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Ideas Made to Matter

Design thinking, explained

Rebecca Linke

Sep 14, 2017

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO.

Since then, the design thinking process has been applied to developing new products and services, and to a whole range of problems, from creating a business model for selling solar panels in Africa to the operation of Airbnb .

At a high level, the steps involved in the design thinking process are simple: first, fully understand the problem; second, explore a wide range of possible solutions; third, iterate extensively through prototyping and testing; and finally, implement through the customary deployment mechanisms. 

The skills associated with these steps help people apply creativity to effectively solve real-world problems better than they otherwise would. They can be readily learned, but take effort. For instance, when trying to understand a problem, setting aside your own preconceptions is vital, but it’s hard.

Creative brainstorming is necessary for developing possible solutions, but many people don’t do it particularly well. And throughout the process it is critical to engage in modeling, analysis, prototyping, and testing, and to really learn from these many iterations.

Once you master the skills central to the design thinking approach, they can be applied to solve problems in daily life and any industry.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Understand the problem 

The first step in design thinking is to understand the problem you are trying to solve before searching for solutions. Sometimes, the problem you need to address is not the one you originally set out to tackle.

“Most people don’t make much of an effort to explore the problem space before exploring the solution space,” said MIT Sloan professor Steve Eppinger. The mistake they make is to try and empathize, connecting the stated problem only to their own experiences. This falsely leads to the belief that you completely understand the situation. But the actual problem is always broader, more nuanced, or different than people originally assume.

Take the example of a meal delivery service in Holstebro, Denmark. When a team first began looking at the problem of poor nutrition and malnourishment among the elderly in the city, many of whom received meals from the service, it thought that simply updating the menu options would be a sufficient solution. But after closer observation, the team realized the scope of the problem was much larger , and that they would need to redesign the entire experience, not only for those receiving the meals, but for those preparing the meals as well. While the company changed almost everything about itself, including rebranding as The Good Kitchen, the most important change the company made when rethinking its business model was shifting how employees viewed themselves and their work. That, in turn, helped them create better meals (which were also drastically changed), yielding happier, better nourished customers.

Involve users

Imagine you are designing a new walker for rehabilitation patients and the elderly, but you have never used one. Could you fully understand what customers need? Certainly not, if you haven’t extensively observed and spoken with real customers. There is a reason that design thinking is often referred to as human-centered design.

“You have to immerse yourself in the problem,” Eppinger said.

How do you start to understand how to build a better walker? When a team from MIT’s Integrated Design and Management program together with the design firm Altitude took on that task, they met with walker users to interview them, observe them, and understand their experiences.  

“We center the design process on human beings by understanding their needs at the beginning, and then include them throughout the development and testing process,” Eppinger said.

Central to the design thinking process is prototyping and testing (more on that later) which allows designers to try, to fail, and to learn what works. Testing also involves customers, and that continued involvement provides essential user feedback on potential designs and use cases. If the MIT-Altitude team studying walkers had ended user involvement after its initial interviews, it would likely have ended up with a walker that didn’t work very well for customers. 

It is also important to interview and understand other stakeholders, like people selling the product, or those who are supporting the users throughout the product life cycle.

The second phase of design thinking is developing solutions to the problem (which you now fully understand). This begins with what most people know as brainstorming.

Hold nothing back during brainstorming sessions — except criticism. Infeasible ideas can generate useful solutions, but you’d never get there if you shoot down every impractical idea from the start.

“One of the key principles of brainstorming is to suspend judgment,” Eppinger said. “When we're exploring the solution space, we first broaden the search and generate lots of possibilities, including the wild and crazy ideas. Of course, the only way we're going to build on the wild and crazy ideas is if we consider them in the first place.”

That doesn’t mean you never judge the ideas, Eppinger said. That part comes later, in downselection. “But if we want 100 ideas to choose from, we can’t be very critical.”

In the case of The Good Kitchen, the kitchen employees were given new uniforms. Why? Uniforms don’t directly affect the competence of the cooks or the taste of the food.

But during interviews conducted with kitchen employees, designers realized that morale was low, in part because employees were bored preparing the same dishes over and over again, in part because they felt that others had a poor perception of them. The new, chef-style uniforms gave the cooks a greater sense of pride. It was only part of the solution, but if the idea had been rejected outright, or perhaps not even suggested, the company would have missed an important aspect of the solution.

Prototype and test. Repeat.

You’ve defined the problem. You’ve spoken to customers. You’ve brainstormed, come up with all sorts of ideas, and worked with your team to boil those ideas down to the ones you think may actually solve the problem you’ve defined.

“We don’t develop a good solution just by thinking about a list of ideas, bullet points and rough sketches,” Eppinger said. “We explore potential solutions through modeling and prototyping. We design, we build, we test, and repeat — this design iteration process is absolutely critical to effective design thinking.”

Repeating this loop of prototyping, testing, and gathering user feedback is crucial for making sure the design is right — that is, it works for customers, you can build it, and you can support it.

“After several iterations, we might get something that works, we validate it with real customers, and we often find that what we thought was a great solution is actually only just OK. But then we can make it a lot better through even just a few more iterations,” Eppinger said.

Implementation

The goal of all the steps that come before this is to have the best possible solution before you move into implementing the design. Your team will spend most of its time, its money, and its energy on this stage.

“Implementation involves detailed design, training, tooling, and ramping up. It is a huge amount of effort, so get it right before you expend that effort,” said Eppinger.

Design thinking isn’t just for “things.” If you are only applying the approach to physical products, you aren’t getting the most out of it. Design thinking can be applied to any problem that needs a creative solution. When Eppinger ran into a primary school educator who told him design thinking was big in his school, Eppinger thought he meant that they were teaching students the tenets of design thinking.

“It turns out they meant they were using design thinking in running their operations and improving the school programs. It’s being applied everywhere these days,” Eppinger said.

In another example from the education field, Peruvian entrepreneur Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor hired design consulting firm IDEO to redesign every aspect of the learning experience in a network of schools in Peru. The ultimate goal? To elevate Peru’s middle class.

As you’d expect, many large corporations have also adopted design thinking. IBM has adopted it at a company-wide level, training many of its nearly 400,000 employees in design thinking principles .

What can design thinking do for your business?

The impact of all the buzz around design thinking today is that people are realizing that “anybody who has a challenge that needs creative problem solving could benefit from this approach,” Eppinger said. That means that managers can use it, not only to design a new product or service, “but anytime they’ve got a challenge, a problem to solve.”

Applying design thinking techniques to business problems can help executives across industries rethink their product offerings, grow their markets, offer greater value to customers, or innovate and stay relevant. “I don’t know industries that can’t use design thinking,” said Eppinger.

Ready to go deeper?

Read “ The Designful Company ” by Marty Neumeier, a book that focuses on how businesses can benefit from design thinking, and “ Product Design and Development ,” co-authored by Eppinger, to better understand the detailed methods.

Register for an MIT Sloan Executive Education course:

Systematic Innovation of Products, Processes, and Services , a five-day course taught by Eppinger and other MIT professors.

• Leadership by Design: Innovation Process and Culture , a two-day course taught by MIT Integrated Design and Management director Matthew Kressy.
• Managing Complex Technical Projects , a two-day course taught by Eppinger.
• Apply for M astering Design Thinking , a 3-month online certificate course taught by Eppinger and MIT Sloan senior lecturers Renée Richardson Gosline and David Robertson.

Steve Eppinger is a professor of management science and innovation at MIT Sloan. He holds the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Chair and has a PhD from MIT in engineering. He is the faculty co-director of MIT's System Design and Management program and Integrated Design and Management program, both master’s degrees joint between the MIT Sloan and Engineering schools. His research focuses on product development and technical project management, and has been applied to improving complex engineering processes in many industries.

Read next: 10 agile ideas worth sharing

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving & Why Is It Important?

• 01 Feb 2022

One of the biggest hindrances to innovation is complacency—it can be more comfortable to do what you know than venture into the unknown. Business leaders can overcome this barrier by mobilizing creative team members and providing space to innovate.

There are several tools you can use to encourage creativity in the workplace. Creative problem-solving is one of them, which facilitates the development of innovative solutions to difficult problems.

Here’s an overview of creative problem-solving and why it’s important in business.

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What Is Creative Problem-Solving?

Research is necessary when solving a problem. But there are situations where a problem’s specific cause is difficult to pinpoint. This can occur when there’s not enough time to narrow down the problem’s source or there are differing opinions about its root cause.

In such cases, you can use creative problem-solving , which allows you to explore potential solutions regardless of whether a problem has been defined.

Creative problem-solving is less structured than other innovation processes and encourages exploring open-ended solutions. It also focuses on developing new perspectives and fostering creativity in the workplace . Its benefits include:

• Finding creative solutions to complex problems : User research can insufficiently illustrate a situation’s complexity. While other innovation processes rely on this information, creative problem-solving can yield solutions without it.
• Adapting to change : Business is constantly changing, and business leaders need to adapt. Creative problem-solving helps overcome unforeseen challenges and find solutions to unconventional problems.
• Fueling innovation and growth : In addition to solutions, creative problem-solving can spark innovative ideas that drive company growth. These ideas can lead to new product lines, services, or a modified operations structure that improves efficiency.

Creative problem-solving is traditionally based on the following key principles :

1. Balance Divergent and Convergent Thinking

Creative problem-solving uses two primary tools to find solutions: divergence and convergence. Divergence generates ideas in response to a problem, while convergence narrows them down to a shortlist. It balances these two practices and turns ideas into concrete solutions.

2. Reframe Problems as Questions

By framing problems as questions, you shift from focusing on obstacles to solutions. This provides the freedom to brainstorm potential ideas.

3. Defer Judgment of Ideas

When brainstorming, it can be natural to reject or accept ideas right away. Yet, immediate judgments interfere with the idea generation process. Even ideas that seem implausible can turn into outstanding innovations upon further exploration and development.

