Design thinking – searching and finding innovations
Design thinking enables you to find user-centered product and service solutions that unveil new usage contexts. Our design thinking experts accompany you on your way to developing novelties that will advance your company.
Design thinking is a creative, artefact-oriented method for finding solutions to complex problems. The approach is playful and experimental for a reason: By intensively dealing with the original question, your team develops new perspectives. Delving into the subject raises awareness for the users' requirements and forms a vital base for new product ideas. Thus, design thinking offers new principles, methods and techniques to find opportunities for new products and enhanced services.
What is your strategic direction?
Design thinking is especially well-suited for determining the strategic direction at an early stage of your project. This will help you find approval, also at higher management levels. While user experience design focuses on interaction design, design thinking is a more general problem solving approach.
Thinking outside the box
As opposed to human-centered design, design thinking deals with the problem and its different solution approaches in a more holistic way, enlarging the solution scope. The stakeholders develop a different mind set – they have to think in different directions, in unconventional ways and outside the box. This creates empathy for potential users and colleagues. Instead of relying on a logical, analytic approach, they trust their own intuition.
This different approach is supported by working in a flexible space: A lot of work is done standing up, notepads and inspiring prototyping materials are always available. Prototypes may be role plays, presentations, drawings or hand-crafted ideas, which help to quickly visualize approaches and bring them to life. This allows you to develop not only a rational-logical but also a holistic assessment of your idea.
The benefits of design thinking
Acceptance
Design thinking is a multidisciplinary approach integrating all the stakeholders of a company into the design process. This forges solutions that are readily accepted, implemented and marketed by all divisions of a company.
Fast results
Design thinking also works under pressure and proves that a lot can be achieved in a short time. Existing methods such as creativity techniques and UCD methods can be easily integrated.
Innovations
You don't only use market opportunities, you create new ones. This is how real innovations come to life.
New ideas
Design thinking changes the mind set of your team and helps to focus on opportunities instead of limiting factors.
Individuality
These solutions lay the foundations for the future of your company. You have to deal with increasing costs and competition on a daily basis. Stand out from the crowd by designing a unique product with an unconventional approach, bringing you one step ahead of your competitors.
In the right hands – UID's hands
A team of proficient user experience designers is by your side from the initial strategic phase all the way to the actual implementation. Our staff have expanded the UID method by attending trainings at leading design thinking institutions in Europe, and are now able to offer our customers in-depth knowledge for their design-thinking projects. This perfectly complements their vast experience as user experience designers.
Six phases of design thinking
Understand
We scrutinize: We analyze the topic, the problem space and the project stakeholders with an open mind. Who knows what? Where do we stand? How can we fully understand the task at hand? Where do we want to go?
Observe
We look closely: In order to understand the usage context, we put ourselves in the place of the user and develop empathy. We observe users, interview them and sum up our own experiences with the topic.
Define
We come to the point: Information is classified and summarized in order to derive requirements and refine the question. Focusing on the prototypical user, we define areas of practice and derive design principles.
Ideate
We get active: Using the inspiration gathered in the first phases, we think outside the box and let our minds run free. Brainstorming and other techniques help us to develop a large pool of ideas from which we choose the most promising approaches.
Prototype
We experiment: What happens to our ideas when we bring them to life in
simple initial prototypes? Does the basic idea work? Do they match the
user's experience landscape? We test all this with a tangible prototype.
Test
We run tests: In order to evaluate possible solutions, we run user tests and guerilla tests in the street and elsewhere. We want to comprehen where we stand, which ideas can be improved and whether we have understood the user.
After the end of the design thinking project you can continue to rely on UID's usual service standard. We can accompany you with your actual, well-prepared HCD project or support you during the implementation right down to the smallest detail.
