Design Thinking

The first stage (or mode) of the Design Thinking process involves:

Developing a sense of empathy towards the people you are designing for, to gain insights into what they need, what they want, how they behave, feel, and think, and why they demonstrate such behaviors, feelings, and thoughts when interacting with products in a real-world setting

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

A good problem statement should thus have the following traits. It should be:

Human-centred. 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 focussing 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.

What leads to successful design?

Looking for the underlying factors and motives that drive users' behaviors and needs.

Photographing or recording target users, like other empathizing methods, can help you uncover:

Photographing or recording target users, like other empathizing methods, can help you uncover

"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.

Point Of View

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

If we are to empathize with users, we should always try to adopt the mindset of a:

beginner

Analysis

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

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.

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)

In "Why", we make:

educated guesses regarding the person's motivations and emotions. These motivations we can then test with users

Our life experiences create assumptions within us, which we use to:

explain and make sense of the world around us

By asking the three questions — What? How? Why? — we can move from:

from concrete observations that are free from assumptions to more abstract motivations driving the actions we have observed

In "How", we analyze:

how the person is doing what he/she is doing (is he/she exerting a lot of effort? Is that individual smiling or frowning?)

In "What", we record:

the details (not assumptions) of what has happened

Synthesis

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

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)]