4. Focus on "Yes, And" Instead of "No, But"

Using negative words like "no" discourages creative thinking. Instead, use positive language to build and maintain an environment that fosters the development of creative and innovative ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving and Design Thinking

Whereas creative problem-solving facilitates developing innovative ideas through a less structured workflow, design thinking takes a far more organized approach.

Design thinking is a human-centered, solutions-based process that fosters the ideation and development of solutions. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase framework to explain design thinking.

The four stages are:

• Clarify: The clarification stage allows you to empathize with the user and identify problems. Observations and insights are informed by thorough research. Findings are then reframed as problem statements or questions.
• Ideate: Ideation is the process of coming up with innovative ideas. The divergence of ideas involved with creative problem-solving is a major focus.
• Develop: In the development stage, ideas evolve into experiments and tests. Ideas converge and are explored through prototyping and open critique.
• Implement: Implementation involves continuing to test and experiment to refine the solution and encourage its adoption.

Creative problem-solving primarily operates in the ideate phase of design thinking but can be applied to others. This is because design thinking is an iterative process that moves between the stages as ideas are generated and pursued. This is normal and encouraged, as innovation requires exploring multiple ideas.

Creative Problem-Solving Tools

While there are many useful tools in the creative problem-solving process, here are three you should know:

Creating a Problem Story

One way to innovate is by creating a story about a problem to understand how it affects users and what solutions best fit their needs. Here are the steps you need to take to use this tool properly.

1. Identify a UDP

Create a problem story to identify the undesired phenomena (UDP). For example, consider a company that produces printers that overheat. In this case, the UDP is "our printers overheat."

2. Move Forward in Time

To move forward in time, ask: “Why is this a problem?” For example, minor damage could be one result of the machines overheating. In more extreme cases, printers may catch fire. Don't be afraid to create multiple problem stories if you think of more than one UDP.

3. Move Backward in Time

To move backward in time, ask: “What caused this UDP?” If you can't identify the root problem, think about what typically causes the UDP to occur. For the overheating printers, overuse could be a cause.

Following the three-step framework above helps illustrate a clear problem story:

• The printer is overused.
• The printer overheats.
• The printer breaks down.

You can extend the problem story in either direction if you think of additional cause-and-effect relationships.

4. Break the Chains

By this point, you’ll have multiple UDP storylines. Take two that are similar and focus on breaking the chains connecting them. This can be accomplished through inversion or neutralization.

• Inversion: Inversion changes the relationship between two UDPs so the cause is the same but the effect is the opposite. For example, if the UDP is "the more X happens, the more likely Y is to happen," inversion changes the equation to "the more X happens, the less likely Y is to happen." Using the printer example, inversion would consider: "What if the more a printer is used, the less likely it’s going to overheat?" Innovation requires an open mind. Just because a solution initially seems unlikely doesn't mean it can't be pursued further or spark additional ideas.
• Neutralization: Neutralization completely eliminates the cause-and-effect relationship between X and Y. This changes the above equation to "the more or less X happens has no effect on Y." In the case of the printers, neutralization would rephrase the relationship to "the more or less a printer is used has no effect on whether it overheats."

Even if creating a problem story doesn't provide a solution, it can offer useful context to users’ problems and additional ideas to be explored. Given that divergence is one of the fundamental practices of creative problem-solving, it’s a good idea to incorporate it into each tool you use.

Brainstorming

Brainstorming is a tool that can be highly effective when guided by the iterative qualities of the design thinking process. It involves openly discussing and debating ideas and topics in a group setting. This facilitates idea generation and exploration as different team members consider the same concept from multiple perspectives.

Hosting brainstorming sessions can result in problems, such as groupthink or social loafing. To combat this, leverage a three-step brainstorming method involving divergence and convergence :

• Have each group member come up with as many ideas as possible and write them down to ensure the brainstorming session is productive.
• Continue the divergence of ideas by collectively sharing and exploring each idea as a group. The goal is to create a setting where new ideas are inspired by open discussion.
• Begin the convergence of ideas by narrowing them down to a few explorable options. There’s no "right number of ideas." Don't be afraid to consider exploring all of them, as long as you have the resources to do so.

Alternate Worlds

The alternate worlds tool is an empathetic approach to creative problem-solving. It encourages you to consider how someone in another world would approach your situation.

For example, if you’re concerned that the printers you produce overheat and catch fire, consider how a different industry would approach the problem. How would an automotive expert solve it? How would a firefighter?

Be creative as you consider and research alternate worlds. The purpose is not to nail down a solution right away but to continue the ideation process through diverging and exploring ideas.

Continue Developing Your Skills

Whether you’re an entrepreneur, marketer, or business leader, learning the ropes of design thinking can be an effective way to build your skills and foster creativity and innovation in any setting.

If you're ready to develop your design thinking and creative problem-solving skills, explore Design Thinking and Innovation , one of our online entrepreneurship and innovation courses. If you aren't sure which course is the right fit, download our free course flowchart to determine which best aligns with your goals.

About the Author

How to solve problems with design thinking

May 18, 2023 Is it time to throw out the standard playbook when it comes to problem solving? Uniquely challenging times call for unique approaches, write Michael Birshan , Ben Sheppard , and coauthors in a recent article , and design thinking offers a much-needed fresh perspective for leaders navigating volatility. Design thinking is a systemic, intuitive, customer-focused problem-solving approach that can create significant value and boost organizational resilience. The proof is in the pudding: From 2013 to 2018, companies that embraced the business value of design had TSR that were 56 percentage points higher than that of their industry peers. Check out these insights to understand how to use design thinking to unleash the power of creativity in strategy and problem solving.

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Design Thinking vs. Agile: Problem Finding & Problem Solving

• Chinese (Simplified)

Design Thinking vs. Agile: Combine Problem Finding & Problem Solving

Maria DiCesare

• October 30, 2023
• minute read

Your company’s development methodology — Agile, Lean, design thinking, or a combination of the three — can determine the success of a project. In addition,   70% of projects fail to deliver their promises to customers, which makes the dev framework all the more critical.

Many IT leaders believe that adopting a single development methodology will fundamentally address this issue — but which is the right choice? Read on to learn more about design thinking, the part that Agile and Lean play, and how to ensure your product is best suited to match what users need.

What is the Agile design methodology?

Agile is a software development methodology that helps organizations stay responsive to change. Small businesses, Fortune 500s, and even the FBI follow the Agile methodology.

Gartner defines Agile as a “development approach that delivers software in increments by following the principles of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development.”

That means Agile is a flexible and iterative software development methodology designed to adjust quickly to feedback.

There are various types of Agile frameworks :

• Dynamic Systems Development Method
• Feature-Driven Development (FDD)

Each approach follows the main principles of Agile. These principles focus on the people doing the work and collaboration between business and IT.

A fundamental tenet of effective Agile development is seeking frequent end-user feedback to iterate the proper outcomes. Early on, this includes:

• Establishing the project business goals
• Writing user stories
• Creating backlogs

Throughout the Agile process, the team shares working demos to gather feedback and uncover new needs. Users should be able to submit issues, suggestions, and ideas through embedded feedback mechanisms within the software. Users should also be able to submit their feedback during development and once the product is in production.

Ideally, there’s a closed loop that brings feedback directly into the development environment, enabling ongoing iteration.

Low-code development platforms are beneficial here. With regular interaction points through meetings and demos, developers can continually gather new insights. Devs can use these insights to adapt and better align the software with both user and business goals.

Where does Lean fit in with Agile and design thinking?

Without Lean, there wouldn’t be Agile.

Lean is a production methodology that started in the manufacturing industry. Lean originally helped companies eliminate waste, boost innovation, and optimize processes.

Lean originated in Venice in the 1450s, but Henry Ford was the first to use it in the production process in 1913.

When it comes to software development, Agile follows many of the same principles as the Lean methodology , including:

• Fast and frequent iterative development
• Short feedback loops, or “sprints”
• Disciplined, error-proof processes

Design thinking versus Agile

Now, you might be wondering, “Is design thinking just another name for the Agile manifesto and framework?”

That’s a great question. Both frameworks depend on response to feedback, but there is a core difference.

While Agile is an approach to problem solving, design thinking is an approach to problem finding . Design thinking is an iterative process of developing new ideas, challenging assumptions, and redefining problems. It calls for a high degree of design empathy and understanding of end users.

The 5 stages of design thinking

The goal of design thinking is to identify alternative solutions that might not necessarily be apparent. ​​There are five stages of design thinking:

1. Empathize

Understand people, their behaviors, and their motivations. People often don’t know or can’t articulate these things explicitly. Understanding emerges through viewing users and their behaviors in context to identify patterns, ask questions, and challenge assumptions.

Create an actionable problem statement to define the proper challenge to address. Define the set of needs that are important to fulfill based on the organization, its goals, and the perspective of end users.

Leverage brainstorming, mind mapping, sketching, or paper prototypes to step back, go wide, and create innovative solutions.

4. Prototype

Bring ideas to life by showing instead of telling. Quickly create working prototypes to get something into users’ hands and begin to collect real-world feedback.

5. Evaluate

Learn from users’ experiences, iterate, and repeat the process as needed until reaching a Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

Better together: Agile and design thinking

Together, design thinking and Agile create a user-centric environment focused on rapid, frequent iterations to reach optimal outcomes. Use design thinking to identify the correct problems and use Agile to build solutions to solve those problems iteratively.

The principles of design thinking bring a strong user focus, while Agile is an excellent way to deliver solutions incrementally. The dev and design teams keep user needs front and center throughout the process.

For teams looking to leverage Agile and design thinking for the first time, here are three recommendations to keep in mind:

Start small.  Focus on high-value, low-risk opportunities to gain experience using design thinking and Agile together. Then, as your capability matures, take on more challenging initiatives.

