try?

d) Include photographs of the prototypes from all angles.

5. TEST

Test is a test prototypes  whether suit with users needs and obtain users experiences during the process. 4 test steps are:

PRE-TEST

a) Describe your test situation. What is the set up?

b) What do you intend to measure in your tests?

TESTING

a) Describe how you conducted your testing. Where did you go?

b) What are some of the on-ground happenings? How did your test users interact with your prototype?

c) Did you iterate your prototypes on the go?

d) Include photographs of testing.

FEEDBACK CAPTURE & UNPACKING

a) Record and unpack the feedback from your test users using the Feedback Capture Grid.

b) Summarise the overall feedback on each prototype tested.

PROJECT PARTNER INTERIM PRESENTATION

a) Record and unpack the feedback from your PP using the Feedback Capture Grid.

Summarise the learning outcomes from this step and describe your next iterations.

At iteration, it means going back to any one of the steps to refine your idea. Adopt the same guidelines in that step to help you with your documentation.