My experience with Design Thinking
In 2016 I did the Design Thinking Experience course. I must confess that I didn’t expect such a great thing. In my mind could be just one more trend theory for my Marketing career, but in fact it was much more than that.
The most amazing thing about the Design Thinking is the focus on the customer and how we can bring it to an extremely high level, without too much effort. We just need to select the appropriate tools and truly think about them. This is something that I have been seeing since I read the book Marketing 3.0 from Kotler and it’s still in the middle of attention in his new book Marketing 4.0, which I am reading in the moment.
The difference is that the techniques that we learn during the Design Thinking help to bring it from the paper and put in practical situations. The fact that you see how to place people in the center of your decisions creating solutions, which will make a real impact in their lives, is really valuable. Despite the industry that you work for.
Three things are the base to apply the Design Thinking point of view: empathy, collaboration, and prototype. Those are the main values when do you want to think through the Design Thinking perspective. In a nutshell, the full process is composed of the steps below.
Obviously this blog post is a summary about the Design Thinking approach. To fully understand the idea I strongly recommend the course and also the book, Change by Design, from Tim Brown. Apparently he is the “father” of the methodology. There are loads of articles on the web as well about it.
The Challenge
My main challenge since the training is to find the opportunity to bring the Design Thinking theory in practice. Most of the methodology is to brainstorm in groups in all steps. Much better if the group is heterogeneous, people with diverse background. The reality in most of the traditional companies is that they still segregating people by department, which is something that we really need to avoid in the Design Thinking perspective.
The working environment still an individual place, where people are rewarded frequently by their personal achievements. One more thing that doesn’t suit if you wish to set people and their needs in the focus of your business. I remember during the training how it was hard to understand and empathize with everyone in the work group. It was a challenge to place myself in their shoes and try to accommodate everyone’s point of view in the project.
My surprise during the course was to see how the prototype part really works. In the first day of the intense training, I thought that it was impossible, it was just one more theory that works more on paper. In fact, when you build something, even really amateur, after all the research and brainstorm with real people and you test it with your customers, you will probably hit the jackpot.
I wish traditional companies embrace the Design Thinking methodology soon and not just the nice and cool startups from the Silicon Valley. Now reading the book Marketing 4.0 (moving from traditional to digital) from Kotler, I am sure that this is the future and there is no going back. The Design Thinking perspective is just one more tool to help us with the challenges that already started.