Create cross-functional teams. To facilitate the required creativity, create cross-functional teams that work together to design and develop solutions. The team should be physically co-located with end users to promote frequent collaboration.

Balance design and development. Agile teams are often inclined to “just start coding,” mixing two methodologies for the first time may create tension. Plan how much time to spend on design thinking before beginning development.

Ensure the team understands the value of the design empathy, definition, and ideation phases. Demonstrate how to leverage design thinking throughout the entire process. The team should be prepared to uncover new user insights, reframe problems, and develop with a renewed sense of why.

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Design Thinking 101

July 31, 2016 2016-07-31

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In This Article:

Definition of design thinking, why — the advantage, flexibility — adapt to fit your needs, scalability — think bigger, history of design thinking.

Design thinking is an ideology supported by an accompanying process . A complete definition requires an understanding of both.

Definition: The design thinking ideology asserts that a hands-on, user-centric approach to problem solving can lead to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage. This hands-on, user-centric approach is defined by the design thinking process and comprises 6 distinct phases, as defined and illustrated below.

The design-thinking framework follows an overall flow of 1) understand, 2) explore, and 3) materialize. Within these larger buckets fall the 6 phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement.

Conduct research in order to develop knowledge about what your users do, say, think, and feel .

Imagine your goal is to improve an onboarding experience for new users. In this phase, you talk to a range of actual users.  Directly observe what they do, how they think, and what they want, asking yourself things like ‘what motivates or discourages users?’ or ‘where do they experience frustration?’ The goal is to gather enough observations that you can truly begin to empathize with your users and their perspectives.

Combine all your research and observe where your users’ problems exist. While pinpointing your users’ needs , begin to highlight opportunities for innovation.

Consider the onboarding example again. In the define phase, use the data gathered in the empathize phase to glean insights. Organize all your observations and draw parallels across your users’ current experiences. Is there a common pain point across many different users? Identify unmet user needs.

Brainstorm a range of crazy, creative ideas that address the unmet user needs identified in the define phase. Give yourself and your team total freedom; no idea is too farfetched and quantity supersedes quality.

At this phase, bring your team members together and sketch out many different ideas. Then, have them share ideas with one another, mixing and remixing, building on others' ideas.

Build real, tactile representations for a subset of your ideas. The goal of this phase is to understand what components of your ideas work, and which do not. In this phase you begin to weigh the impact vs. feasibility of your ideas through feedback on your prototypes.

Make your ideas tactile. If it is a new landing page, draw out a wireframe and get feedback internally.  Change it based on feedback, then prototype it again in quick and dirty code. Then, share it with another group of people.

Return to your users for feedback. Ask yourself ‘Does this solution meet users’ needs?’ and ‘Has it improved how they feel, think, or do their tasks?’

Put your prototype in front of real customers and verify that it achieves your goals. Has the users’ perspective during onboarding improved? Does the new landing page increase time or money spent on your site? As you are executing your vision, continue to test along the way.

Put the vision into effect. Ensure that your solution is materialized and touches the lives of your end users.

This is the most important part of design thinking, but it is the one most often forgotten. As Don Norman preaches, “we need more design doing.” Design thinking does not free you from the actual design doing. It’s not magic.

“There’s no such thing as a creative type. As if creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”  - Milton Glaser

As impactful as design thinking can be for an organization, it only leads to true innovation if the vision is executed. The success of design thinking lies in its ability to transform an aspect of the end user’s life. This sixth step — implement — is crucial.

Why should we introduce a new way to think about product development? There are numerous reasons to engage in design thinking, enough to merit a standalone article, but in summary, design thinking achieves all these advantages at the same time.

Design thinking:

• Is a user-centered process that starts with user data, creates design artifacts that address real and not imaginary user needs, and then tests those artifacts with real users
• Leverages collective expertise and establishes a shared language, as well as buy-in amongst your team
• Encourages innovation by exploring multiple avenues for the same problem

Jakob Nielsen says “ a wonderful interface solving the wrong problem will fail ." Design thinking unfetters creative energies and focuses them on the right problem. 

The above process will feel abstruse at first. Don’t think of it as if it were a prescribed step-by-step recipe for success. Instead, use it as scaffolding to support you when and where you need it. Be a master chef, not a line cook: take the recipe as a framework, then tweak as needed.

Each phase is meant to be iterative and cyclical as opposed to a strictly linear process, as depicted below. It is common to return to the two understanding phases, empathize and define, after an initial prototype is built and tested. This is because it is not until wireframes are prototyped and your ideas come to life that you are able to get a true representation of your design. For the first time, you can accurately assess if your solution really works. At this point, looping back to your user research is immensely helpful. What else do you need to know about the user in order to make decisions or to prioritize development order? What new use cases have arisen from the prototype that you didn’t previously research?

You can also repeat phases. It’s often necessary to do an exercise within a phase multiple times in order to arrive at the outcome needed to move forward. For example, in the define phase, different team members will have different backgrounds and expertise, and thus different approaches to problem identification. It’s common to spend an extended amount of time in the define phase, aligning a team to the same focus. Repetition is necessary if there are obstacles in establishing buy-in. The outcome of each phase should be sound enough to serve as a guiding principle throughout the rest of the process and to ensure that you never stray too far from your focus.

The packaged and accessible nature of design thinking makes it scalable. Organizations previously unable to shift their way of thinking now have a guide that can be comprehended regardless of expertise, mitigating the range of design talent while increasing the probability of success. This doesn’t just apply to traditional “designery” topics such as product design, but to a variety of societal, environmental, and economical issues. Design thinking is simple enough to be practiced at a range of scopes; even tough, undefined problems that might otherwise be overwhelming. While it can be applied over time to improve small functions like search, it can also be applied to design disruptive and transformative solutions, such as restructuring the career ladder for teachers in order to retain more talent. 

It is a common misconception that design thinking is new. Design has been practiced for ages : monuments, bridges, automobiles, subway systems are all end-products of design processes. Throughout history, good designers have applied a human-centric creative process to build meaningful and effective solutions.

In the early 1900's husband and wife designers Charles and Ray Eames practiced “learning by doing,” exploring a range of needs and constraints before designing their Eames chairs, which continue to be in production even now, seventy years later. 1960's dressmaker Jean Muir was well known for her “common sense” approach to clothing design, placing as much emphasis on how her clothes felt to wear as they looked to others. These designers were innovators of their time. Their approaches can be viewed as early examples of design thinking — as they each developed a deep understanding of their users’ lives and unmet needs. Milton Glaser, the designer behind the famous I ♥ NY logo, describes this notion well: “We’re always looking, but we never really see…it’s the act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it.”

Despite these (and other) early examples of human-centric products, design has historically been an afterthought in the business world, applied only to touch up a product’s aesthetics. This topical design application has resulted in corporations creating solutions which fail to meet their customers’ real needs. Consequently, some of these companies moved their designers from the end of the product-development process, where their contribution is limited, to the beginning. Their human-centric design approach proved to be a differentiator: those companies that used it have reaped the financial benefits of creating products shaped by human needs.

In order for this approach to be adopted across large organizations, it needed to be standardized. Cue design thinking, a formalized framework of applying the creative design process to traditional business problems.

The specific term "design thinking" was coined in the 1990's by David Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO, with Roger Martin, and encapsulated methods and ideas that have been brewing for years into a single unified concept.

We live in an era of experiences , be they services or products, and we’ve come to have high expectations for these experiences. They are becoming more complex in nature as information and technology continues to evolve. With each evolution comes a new set of unmet needs. While design thinking is simply an approach to problem solving, it increases the probability of success and breakthrough innovation.

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How to solve problems using the design thinking process

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you develop solutions in a human-focused way. Initially designed at Stanford’s d.school, the five stage design thinking method can help solve ambiguous questions, or more open-ended problems. Learn how these five steps can help your team create innovative solutions to complex problems.

As humans, we’re approached with problems every single day. But how often do we come up with solutions to everyday problems that put the needs of individual humans first?

This is how the design thinking process started.

What is the design thinking process?

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you tackle complex problems by framing the issue in a human-centric way. The design thinking process works especially well for problems that are not clearly defined or have a more ambiguous goal.

One of the first individuals to write about design thinking was John E. Arnold, a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford. Arnold wrote about four major areas of design thinking in his book, “Creative Engineering” in 1959. His work was later taught at Stanford’s Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (also known as d.school), a design institute that pioneered the design thinking process. 

This eventually led Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon to outline one of the first iterations of the design thinking process in his 1969 book, “The Sciences of the Artificial.” While there are many different variations of design thinking, “The Sciences of the Artificial” is often credited as the basis. 

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A non-linear design thinking approach

Design thinking is not a linear process. It’s important to understand that each stage of the process can (and should) inform the other steps. For example, when you’re going through user testing, you may learn about a new problem that didn’t come up during any of the previous stages. You may learn more about your target personas during the final testing phase, or discover that your initial problem statement can actually help solve even more problems, so you need to redefine the statement to include those as well. 

Why use the design thinking process

The design thinking process is not the most intuitive way to solve a problem, but the results that come from it are worth the effort. Here are a few other reasons why implementing the design thinking process for your team is worth it.

Focus on problem solving

As human beings, we often don’t go out of our way to find problems. Since there’s always an abundance of problems to solve, we’re used to solving problems as they occur. The design thinking process forces you to look at problems from many different points of view. 

The design thinking process requires focusing on human needs and behaviors, and how to create a solution to match those needs. This focus on problem solving can help your design team come up with creative solutions for complex problems. 

Encourages collaboration and teamwork

The design thinking process cannot happen in a silo. It requires many different viewpoints from designers, future customers, and other stakeholders . Brainstorming sessions and collaboration are the backbone of the design thinking process.

