Think about the most innovative products of the technological age: the iPhone, iPod, Nest, Dyson vacuum, Amazon Kindle and Tesla cars. They are the frontrunners in shaping and evolving our lifestyle today. Interacting with these products regularly, we rarely dwell on how they came to be. Why did Apple design the iPod? Who worked on the conception, design and production and for how long? Even on a modest scale, products like OXO measuring cup and Tide To-go pen – sincerely loved by their users – don’t evoke discussions on design teams or ideation process.
The same goes for ubiquitous services like WhatsApp, Airbnb and Uber. How did two roommates living in San Francisco convince strangers to sleep on an air mattress in their home? Coverage of any process story is typically tucked away into ‘business’ journals, qualifying the curiosity. Could a non-business savvy person using an iPhone not be interested in knowing why their beloved phone was designed the way it was? It may be time for design to be visible to the width of society – not just through launched products but also through the backstory: the idea, innovation strategy, design and delivery.
The pursuit of innovation has had a long history in the business world. Disruptive thinkers and brave entrepreneurs like Walt Disney and Henry Ford transformed the industry landscape in the early 20th century. For several decades since, marketing and business strategy practices have driven corporate growth creating a robust and competitive marketplace.
By the new millennium, business leaders faced a new challenge: continual innovation and differentiation in an increasingly cutthroat atmosphere. Furthering this task was the emergent technological revolution, shifting consumer lifestyles, awareness and needs. The way people consumed information, interacted with one another, and made decisions about spending money fundamentally changed. Even long-standing companies like Polaroid, Nintendo and National Geographic felt the urgency to reform to the evolving consumer mindset.
The time of design had come. IDEO, with origins as a traditional product design consultancy as early as 1980, responded to its clients’ new needs by adapting its offering in 1991, bringing together human-centered, systemic and iterative practices that enable disruptive innovation. The methodology – named design thinking – has been championed as a reliable framework for much-needed innovation in the industry, helping scores of businesses reinvent and differentiate their offerings.
So what’s the big deal with design thinking and why is it a game changer? The approach introduces a creative yet manageable path to innovation that traditional managers can grasp. Decisions are based on insights derived from a deep understanding of human motivation, with resulting products or services responding directly to unmet needs. This builds confidence in reception of new solutions in the marketplace, reducing potential risk.
Companies like Polaroid, Nintendo and National Geographic felt the urgency to reform to the evolving consumer mindset
For example, when Braun+Oral-B was in the process of designing a smarter electric toothbrush, their solution was to simply add-on the newest technology features: playing music and tracking users’ brushing performance. British design consultancy Industrial Facility did not agree: research informed them that the add-on features would do nothing to lift the guilt associated with the toothbrush: of not brushing properly or enough. Instead, bringing positivity to the interaction by simplifying recharging and replacement orders assured relevance to user needs and therefore future reception.
Design thinking is increasingly important because it has proven to be a reliable framework in finding tangible solutions to complex and ambiguous issues, like obesity, food waste, water scarcity and so on. Designing for previously unknown or uncovered needs disrupts markets, inspires paradigm shifts and invents new prospects.
In the case of Municipality of Holstebro in Denmark, struggling with poor nutrition among its dependent seniors, an ordinary redesign of the mealplan revealed systemic problems. With the same menu for three months, both seniors and cooks were disgruntled with the stagnation caused by cost-effective management. Chefs were underwhelmed by their jobs, having no incentive to be creative; seniors craved an uplifting social dining experience, without which they simply did not eat enough. Uncovering this reality threw new light on the issue, helping create a successful solution with an ambitious meal plan, visitors’ menu, seasonal foods, and mentorship from industry chefs resulting in a 500% increase in meal orders within the first week.
So how does one go about doing design thinking? By relying on empathic, qualitative research as opposed to quantitative market research; design researchers spend time with a small group of potential users in their context: in homes, offices, supermarkets, playgrounds, etc. By observing what people do, not just what they say, true motivations for behaviour are uncovered. Unlike market research, where large numbers of consumers take a standard survey to evaluate a product, concept or assumption, design research does not begin with a design agenda. The only goal is to understand how users behave in their context. It is only with a keen eye that one can observe those praising something they own while also finding excuses not to use it, workarounds like socks being used as gloves, or people simply contradicting themselves. Recurrences of ‘why?’ are a constant part of every researcher’s life.
Since design thinking keeps the user in mind at all times, it delivers truly disruptive innovation
Numerous such observations are then synthesized – a process of finding patterns based on accompanying motivations, the ‘why’s – to construct insights. With a firm grasp of the nuances of human incentives, it is easier to define the opportunity and form of intervention most desirable, feasible, and viable. Acting on these opportunities to design products, services, spaces, or experiences through an iterative process culminates the design thinking cycle.
When IDEO began investigating behaviours around personal money management, they observed not just target users for a banking service, but also extreme users – those in dire financial struggles – for an opportunity. Making sense of plentiful observations from families and individuals, patterns emerged: people rounded up numbers in their cheque books to facilitate easy addition. This also gave them a small buffer in spending, offering them some control, making them feel empowered in their management. Based on this insight, the Keep The Change programme was designed for Bank of America, where people enroll into a savings account that rounds up purchases made by their debit card. This way, the shame in not saving is flipped into pride at doing what little is possible.
Since design thinking keeps users in mind at all times, designing for unmet needs instead of matching competitors’ products, it delivers truly disruptive innovation, offering leaps of growth to brave companies willing to invest in the opportunity. As the methodology becomes more popular in the industry, designers find their expertise being encroached upon: everyone thinks they can be a design thinker. And because the framework does not offer any evaluation of the research or design, belowaverage outcomes – misunderstood as innovative by non-designers – are staining the true potential of design thinking.
Following a list of activities your manager prescribed is very different from thinking like a designer and therein lies the current challenge for design thinking: in successfully equipping a wide array of innovation-hopefuls to wield its power. A skills renaissance may be necessary to broaden the impact of the creative tool: a shift from the traditional evaluative approach to a generative, systemic approach. With growing success of the methodology, consulting models are shifting amid emerging in-house capabilities and acquisitions.
Will designers become redundant if everyone can do their job? Or will there be a new wave of methodologies powered by creatives? Maybe the higher calling for designers is to teach the art of design thinking: in building corporate capabilities to serve the unmet needs of human beings. Because in the end, that’s where true success lies.
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