It’s no secret that Design Thinking is an essential soft-skill for product, UX, and UI designers. But why is that? What is it about the Design Thinking process that makes it such an effective framework for creating the most effective solutions to delight users?
I’ve been reading the 2nd edition of Lean UX by Jeff Gothem and Josh Seiden, and in the first part, the authors describe why Design Thinking is one of the 3 foundations of Lean UX.
“Design Thinking is important for Lean UX because it takes the explicit position that every aspect of a business (or any other system) can be approached with design methods”
This was particularly impactful because it speaks to the fact that Design Thinking isn’t just about visual design, or even user experience design. It’s a tried-and-true method that can be used to tackle any problem or any need within a system.
So, what are the steps of the Design Thinking process, and how do they help us solve problems?
👂 Empathy & definition
The job of a UX/UI designer is to service the user with the experiences and journeys you craft. It’s easy to make assumptions about our product and our users and what exactly it takes to service them. The Design Thinking process, however, starts us off by listening and understanding the users. It is only by listening and empathizing that we can amplify the user’s voice in the products that we design, that we can forego any and all assumptions to focus and what a user really needs.
In order to understand the user, rather than simply listening, we have to define our findings. Using tools such as empathy maps and affinity diagrams, we can start to make sense of everything we’ve heard from our users to arrive at central themes and problems to solve.
💡 Ideation
Once we understand the user, their needs, and their problems, we of course have to design solutions that are both effective and delightful. And that’s no easy task! The only way to come up with effective solutions is to churn out ideas and pick and choose the best aspects of each to continue moving towards better solutions.
Without this crucial, almost Darwinian step, we would mostly find ourselves with sub-par ideas that fail to provide meaningful solutions for those who champion, our users. This step also allows us to involve stakeholders, it allows us to gather feedback and ideas not only from the users, but also from those who make decisions on our product.
🔬 Prototyping & testing
Prototyping then allows to expand upon the ideas developed into the previous stage, and gives us the chance to iterate once again to improve upon them. It also connects directly with the next stage, allowing us to test our designs with users.
This stage is key as it once again allows us to let go of any assumptions we may have developed, and helps us once again listen to the users to gather more insights, and improve upon our product.
Testing also gives us the opportunity to understand the true value of our solutions, and weather or not they align with our goals, wether it be delighting the users, or moving towards business goals for our stakeholders.
🛠 An indispensable tool
It’s hard to deny that Design Thinking is an absolute must for all designers. It is the perfect companion to agile development, allowing both design and dev teams to work in harmony and ship effective, real solutions that delight users and stakeholders alike!