Foster innovation

The design thinking process focuses on finding creative solutions that cater to human needs. This means your team is looking to find creative solutions for hyper specific and complex problems. If they’re solving unique problems, then the solutions they’re creating must be equally unique.

The iterative process of the design thinking process means that the innovation doesn’t have to end—your team can continue to update the usability of your product to ensure that your target audience’s problems are effectively solved. 

The 5 stages of design thinking

Currently, one of the more popular models of design thinking is the model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (or d.school) at Stanford. The main reason for its popularity is because of the success this process had in successful companies like Google, Apple, Toyota, and Nike. Here are the five steps designated by the d.school model that have helped many companies succeed.

1. Empathize stage

The first stage of the design thinking process is to look at the problem you’re trying to solve in an empathetic manner. To get an accurate representation of how the problem affects people, actively look for people who encountered this problem previously. Asking them how they would have liked to have the issue resolved is a good place to start, especially because of the human-centric nature of the design thinking process. 

Empathy is an incredibly important aspect of the design thinking process.  The design thinking process requires the designers to put aside any assumptions and unconscious biases they may have about the situation and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. 

For example, if your team is looking to fix the employee onboarding process at your company, you may interview recent new hires to see how their onboarding experience went. Another option is to have a more tenured team member go through the onboarding process so they can experience exactly what a new hire experiences.

2. Define stage

Sometimes a designer will encounter a situation when there’s a general issue, but not a specific problem that needs to be solved. One way to help designers clearly define and outline a problem is to create human-centric problem statements. 

A problem statement helps frame a problem in a way that provides relevant context in an easy to comprehend way. The main goal of a problem statement is to guide designers working on possible solutions for this problem. A problem statement frames the problem in a way that easily highlights the gap between the current state of things and the end goal. 

Tip: Problem statements are best framed as a need for a specific individual. The more specific you are with your problem statement, the better designers can create a human-centric solution to the problem. 

Examples of good problem statements:

We need to decrease the number of clicks a potential customer takes to go through the sign-up process.

We need to decrease the new subscriber unsubscribe rate by 10%. 

We need to increase the Android app adoption rate by 20%.

3. Ideate stage

This is the stage where designers create potential solutions to solve the problem outlined in the problem statement. Use brainstorming techniques with your team to identify the human-centric solution to the problem defined in step two. 

Here are a few brainstorming strategies you can use with your team to come up with a solution:

Standard brainstorm session: Your team gathers together and verbally discusses different ideas out loud.

Brainwrite: Everyone writes their ideas down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and each team member puts their ideas up on the whiteboard. 

Worst possible idea: The inverse of your end goal. Your team produces the most goofy idea so nobody will look silly. This takes out the rigidity of other brainstorming techniques. This technique also helps you identify areas that you can improve upon in your actual solution by looking at the worst parts of an absurd solution. 

It’s important that you don’t discount any ideas during the ideation phase of brainstorming. You want to have as many potential solutions as possible, as new ideas can help trigger even better ideas. Sometimes the most creative solution to a problem is the combination of many different ideas put together.

4. Prototype stage

During the prototype phase, you and your team design a few different variations of inexpensive or scaled down versions of the potential solution to the problem. Having different versions of the prototype gives your team opportunities to test out the solution and make any refinements. 

Prototypes are often tested by other designers, team members outside of the initial design department, and trusted customers or members of the target audience. Having multiple versions of the product gives your team the opportunity to tweak and refine the design before testing with real users. During this process, it’s important to document the testers using the end product. This will give you valuable information as to what parts of the solution are good, and which require more changes.

After testing different prototypes out with teasers, your team should have different solutions for how your product can be improved. The testing and prototyping phase is an iterative process—so much so that it’s possible that some design projects never end.

After designers take the time to test, reiterate, and redesign new products, they may find new problems, different solutions, and gain an overall better understanding of the end-user. The design thinking framework is flexible and non-linear, so it’s totally normal for the process itself to influence the end design. 

Tips for incorporating the design thinking process into your team

If you want your team to start using the design thinking process, but you’re unsure of how to start, here are a few tips to help you out. 

Start small: Similar to how you would test a prototype on a small group of people, you want to test out the design thinking process with a smaller team to see how your team functions. Give this test team some small projects to work on so you can see how this team reacts. If it works out, you can slowly start rolling this process out to other teams.

Incorporate cross-functional team members : The design thinking process works best when your team members collaborate and brainstorm together. Identify who your designer’s key stakeholders are and ensure they’re included in the small test team. 

Organize work in a collaborative project management software : Keep important design project documents such as user research, wireframes, and brainstorms in a collaborative tool like Asana . This way, team members will have one central source of truth for anything relating to the project they’re working on.

Foster collaborative design thinking with Asana

The design thinking process works best when your team works collaboratively. You don’t want something as simple as miscommunication to hinder your projects. Instead, compile all of the information your team needs about a design project in one place with Asana. 

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Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem and Interpret the Results

An integral part of the Design Thinking process is the definition of a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which the design thinker will focus on solving. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the Design Thinking process, as the definition of a problem (also called a design challenge) will require you to synthesise your observations about your users from the first stage in the Design Thinking process, which is called the Empathise stage.

When you learn how to master the definition of your problem, problem statement, or design challenge, it will greatly improve your Design Thinking process and result. Why? A great definition of your problem statement will guide you and your team’s work and kick start the ideation process in the right direction. It will bring about clarity and focus to the design space. On the contrary, if you don’t pay enough attention to defining your problem, you will work like a person stumbling in the dark.

In the Define stage you synthesise your observations about your users from the first stage, the Empathise stage. A great definition of your problem statement will guide you and your team’s work and kick start the ideation process (third stage) in the right direction. The five stages are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be understood as different modes that contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps.

Analysis and Synthesis

Before we go into what makes a great problem statement, it’s useful to first gain an understanding of the relationship between analysis and synthesis that many design thinkers will go through in their projects. Tim Brown, CEO of the international design consultancy firm IDEO, wrote in his book Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation , that analysis and synthesis are “equally important, and each plays an essential role in the process of creating options and making choices.”

Analysis is about breaking down complex concepts and problems into smaller, easier-to-understand constituents. We do that, for instance, during the first stage of the Design Thinking process, the Empathise stage, when we observe and document details that relate to our users. Synthesis , on the other hand, involves creatively piecing the puzzle together to form whole ideas. This happens during the Define stage when we organise, interpret, and make sense of the data we have gathered to create a problem statement.

Although analysis takes place during the Empathise stage and synthesis takes place during the Define stage, they do not only happen in the distinct stages of Design Thinking. In fact, analysis and synthesis often happen consecutively throughout all stages of the Design Thinking process. Design thinkers often analyse a situation before synthesising new insights, and then analyse their synthesised findings once more to create more detailed syntheses.

What Makes a Good Problem Statement?

A problem statement is important to a Design Thinking project, because it will guide you and your team and provides a focus on the specific needs that you have uncovered. It also creates a sense of possibility and optimism that allows team members to spark off ideas in the Ideation stage, which is the third and following stage in the Design Thinking process. A good problem statement should thus have the following traits. It should be:

Human-centered. This requires you to frame your problem statement according to specific users, their needs and the insights that your team has gained in the Empathise phase. The problem statement should be about the people the team is trying to help, rather than focusing on technology, monetary returns or product specifications.

Broad enough for creative freedom. This means that the problem statement should not focus too narrowly on a specific method regarding the implementation of the solution. The problem statement should also not list technical requirements, as this would unnecessarily restrict the team and prevent them from exploring areas that might bring unexpected value and insight to the project.

Narrow enough to make it manageable. On the other hand, a problem statement such as , “Improve the human condition,” is too broad and will likely cause team members to easily feel daunted. Problem statements should have sufficient constraints to make the project manageable.

As well as the three traits mentioned above, it also helps to begin the problem statement with a verb, such as “Create”, “Define”, and “Adapt”, to make the problem become more action-oriented.

How to Define a Problem Statement

Methods of interpreting results and findings from the observation oriented Empathise phase include:

Space Saturate and Group and Affinity Diagrams – Clustering and Bundling Ideas and Facts

In space saturate and group, designers collate their observations and findings into one place, to create a collage of experiences, thoughts, insights, and stories. The term 'saturate' describes the way in which the entire team covers or saturates the display with their collective images, notes, observations, data, experiences, interviews, thoughts, insights, and stories in order to create a wall of information to inform the problem-defining process. It will then be possible to draw connections between these individual elements, or nodes, to connect the dots, and to develop new and deeper insights, which help define the problem(s) and develop potential solutions. In other words: go from analysis to synthesis.

Empathy Mapping

An empathy map consists of four quadrants laid out on a board, paper or table, which reflect the four key traits that the users demonstrated/possessed during the observation stage. The four quadrants refer to what the users: Said , Did , Thought , and Felt . Determining what the users said and did are relatively easy; however, determining what they thought and felt is based on careful observation of how they behaved and responded to certain activities, suggestions, conversations etc. (including subtle cues such as body language displayed and the tone of voice used).

Point Of View – Problem Statement

A Point Of view (POV) is a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which will allow you to ideate in a goal-oriented manner. Your POV captures your design vision by defining the RIGHT challenge to address in the ideation sessions. A POV involves reframing a design challenge into an actionable problem statement. You articulate a POV by combining your knowledge about the user you are designing for, his or her needs and the insights which you’ve come to know in your research or Empathise mode. Your POV should be an actionable problem statement that will drive the rest of your design work.

You articulate a POV by combining these three elements – user, need, and insight. You can articulate your POV by inserting your information about your user, the needs and your insights in the following sentence:

[ User . . . (descriptive)] needs [ need . . . (verb)] because [ insight. . . (compelling)]

“How Might We” Questions

When you’ve defined your design challenge in a POV, you can start to generate ideas to solve your design challenge. You can start using your POV by asking a specific question starting with: “ How Might We ” or “in what ways might we”. How Might We ( HMW ) questions are questions that have the potential to spark ideation sessions such as brainstorms. They should be broad enough for a wide range of solutions, but narrow enough that specific solutions can be created for them. “How Might We” questions should be based on the observations you’ve gathered in the Empathise stage of the Design Thinking process.

