INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

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MODULE-1

PROCESS OF DESIGN
Understanding Design thinking
Shared model in team-based design – Theory and practice in Design thinking –
Explore presentation signers across globe – MVP or Prototyping
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PROCESS OF DESIGN

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving.

Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on the

people they're creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. When
you sit down to create a solution for a business need, the first question should always be what's
the human need behind it?

In employing design thinking, you’re pulling together what’s desirable from a human
point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows those
who aren't trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges. The
process starts with taking action and understanding the right questions. It’s about embracing
simple mindset shifts and tackling problems from a new direction.

Why is design thinking important?

Design thinking enables organizations to create lasting value for consumers. The process
is useful in any complex system (not just design systems) because it:
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1. Aims to solve a concrete human need

Using an observational, human-centric approach, teams can uncover pain points from the
consumer that they hadn’t previously thought of, ones that the consumer may not even be aware
of. Design thinking can provide solutions to those pain points once they’re identified.

2. Tackles problems that are ambiguous or difficult to define

Consumers often don’t know what problem they have that needs solving or they can’t
verbalize it. But upon careful observation, one can identify problems based on what they see from
real consumer behavior rather than simply working off of their ideas of the consumer. This helps
define ambiguous problems and in turn makes it easier to surface solutions.

3. Leads to more innovative solutions

Humans are not capable of imagining things that are not believed to be possible, which
makes it impossible for them to ask for things that do not yet exist. Design thinking can help
surface some of these unknown pain points that would otherwise have never been known. Using
an iterative approach to tackle those problems often leads to non-obvious, innovative solutions.

4. Makes organizations run faster and more efficiently

Rather than researching a problem for a long time without devising an outcome, design
thinking favors creating prototypes and then testing to see how effective they are.

THE FIVE STAGES OF THE DESIGN-THINKING PROCESS

Design thinking follows a five-stage framework.

1. Empathize
In this first stage, the designer observes consumers to gain a deeper understanding of how
they interact with or are affected by a product or issue. The observations must happen with
empathy, which means withholding judgment and not imparting preconceived notions of what the
consumer needs. Observing with empathy is powerful because it can uncover issues the consumer
didn’t even know they had or that they could not themselves verbalize. From this point, it’s easier
to understand the human need for which you are designing.

2. Define
In this second stage, you gather your observations from the first stage to define the problem
you’re trying to solve. Think about the difficulties your consumers are brushing up
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against, what they repeatedly struggle with, and what you’ve gleaned from how they’re affected
by the issue. Once you synthesize your findings, you are able to define the problem they face.

3. Ideate
The next step is to brainstorm ideas about how to solve the problem you’ve identified.
These ideation sessions could be in a group, where your team gathers in an office space that
encourages creativity and collaboration, an innovation lab, or can be done solo. The important part
is to generate a bunch of different ideas. At the end of this process, you’ll come up with a few
ideas with which to move forward.

4. Prototype
This is the stage that turns ideas into an actual solution. Prototypes are not meant to be
perfect. The point of a prototype is to come out quickly with a concrete version of the idea to see
how it is accepted by consumers. Examples of prototypes include a landing page to test consumer
desire for a product or a video that demonstrates streamlined logistic processes.

5. Test
Once you give a prototyped solution to consumers, you must observe how they interact
with it. This testing stage is the one in which you collect feedback on your work.
The design-thinking process is an iterative, rather than linear, one. At the end of the fifth stage,
you’ll likely have to go back to one or several of the other stages. Perhaps the testing has shown
you need to develop another prototype, for which you’d return to the fourth stage. Or perhaps it’s
shown that you’ve misdefined the consumer’s needs. If so, you would have to return to an earlier
stage of the process.

What industries and roles can benefit from design thinking?

While design thinking originated with designers, it is now widely used by people from all
disciplines. Even among design agencies the work is famously cross-functional: IDEO and similar
agencies hire non-designers—chefs, engineers, social scientists, biologists—and integrate them
into their project teams to add perspective.

