Design Thinking 💡

Definition: Design thinking refers to creative strategies designers used during the process of designing.

  1. Empathise

Try to understand the users needs and perspectives through putting ourselves into the shoes of the people we are designing for, interaction and observation. It is through

the way people do things and why they do it

their physical and emotional needs

how they think about things

what they value

How to empathise?

Technique 1: Observe

  1. Ideate
  1. Define

Listen to what others are sharing with our eyes instead of ears.

Who: Who are your target audience?

Where to go online: Which platform can you observe your target audience?

What things to watch for: What are you curious to discover?

Where to go offline: Where can you observe your target audience offline?

Technique 2: Interviewing

Technique 3: Empathy Immersion

Experience and feel it yourself!

What is define?

Bring clarity and focus to the design scope, by defining the problem that you are aiming to address, based on what you have learnt about your target user and the context.

Making sense of the scattered information that you have gathered and connecting them together in a meaningful way to shed lights on the needs and wants.

How to define?

Provides focus and frame the problem

Informs criteria for evaluating competing ideas

Provide a clear common direction so that your team could make decisions independently in parallel

Be specific

Inspires your team

  1. Test
  1. Prototype

What is test?

You can get feedback on your solutions, refine your solutions to make them better, and continue to know more about your target users

Why test?

To make iterations and refine the prototype

Through testing, observe how users reacts to the prototype, learn more and empathise with the user.

Test reveals if prototype meets the users needs, and this allows us to refine our point of view or reframe the problem.

How to test?

Show and not tell

Have them talk through their experiences

Actively observe users

Follow up with the questions

What is prototype?

Prototype is getting ideas and explorations out of our head and into the physical world.

When prototype is completed, it is the best if we as the designing team and the users can experience it and test it

In the earlier stage, prototypes can be made out by sketching it out or using materials like cardboard to test it

At the later stage, prototypes can be made functional and visually appealing.

Why prototype?

To ideate and problem-solve

To communicate

To start a conversation

Manage the solution - building process

To fail quickly and cheaply

Test for possibilites

How to prototype?

Start building

Don't spend too long on one prototype

Identify a variable

Build with the user in mind

What is ideate?

It is not about coming up with the right ideas, but it's about generating a range of possibilities