For example, you have observed that youths tend not to watch TV programs on the TV at home, some questions which can guide and spark your ideation session could be:

How might we make TV more social, so youths feel more engaged?

How might we enable TV programs to be watched anywhere, at anytime?

How might we make watching TV at home more exciting?

The HMW questions open up to Ideation sessions where you explore ideas, which can help you solve your design challenge in an innovative way.

Why-How Laddering

"As a general rule, asking 'why’ yields more abstract statements and asking 'how’yields specific statements. Often times abstract statements are more meaningful but not as directly actionable, and the opposite is true of more specific statements." – d.school, Method Card, Why-How Laddering

For this reason, during the Define stage designers seek to define the problem, and will generally ask why . Designers will use why to progress to the top of the so-called Why-How Ladder where the ultimate aim is to find out how you can solve one or more problems. Your How Might We questions will help you move from the Define stage and into the next stage in Design Thinking, the Ideation stage, where you start looking for specific innovative solutions. In other words you could say that the Why-How Laddering starts with asking Why to work out How they can solve the specific problem or design challenge.

The Take Away

The second stage in a typical Design Thinking process is called the Define phase. It involves collating data from the observation stage (first stage called Empathise ) to define the design problems and challenges. By using methods for synthesising raw data into a meaningful and usable body of knowledge — such as empathy mapping and space saturate and group — we will be able to create an actionable design problem statement or Point of View that inspire the generation of ideas to solve it. The How Might We questions open up to Ideation sessions where you explore ideas, which can help you solve your design challenge in an innovative way.

References & Where to Learn More

Course: “Design Thinking - The Ultimate Guide” .

d.school: Space Saturation and Group .

d.school: Empathy Map .

d.school: “How might we” questions .

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: gdsteam. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0

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Human-Centered Change and Innovation

Innovation, change and transformation thought leadership, lovingly curated by braden kelley, design thinking vs. traditional problem-solving, which approach fosters better business innovation.

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In today’s rapidly evolving business landscape, innovation is the key driver of growth and success. To stay ahead of the competition, businesses must adopt an approach that not only solves problems effectively but also incorporates human-centered thinking and fosters creativity. This thought leadership article explores the two prominent problem-solving methodologies – Design Thinking and Traditional Problem-Solving – and delves into their effectiveness in driving business innovation. Through the analysis of two case studies, we examine how each approach can impact an organization’s ability to innovate and ultimately thrive in a competitive market.

1. Design Thinking: Embracing Empathy and Creativity:

Design Thinking is a customer-centric approach that places emphasis on empathy, active listening, and iterative problem-solving. By gaining a deep understanding of end-users’ needs, aspirations, and pain points, businesses can create innovative solutions that truly resonate with their target audience. This methodology comprises five key stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Let’s explore a case study that illustrates the power of Design Thinking in fostering business innovation.

Case Study 1: Airbnb’s Transformation:

When Airbnb realized their business model needed a refresh, they turned to Design Thinking to reimagine the experience for users. By empathizing with both hosts and guests, Airbnb identified pain points, such as low trust levels and inconsistent property quality. They defined the core problem and developed innovative solutions through multiple brainstorming sessions. This iterative approach led to the creation of user-friendly features such as verified user profiles, secure booking processes, and an enhanced rating system. As a result, Airbnb disrupted the hospitality industry, revolutionizing how people book accommodations, and became a global success story.

2. Traditional Problem-Solving: Analytical and Linear Thinking:

Traditional problem-solving methods often follow a logical, linear approach. These methods rely on analyzing the problem, identifying potential solutions, and implementing the most viable option. While this approach has its merits, it can sometimes lack the human-centered approach essential for driving innovation. To delve deeper into the impact of traditional problem-solving on business innovation, let’s examine another case study.

Case Study 2: Blockbuster vs. Netflix:

Blockbuster, once an industry giant, relied on traditional problem-solving techniques. Despite being highly skilled at analyzing data and trends, Blockbuster failed to tap into their customers’ unmet needs. As the digital revolution occurred, Netflix recognized an opportunity to disrupt the traditional video rental business. Netflix utilized Design Thinking principles early on, empathizing with customers and understanding that convenience and personalized recommendations were paramount. Through their innovative technology and business model, Netflix transformed the way people consume media and eventually replaced Blockbuster.

Design Thinking and Traditional Problem-Solving are both valuable methodologies for business problem-solving. However, when it comes to fostering better business innovation, Design Thinking stands out as an approach that encourages human-centered thinking, empathy, and creativity. By incorporating Design Thinking principles into their problem-solving processes, organizations can develop innovative solutions that address the unmet needs of their customers. The case studies of Airbnb and Netflix demonstrate how adopting a Design Thinking approach can lead to significant business success, disrupting industries while putting the user experience at the forefront. As businesses continue to face dynamic challenges, embracing Design Thinking can empower them to drive continuous innovation and secure competitive advantage in the modern era.

SPECIAL BONUS: The very best change planners use a visual, collaborative approach to create their deliverables. A methodology and tools like those in Change Planning Toolkit ™ can empower anyone to become great change planners themselves.

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Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem

Once you’ve empathized with your users, you can move on to the second stage of the design thinking process and define the problem your users need you to solve..

If you’ve read our introduction to User Experience (UX) Design , you’ll know that UX is essentially about solving the problems that prevent users from accomplishing what they want to do with our product.

Before you can go into problem-solving mode, however, there is one very crucial step that you need to complete—one that will shape your entire design project from start to finish. In the Design Thinking process , this step is what’s known as the “define” stage.

As the second step in the Design Thinking process, the define stage is where you’ll establish a clear idea of exactly which problem you will solve for the user. You’ll then shape this into a problem statement which will act as your northern star throughout the design process.

In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about this stage in the Design Thinking process, as well as how to define a meaningful problem statement.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is the define stage and why is it necessary?
• What is a problem statement?
• How to define a meaningful problem statement
• What comes after the define phase?

Before we dive in, though, if you’d like an overview of the entire Design Thinking process, check out this video:

1. What is the define stage and why is it necessary?

As the second step in the Design Thinking process, the define stage is dedicated to defining the problem: what user problem will you be trying to solve? In other words, what is your design challenge?

The define stage is preceded by the empathize phase , where you’ll have learned as much about your users as possible, conducting interviews and using a variety of immersion and observation techniques. Once you have a good idea of who your users are and, most importantly, their wants, needs, and pain-points, you’re ready to turn this empathy into an actionable problem statement.

The relationship between the empathize and define stages can best be described in terms of analysis and synthesis. In the empathize phase, we use analysis to break down everything we observe and discover about our users into smaller, more manageable components—dividing their actions and behaviour into “what”, “why” and “how” categories, for example. In the define stage, we piece these components back together, synthesising our findings to create a detailed overall picture.

Why is the define stage so important?

The define stage ensures you fully understand the goal of your design project. It helps you to articulate your design problem, and provides a clear-cut objective to work towards. A meaningful, actionable problem statement will steer you in the right direction, helping you to kick-start the ideation process (see Stage Three of the Design Thinking process ) and work your way towards a solution.

Without a well-defined problem statement, it’s hard to know what you’re aiming for. Your work will lack focus, and the final design will suffer. Not only that: in the absence of a clear problem statement, it’s extremely difficult to explain to stakeholders and team members exactly what you are trying to achieve.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at problem statements and how you can go about defining them.

2. What is a problem statement?

A problem statement identifies the gap between the current state (i.e. the problem) and the desired state (i.e. the goal) of a process or product . Within the design context, you can think of the user problem as an unmet need. By designing a solution that meets this need, you can satisfy the user and ensure a pleasant user experience.

A problem statement, or point of view (POV) statement, frames this problem (or need) in a way that is actionable for designers. It provides a clear description of the issue that the designer seeks to address, keeping the focus on the user at all times.

Problem or POV statements can take various formats, but the end goal is always the same: to guide the design team towards a feasible solution. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you might frame your design problem:

• From the user’s perspective: “I am a young working professional trying to eat healthily, but I’m struggling because I work long hours and don’t always have time to go grocery shopping and prepare my meals. This makes me feel frustrated and bad about myself.”
• From a user research perspective: “Busy working professionals need an easy, time-efficient way to eat healthily because they often work long hours and don’t have time to shop and meal prep.”
• Based on the four Ws—who, what, where, and why: “Our young working professional struggles to eat healthily during the week because she is working long hours. Our solution should deliver a quick and easy way for her to procure ingredients and prepare healthy meals that she can take to work.”

As you can see, each of these statements addresses the same issue—just in a slightly different way. As long as you focus on the user, what they need and why, it’s up to you how you choose to present and frame your design problem.

We’ll look at how to form your problem statement a little later on. Before we do, let’s consider some problem statement “do”s and “don’t”s.

What makes a good problem statement?

A good problem statement is human-centered and user-focused. Based on the insights you gathered in the empathize phase, it focuses on the users and their needs—not on product specifications or business outcomes. Here are some pointers that will help you create a meaningful problem statement:

• Focus on the user: The user and their needs should be front and center of your problem statement. Avoid statements that start with “we need to…” or “the product should”, instead concentrating on the user’s perspective: “Young working professionals need…”, as in the examples above.
• Keep it broad: A good problem statement leaves room for innovation and creative freedom. It’s important to keep it broad enough to invite a range of different ideas; avoid any references to specific solutions or technical requirements, for example.
• Make it manageable: At the same time, your problem statement should guide you and provide direction. If it’s too broad in terms of the user’s needs and goals, you’ll struggle to hone in on a suitable solution. So, don’t try to address too many user needs in one problem statement; prioritize and frame your problem accordingly.

Bearing these things in mind, let’s explore some useful methods for creating a meaningful problem statement.

3. How to write a meaningful problem statement

Writing a meaningful problem statement can be extremely challenging. How do you condense all the complexities of the user’s conscious and unconscious desires into one simple, actionable statement? Fortunately, there are some tried-and-tested methods that will help you do just that.

Space saturation and group

One of the first steps in defining a problem statement is to organize your findings from the empathize phase. Space saturation and group is a popular method used by design thinkers to collect and visually present all observations made in the empathize phase in one space. As the name suggests, you will literally “saturate” a wall or whiteboard with Post-It notes and images, resulting in a collage of artifacts from your user research.

As the Stanford d.school explains: “You space saturate to help you unpack thoughts and experiences into tangible and visual pieces of information that you surround yourself with to inform and inspire the design team. You group these findings to explore what themes and patterns emerge, and strive to move toward identifying meaningful needs of people and insights that will inform your design solutions.”

This method should involve anyone who took part in the empathize stage of the design project, and should take no longer than 20-30 minutes.

The four Ws

Asking the right questions will help you put your finger on the right problem statement. With all your findings from the empathize phase in one place, ask yourself the four Ws: Who , what , where , and why?

• Who is experiencing the problem? In other words, who is your target user; who will be the focus of your problem statement?
• What is the problem? Based on the observations you made during the empathize phase, what are the problems and pain-points that frequently came up? What task is the user trying to accomplish, and what’s standing in their way?
• Where does the problem present itself? In what space (physical or digital), situation or context is the user when they face this problem? Are there any other people involved?
• Why does it matter? Why is it important that this problem be solved? What value would a solution bring to the user, and to the business?

Approaching your observations with these four questions in mind will help you to identify patterns within your user research. In identifying the most prevalent issues, you’ll be one step closer to formulating a meaningful problem statement.

The five whys

Another question-based strategy, the five whys technique can help you delve deeper into the problem and drill down to the root cause. Once you’ve identified the root cause, you have something that you can act upon; somewhere specific to focus your problem-solving efforts.

Let’s take our previous example of the young working professional who wants to eat healthily, but finds it difficult to do so. Here’s how you might use the five whys to break the problem down and get to the root cause:

• Why is she not eating healthily? → She orders takeaway everyday.
• Why does she order takeaway everyday? → Her fridge and cupboards are empty.
• Why are the fridge and cupboards empty? → She hasn’t been grocery shopping in over a week.
• Why hasn’t she been grocery shopping? → She doesn’t have time to go to the supermarket.
• Why doesn’t she have time? → She works long hours and is exhausted.

The root cause here is a lack of time, so your solution might focus on efficiency and convenience. Your final problem statement might look something like this: “Young working professionals need a quick, convenient solution to eating healthily.”

4. What comes after the define phase?

By the end of the define phase, you’ll have turned your findings from the empathize stage into a meaningful, actionable problem statement. With your problem statement to hand, you’ll be ready to move on to the ideation phase , where you’ll turn your problem statement into “how might we” questions and generate as many potential solutions as possible.

As you move through the Design Thinking process, you’ll constantly refer back to your problem statement to make sure you’re moving in the right direction. A well-thought-out problem statement will keep you on track, help you communicate your objectives to key stakeholders, and ultimately lead you to that all-important user solution.

Want to learn more about designing user-friendly solutions? Check out these articles:

• UX Best Practices: How Can You Become A Better Designer?
• What Is User Experience Design? Everything You Need To Know To Get Started
• This Is Why Empathy Matters As A UX Designer
• What is lean UX?

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Agile vs design thinking: key differences, similarities, and why you don’t have to choose between them

Building strong, user-centric products often comes down to a great innovation strategy, which is where the agile and design thinking methodologies come in. 

Both strategies have similar philosophies: they rely on customer feedback and take an iterative approach to inspire ideas, avoid mistakes, and ultimately lead to better, faster, and more glorious products.

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Agile and design thinking aren't interchangeable, but the real benefit comes when you bring them together . This chapter will help you understand the distinction between agile and design thinking, the pros and cons of using each method, and how the two can work together. 

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Harness data directly from users as they experience your product and give the team direct, easily accessible, and digestible product experience insights.

What is agile and how does it relate to design thinking?

Agile is a flexible project management method with a speedy, iterative approach to product development. 

Throughout agile product management , the team shares working demos or prototypes to gather feedback and uncover unanticipated user needs. The goal is to build and deliver a product incrementally, based on user feedback , rather than trying to deliver the whole solution all at once. 

When agile emerged in the early 2000s, it gave developers the freedom to test new ideas, engage with users, and pivot the product plan in response to user feedback—while it was still relatively easy to do so. Sound familiar? It should:

The fundamentals of agile product management come from the same theories and practices that define design thinking .

Like agile, design thinking is a methodology built around users, allowing their feedback to drive the next iteration of a product. What separates the methodologies is a fundamental difference in core and execution: 

Design thinking is a way to define the problem. It’s how you explore ideas and test your beliefs to ultimately find the best possible solution. 

Agile helps solve the problem in the most efficient way possible. It's the framework you use to adapt to changing user needs.

Drawing the line between agile and design thinking

Agile and design thinking can (and should) be used together as part of a balanced, user-centric product development process—but you first need to understand where one ends and the other begins.

The biggest difference between design thinking and agile is that they serve different purposes : 

Design thinking is a problem-finding approach . It calls for a high degree of empathy and understanding of end users, and is an iterative process to develop new ideas, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems. Design thinking looks at the why of a problem, with a focus on asking users questions about specific challenges that need to be solved. 

With design thinking, the goal is to define a solution that satisfies users’ needs by generating fresh ideas that teams can test with a series of user-focused exercises.

Agile, on the other hand, deals with predefined problems and focuses on getting the job done as quickly as possible. The focus is on the how of product development, breaking up the planning and scope of work into smaller units. As products develop, teams can make modifications based on real-time feedback from testing, iterating, and continuously improving throughout the development process.

Agile is a way of working/planning and design thinking is a way of finding out the answer to a certain hypothesis to know what to build. It can live inside of the agile planning framework.

4 things agile and design thinking have in common

Design thinking and agile mindsets aren’t mutually exclusive. In fact, the way they complement each other makes them work beautifully together.

Design thinking is a mindset for exploring complex problems and finding opportunities in a world full of uncertainty. In these conditions, agile offers ways to build dynamic software that can adapt to change. 

And although they come from different origins—industrial design and software development—they also share many similarities, and are complementary and compatible.

Here are four shared characteristics of the agile and design thinking methodologies:

1. A focus on users (and user feedback)

Both agile and design thinking employ user feedback while building a product. They learn from the user experience to fine-tune and improve the product to create customer delight . 

Both processes gather input from sources other than the team performing the task, including user research, usability testing, business requirements, and technological options.

💡 Pro tip: user feedback plays a big role in uncovering insights about user needs and problems, and ensuring their experience with the product is delightful. 

Use Hotjar’s Survey and Feedback tools to place quick, non-invasive questions on key product or website pages for a steady stream of user feedback. For a fuller picture, combine these qualitative learnings with user observation data from Recordings or Heatmaps to see how users’ thoughts square with their behaviors.

This will help you understand significant pain points and areas of improvement, which can be used as guiding factors for introducing relevant product features.

2. Constant iteration

Speed of result delivery, iteration of stages, and general agility are important in both agile and design thinking. Both methodologies make use of repeated improvements to build a better product. This means agile and design thinking are iterative and repetitive, and encourage teams to engage in product experimentation .

While the design is primarily about back and forth variations, the product is in a continuous process of development, and both methods refer to the same concept of continuous improvement.

The point of testing is to learn and improve, and both methods embrace this philosophy. 

Agile products are built early and often, constantly testing the result to see what's working—and what’s not. The agile method is based on defining the most important features first , then moving into defining those of lesser importance. This usually implies setting up a testing schedule with a prototype in place , before the design is mature and coding is finished.

Testing is just as important for design thinking, to validate new ideas and come up with a better solution. However, design thinking embraces the idea of using low-fidelity concepts —like UI mockups, sketches, and similar visual artifacts—to test early, and move to higher-fidelity concepts as you progress through learning. 

4. Collaboration 

A strong appeal for teamwork that values understanding and independence across departments is a core tenet of both agile and design thinking. 

From user research and brainstorms to team workshops and prototyping methods, these two methodologies constantly balance team efforts across product discovery and delivery to identify and prioritize user-centric business objectives.

3 differences between agile and design thinking

In spite of their parallels, the agile and design thinking methodologies can’t be used interchangeably. Here are three examples of where their similarities come to an end.

1. The root of the problem

Agile is a method to solve predefined problems , and to quickly execute solutions to those problems you’re already aware of. 

Design thinking focuses on finding the right problems to solve , and provides product teams with a way to make better choices about the journey their users should follow.

2. How user feedback is used

This difference involves how each method uses the feedback they’ve gathered from users at a specific time. 

With agile, the workflow is build first, then measure, then learn . The team creates a minimum viable product ( MVP ) and then relies on user feedback to make adjustments and improvements. 

However, with design thinking, the flow is learn, measure, then build . The design thinking process capitalizes on user feedback to discover which customer needs are not being met.

💡 Pro tip: agile teams can talk to users on a daily basis, but without the skills to listen and respond to user needs, that daily interaction won’t add the value product teams seek.

Use design thinking tools (like Hotjar 👋) to listen to customers and observe their behavior so you can empathize with their needs and identify specific problems—and possible solutions.

Hotjar’s Feedback widget lets users highlight parts of the page they like and don't like to help you spot areas for improvement.

3. Length of the development process

Agile teams might experience a longer product development process than teams that employ design thinking. That’s because the agile framework tends to develop a product first, and then uses feedback from users to make improvements. 

Design thinking seeks user feedback first , before teams even start working on the product. Since most feedback is factored in at the planning stage, this shortens the development process.

Combining agile and design thinking to deliver valuable products 

The agile and design thinking methodologies help teams develop new competencies, tackle problems, and explore possibilities at different stages of product development. Fortunately, you don’t have to choose one over the other. 

These two methods complement each other nicely, and can be part of a broader effort to be more user-centric and innovative.

Together, agile and design thinking help you understand where you’re at today, where you want to be tomorrow, and pursue success through exploration, experimentation, and validated learning.

How agile and design thinking work together for a better, user-centric product development process

Each mindset brings its own value to the product development lifecycle, and incorporating principles from both agile and design thinking can offset each method’s individual disadvantages. 

This leaves more room to rapidly generate new ideas and embrace the type of user-centered innovation that can transform your product. 

Avoid building a product nobody needs—or wants

One of the risks of using agile is that you might end up designing (and partially building) a product that your users don't want. However, design thinking offsets this because its methodology prevents you from wasting resources on unfruitful ideas.

Understand the product roadmap

Design thinking focuses on repeated ideation and continuous feedback from the start, which makes it difficult to estimate product timelines . Agile creates a clear path to the product , which helps designers estimate the time to completion. 

Speed up the development process

Because users aren’t included during the initial stages, agile teams tend to take a lot of time developing and shaping the product in response to user feedback after the product launch. Design thinking shortens the development process because it takes feedback into account during the ideation stage, preventing a drawn-out timeline. 

Focus on the right changes at the right time

If agile teams become overly focused on incremental improvements, they can lose sight of the impact their iterations will have on the customer experience. Design thinking fills the gaps by using research techniques that uncover human needs and motivations. It also includes rapid prototyping methods that enable teams to test new ideas quickly.

💡 Pro tip: combine agile and design thinking techniques to iteratively build a better product as a team.

Agile developers that use design thinking when talking to customers do a better job of gathering feedback and figuring out solutions to the right problems. In turn, design thinkers that adopt agile strategies, like daily stand-ups and sprints, drive better collaboration and communication within their teams.

Quickly prove (or disprove) hypotheses

Design thinking helps you identify a problem through user research before creating a solution for it. This helps ensure that users need the product, but your assumptions might turn out to be wrong . Shorter agile sprints offset this by ensuring you don’t waste a lot of time on each idea.

Within design thinking, you might find that the hypothesis you thought was true is not what your users are looking for.

How to use agile and design thinking together in product development (in 3 steps)

Think of the collaboration between agile and design thinking as a work of art: designers and engineers are the artists; the product is the medium. Together, they work iteratively and continuously to craft solutions that delight the user throughout their entire experience with the product .

The principle sounds simple: use design thinking to identify the right problems to solve, and then use agile to iteratively build solutions to solve those problems. The execution, however, can be a little elusive. 

Finding the right balance between discovery (researching and understanding what your users want and designing solutions to meet those needs) and delivery (coding, testing, and deploying) can be challenging. The trick is to devise and manage a shared workflow that efficiently integrates both sets of activities.

Here’s how these two mindsets come together in practice.

1. Define your beliefs and assumptions (so they can be tested)

The first step is to draw on two aspects that are baked into design thinking: 

Focusing on and empathizing with customers

Intuitive reasoning and questioning

This creative method lets you ask the right questions and challenge your assumptions, and reveals the core of the problem you're trying to solve. These insights will be the basis of what you test later on, by translating them into questions or experiments.

Use design thinking to:

Gather information and determine the facts to identify problems and opportunities for your product.

Define a problem statement , break down your beliefs, and identify the underlying assumptions in your thinking.

Frame the problem, analyze information, and synthesize insights for strategic decision making.

Employ critical analysis to make judgments about the meaning of what you know. 

The entire design thinking process is about listening to users’ feedback, and implementing changes for your solution based on that feedback. As an agile team, you want to create a closed loop that brings feedback directly into the development environment . This includes user research methods like interviews, surveys, analytics, experience mapping, SWOT analysis, value streaming mapping, and more.

Make sure your users can submit issues, suggestions, and ideas through embedded feedback mechanisms within the product, both during development and once in production.

🔥 If you’re using Hotjar

Empathize with your users by watching session recordings , and ask them what they think with on-page surveys .

These insights will help you identify who your users are, what they think about your product, and what problems they have with the user experience.

Hotjar’s tool stack gives you insights and user feedback ‘in the wild’

2. Decide the most important thing to learn, and how you’ll learn it

Once you’ve understood the problem or opportunity in the first step, it’s time to explore solutions before you implement them. 

At this point, you can really use each method to their full potential. Don’t be afraid to rely on design thinking’s penchant for exploring possibilities and agile’s ability to coordinate coherent action. 

Use design thinking to: 

Ask provoking questions.

Entertain unconstrained thinking through brainstorming.

Follow tangents and new avenues of thought through ideation.

Use agile to:

Evaluate your options, decide what matters most, and home in on strategic intent.

Set challenges and define the key elements of a solution.

Create solutions as prototypes, while keeping options open and remaining adaptive to change.

Design thinking helps you learn where and how the product is not in tandem with user needs and objectives , to move yourself from ambiguity to clarity. Then once you find a creative solution, you can bring in agile to fast-track the process and rapidly respond to user feedback, moving from prototyping to product launch to refinement.

By combining agile with design thinking in this step, you get to discover a product and get organizational feedback to know if stakeholders agree with your idea, which helps prevent wasting time and resources. 

3. Design experiments that will deliver insights

The third step is where you test your beliefs through action: this part of the strategy involves making your hypotheses testable, running experiments, measuring outcomes, and refining your initial strategy through what you’ve learned. 

Design user-led experiments that test your initial assumptions—and help you generate more.

Start with an early release or MVP of a usable product and iterate toward the best solution based on real user feedback.

Build features and products that are dynamic and can adapt to change.

Test simple prototypes to eliminate errors and understand the viability of ideas during the early stages. 

Work in sprints to learn faster and reduce risk in your investments.

The heart of agile is to adapt gracefully to changing user needs. The best way to do this is by keeping releases small and frequent . These small batches of work can range from 2- to 12-week sprints. 

For your business, this means more flexibility to decide what to invest in. 

For your product team, it means you learn faster and reduce risk in investments. Your design is customer-led and can meet immediate user needs in a way that doesn’t constrain your ability to respond when things change.

Agile and design thinking in practice: IDEO

Design thinking pioneers and practitioners at IDEO use agile principles and practices to enhance their design thinking method. Their projects involve:

Teams made up of multi-disciplined members, with cross-functional responsibilities

Having a flat hierarchy, instilling individual autonomy, and providing team orientation through what they call ‘studios’

Using the Sprint method to start prototyping quickly, collect immediate user feedback, and make small mistakes early

Working in cycles (sprints) that last 8–12 weeks long

Incorporating product review and testing after every sprint

Keeping a constant line of communication with the product owner

5 potential challenges in combining agile and design thinking—and how to overcome them

Tying both methodologies together into one cohesive way of working isn’t easy, and you’ll probably face some challenges along the way. The good news is that there are specific steps you can take to effectively tie together agile and design thinking . 

Remember, design thinking is about exploring problems and opportunities that will move you toward building the right product for your users, and agile is a way to build things the right way . The strengths of each mindset come together to help you achieve the right outcomes for your users, team, and bottom line.

1. Using the right solution at the right time

Problem: Figuring out which methodology fits best at a certain stage of your product development process can be confusing. 

Solution: Start small and focus on high-value, low-risk opportunities to earn experience by using agile and design thinking together to generate solutions.

Generally, design thinking is best used in the early stages, when you're only shaping your idea. Agile is most effective when the problem is already defined and needs fast and effective implementation. 

Remember, designing the best version of your product is not a linear, straightforward process . Instead of focusing on applying a procedure, teams need to challenge how they think, try new things, embrace the things that work, and learn from the things that don’t. 

2. Balancing design and development

Problem: Mixing the two methodologies for the first time may create tension around how much time to spend on design thinking before actually beginning development. 

Solution: Make sure the team understands the value of the empathy, definition, and ideation phases, and that design thinking is not just leveraged at the beginning of the process. Encourage the entire team to understand the problem statement and build a useful design framework.

Then, as you go forward in the process, continually check in with the team , keeping them aligned around the common vision and celebrating wins—it will help them see the purpose of changes and adopt new approaches faster.

💡 Pro tip : celebrate small wins and mistakes as part of the learning process. 

Keep morale high in a messy transition period by focusing on small-scale successes. To keep up with momentum, create a learning-forward culture, where your team feels comfortable taking risks, messing up, and growing from the experience. 

Use Hotjar’s product experience insight tools to show your team positive user feedback as evidence that product changes and streamlined processes make a difference.

3. (Re)discovering the product

Problem: As agile team members mature in their design thinking practice, they may realize their agile stories haven’t been considered or validated from a user-centric perspective. 

Solution: To address this issue, take a dual-track approach, using a single, integrated team of designers and developers who balance their time between discovery and delivery.

Cross-organizational teams have a more comprehensive understanding of business requirements and user needs . This helps them make better, more informed decisions for the overall customer experience.

4. Simplifying the design handoff

Problem: When designers hand off fixed design assets to product developers, there's a chance that the developers won’t completely understand the UX design . In turn, this could lead to them coding it differently than it was intended. 

Solution: Interactive prototypes allow you to assess your idea and confirm it works correctly, while also simplifying design handoff. That’s why it's recommended to build a simple but interactive example of your design, rather than send static design assets. 

Another tactic is to use design patterns as building blocks . Once the entire team accepts them, these patterns become easier to implement and encourage team members to remove lower-level design decisions.

5. Increasingly complex requirements

Problem: The more complex a product or initiative, the longer it takes, and the more issues arise. 

Solution: The development team should work with the ScrumMaster to plan and design a solution as best as possible. That means breaking up complex requirements into smaller stories and iterating over time.

Break down the process into shorter sprints, like 2 weeks instead of 8, for example. Ask yourself: what can we find out during this 2-week sprint? 

Start small by conducting hybrid sprints, which embed design thinking activities and objectives into the agile sprint plan. This ensures incremental sprint planning and backlog grooming won’t overpower product management and restrict your team’s freedom to explore ambiguous questions and new methods.

💡 Pro tip : keep your users’ concerns in mind as your product evolves. 

Your team aren't the only ones who get nervous about product or organizational overhauls. Users can also worry about changes to a product—especially one they’re already attached to. 

As with your team, address your users’ emotional concerns. Use Hotjar’s feedback tools to understand what they’re anxious about and what they want you to prioritize in the change process. Then, get your users excited by showing them how they’ll benefit from the change.

Together, agile and design thinking lead to a user-centered workflow to achieve the best results

We’ve taken a closer look at what sets agile and design thinking apart, their similarities, and how they come together for innovative product development. In the end, it always comes down to making sure that user needs are kept front and center throughout the entire design and development process.

Design thinking brings a strong user focus, while agile is an excellent way to incrementally deliver solutions tailored to them. Together, these two methods can transform your organization, and ensure that every product delivers value to the business, your customers, and your team.

FAQs about agile vs design thinking

How is agile different from design thinking.

Agile is a method of problem solving, while design thinking is a method of problem finding.

The design thinking mindset is about understanding constraints, seeing opportunities, and exploring possibilities. It’s a quest toward finding problems and exploring solutions that create value for the users.

Agile begins with an existing problem and delivers an elegant solution. The agile mindset is about achieving outcomes with software in the best way. It’s how teams unlock value continuously, adapt to changing needs, and build quality into the software they create.

How can agile and design thinking work together?

Agile principles like engagement, adaptation, self-reflection, engaging transformation, and self-organizing organizations work well with design ideas such as understanding users, willingness to fail, fast prototyping, and exploration.

Use design thinking to identify the right problems to solve, and then use agile to iteratively build solutions to solve those problems.

Start by implementing a design thinking process based on user research. This will translate to user needs that will streamline all the other processes in agile development. 

Create cross-functional teams that work together to design and develop solutions. As the product develops, they can make modifications based on real-time feedback from testing, iterating and continuously improving throughout the development process.

Make sure to leverage design thinking more than just at the beginning of the process. Your team should be prepared to constantly uncover new user insights and reframe the problem, then iterate and continue development with a renewed sense of purpose.

What are the benefits of combining agile and design thinking?

Together, design thinking and agile create a user-centric environment focused on rapid, frequent iterations to achieve optimal results for you, your team, your product, and your organization.

Teams that combine design thinking and agile practices can benefit from stronger alignment among stakeholders and capture higher quality, real-time feedback from customers.

This lets you generate new ideas and embrace the type of user-centered innovation that can transform a product. When practiced together, agile and design thinking put insights to work in a way that benefits both your users and your business’ bottom line.

Design thinking tools

Previous chapter

Guide index

Mastering Problem Framing and Solution Finding in Design Thinking

Table of contents, definition and significance, the role of empathy, strategies for effective problem framing, the iterative nature of design thinking, bridging the gap, techniques for generating solutions, encouraging creativity, prototyping and testing solutions, from prototype to final product, ensuring solutions meet needs, common pitfalls, tips for overcoming challenges.

Design thinking stands as a beacon for professionals striving to navigate the complexities of innovation and problem-solving in the realm of user experience (UX) design. At its core, this methodology champions a user-centric approach, aiming to address intricate challenges through empathy, ideation, and iterative testing. The quintessence of design thinking lies not just in its phases but in the nuanced skills of problem framing and solution finding—skills that are pivotal in turning abstract issues into tangible, user-focused outcomes.

Understanding Problem Framing

Problem framing is the art of defining and understanding the challenge at hand , not just at its surface level but in a manner that uncovers the underlying needs and motivations of users. This initial phase sets the stage for the entire design thinking process, determining the direction and scope of potential solutions.

Empathy, the ability to understand and share the feelings of another, is the cornerstone of effective problem framing. It allows designers to transcend their biases and assumptions, ensuring that the real issues of users are brought to the forefront.

Engaging with Stakeholders and Users: Direct interaction with those affected by the problem provides invaluable insights and fosters a deeper understanding of their experiences and needs.

Utilizing Empathy Maps and User Personas: These tools help in visualizing and synthesizing user data, enabling designers to empathize with users and identify key pain points.

Asking the Right Questions: Open-ended and thought-provoking questions encourage a broad exploration of the problem space, revealing aspects that might otherwise be overlooked.

Transitioning from Problem Framing to Solution Finding

Design thinking is inherently iterative, with each phase informing and refining the next. The transition from problem framing to solution finding is fluid, allowing for a continuous loop of learning and adaptation .

Moving from a deep understanding of the problem to the generation of solutions requires a shift in mindset—from empathetic observer to creative problem solver. This transition is facilitated by the ideation phase, where the insights gathered during problem framing are transformed into innovative ideas.

Ideation: The Heart of Solution Finding

Brainstorming Sessions: These collaborative sessions encourage the free flow of ideas, fostering creativity and divergent thinking.

Worst Possible Idea: This counterintuitive approach helps in breaking down psychological barriers and unleashing creativity by exploring the extremes of bad ideas.

SCAMPER Method: This technique prompts designers to Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, or Reverse elements of existing solutions, sparking new ideas.

Fostering an environment that encourages risk-taking and out-of-the-box thinking is essential for ideation. Creativity thrives in settings where all ideas are welcomed and explored, regardless of their initial feasibility.

• The Importance of Prototypes

Prototyping is a critical step in bringing ideas to life, allowing designers to explore and iterate on solutions in a tangible form. Prototypes range from low-fidelity sketches to interactive digital models, each serving different purposes in the design process.

• Conducting User Tests

User testing is integral to evaluating the effectiveness of prototypes, providing direct feedback from the target audience. This feedback is invaluable for refining solutions and ensuring they resonate with users’ needs.

• Iterating Based on Feedback

The iterative nature of design thinking emphasizes the importance of revising and improving solutions based on user feedback. Each iteration brings the design closer to a product that truly meets user needs and expectations.

Implementing Solutions

The journey from a prototype to a final product involves a careful consideration of user feedback, technical feasibility, and business objectives. This phase requires close collaboration between designers, developers, and stakeholders to ensure the solution is viable and scalable.

The ultimate goal of any UX design project is to deliver solutions that not only solve the identified problem but also enhance the overall user experience. This requires a continuous evaluation of the solution’s impact on users and the business.

Challenges and Tips for Success

Designers might face several challenges in problem framing and solution finding, such as confirmation bias, scope creep, or a lack of stakeholder buy-in. Recognizing these pitfalls is the first step toward mitigating them.

• Fostering Open Communication: Encourage transparency and regular communication among all team members and stakeholders to ensure alignment and collaboration.
• Maintaining Focus on the User: Regularly revisit user research and feedback to keep the project user-centered.
• Being Flexible: Adaptability is key in design thinking. Be open to pivoting strategies and approaches based on new insights and feedback.
• Prioritizing Iterative Testing: Emphasize the importance of iterative testing to refine solutions and ensure they meet user needs effectively.
• Encouraging Diverse Perspectives: Involve team members from various backgrounds to bring a wide range of insights and creative solutions to the table.
• Staying Informed and Inspired: Keep abreast of the latest trends, tools, and methodologies in UX design to inspire innovation and enhance problem-solving skills.

Mastering the skills of problem framing and solution finding within the design thinking process is crucial for professionals in the UX design field. By adopting a user-centric approach, empathizing with users, engaging in creative ideation, and iteratively refining solutions based on feedback, designers can navigate the complexities of innovation and deliver impactful, user-focused outcomes. Overcoming common challenges and maintaining a collaborative, adaptable mindset are key to success in this dynamic and ever-evolving field. As the digital landscape continues to grow and change, the principles of design thinking offer a reliable framework for addressing new challenges and fostering a culture of continuous innovation and improvement.

• Why is empathy important in problem framing?

Empathy is crucial because it allows designers to put themselves in the users’ shoes, understanding their experiences, challenges, and needs from their perspective. This empathetic approach helps in identifying the true issues that need addressing, ensuring that solutions are relevant and impactful for the users.

• Can you explain the ideation phase and its significance in solution finding?

The ideation phase is the creative heart of the design thinking process where insights gathered during problem framing are transformed into a wide range of innovative ideas. This phase involves techniques like brainstorming, the SCAMPER method, and exploring the “worst possible idea” to encourage divergent thinking and generate a variety of solutions.

• How do prototypes contribute to the design thinking process?

Prototypes are tangible representations of solutions that allow designers and stakeholders to explore and test ideas in a low-risk environment. They range from simple sketches to interactive digital models and serve as a critical step in refining and validating solutions before final implementation.

• What role does user testing play in refining solutions?

User testing involves presenting prototypes to the target audience to gather direct feedback. This feedback is invaluable for understanding how well the solution meets user needs, what improvements are necessary, and how the solution can be further refined to enhance user satisfaction and effectiveness.

• What are some common challenges in problem framing and solution finding, and how can they be overcome?

Common challenges include confirmation bias, scope creep, and a lack of stakeholder buy-in. Overcoming these challenges involves fostering open communication, maintaining a strong focus on the user, being flexible and adaptable to new insights, prioritizing iterative testing, encouraging diverse perspectives, and staying informed about the latest trends and methodologies in UX design.

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