Our growth innovation team at WeWork comprises a designer, who focuses on applying
this method for the end consumer of a project; a technologist, who uses this technique to deliver
value to engineers; and a business strategist, who applies this method to deliver value for business
owners and various stakeholders.
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Design thinking has been used at Kaiser Permanente to overhaul the system of shift
changes among nursing staff. It has helped the Singapore government make the process for
securing a work pass in the nation-state easier and more human. Design thinking has been used to
solve business problems at companies like Toyota, Intuit, SAP, and IBM.
One reason for the proliferation of design thinking in industries is that it’s useful to break down
problems in any complex system, be it business, government, or social organizations. It can be
used to explore big questions about how to respond to the growth of technology and globalization,
how to pivot in response to rapid change, and how to support individuals while catering to larger
organizations.

Design thinking can be used by all departments in a business. It can be fostered by bright,
airy physical workspaces that cater to the way employees prefer to work. To employ design
thinking in all projects, managers should first define the consumers they’re trying to help and then
employ the five stages of design thinking to define and tackle the identified problems. Employing
a design-thinking process makes it more likely a business will be innovative, creative, and
ultimately more human.

UNDERSTANDING DESIGN THINKING

SHARED MODEL IN TEAM-BASED DESIGN

If we apply the analogy of Design Thinking as a journey, having good travel partners is
important to safely and successfully arriving at your desired destination. The process of Design
Thinking takes you into unknown and sometimes uncomfortable territory. Members of a Design
Thinking team need to be open minded, curious, collaborative and allow their assumptions to be
challenged, ready for change, and be adaptable. Yes, that’s a lot, but it’s worth the effort as it
creates a great team spirit, work ethic – and ditto the end product.

Who to Take on the Ride

Team sizes may vary depending upon the challenge at hand, and may even comprise
multiple teams working in tandem to tackle various parts of a more complex problem, or people
or teams working alone sometimes and merging together at other times.

Cross-disciplinary teams will provide you with the best results. Teams may consist of
people unfamiliar with each other, with external members brought on board either as specialists
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or facilitators depending on the availability of skills. Navigating the people dynamics will most
likely be one of the toughest parts of a Design Thinking process, although it is also the most
rewarding as it involves the coming together of many different minds and personalities, whilst
adding richness to the experience.

Build the Right Kind of Team

The right kinds of specializations are important, but specialization is not the only quality
required. To make a Design Thinking project successful, we need T-shaped people. T-shaped
people have a depth of knowledge and experience in their own fields but they can also reach out
and connect with others horizontally and create meaningful collaborations.

A Design Thinking team should ideally be a cross/multi-disciplinary team consisting of a

mix of specializations, including specialists associated with problem areas contributing but not
dominating the journey. While specialists may have vast knowledge on a technical level, they are
working towards solutions targeted towards non-specialists in many cases and require outside
perspectives in addition to what they already know.

Taking a cross section of an organization, one will soon realize that individuals within
specific departments with specialist skills in specific business functions tend to approach problem
solving on their own level of experience, using the skill set they feel most comfortable with. Sales,
marketing, IT, product development, customer service and HR departments all view challenges
they face through the lens of their departmental functions. Bringing together teams that provide a
wider view of things is important, but even more so is to encourage them to look outside their own
spheres of influence to allow more holistically framed problems to be uncovered.

All too often, solutions are conceptualized by account managers and merely handed down
to creative teams for execution and decoration. Often, this results in a team tackling the wrong
problems. Individuals who are able to see the bigger picture in a situation are considered valuable
assets, as are those who are able to connect with real people outside the organizational structures in order
to understand the challenge from a market perspective.

Build The Right Team Culture

Choosing the perfect team may not always be possible, especially in situations where there
is a limited pool of candidates. Within startup environments everyone needs to be involved in
everything, so it may be more of a case of developing the appropriate team culture, or even project
culture, in order to move forward with the Design Thinking process. Encouraging
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empathy, experimentation, curiosity, courage, open-mindedness, holistic thinking, stripping away

biases, and favoring ambiguity over rational clarity, are great places to start.

It is important to set some rules and encourage individuals to think big-picture thoughts
before getting stuck on the executional nitty gritty. All team members should be encouraged to
respect each other's inputs, in order to dig deeper and to build upon each other's findings, as
opposed to trying to dominate and score with the winning idea as a solo effort. The following
attributes or characteristics of Design Thinking will help you to choose and select team members
for a given Design Thinking work project. Ask yourself questions such as: Which team members
already possess these characteristics? Who would be open to them? Which team members possess
the core expert skills required? You should, of course, practice these qualities yourself in your own
leading style, but you should also print and hand out this illustration to each of the team members
and explain the attributes featured therein. This will help to develop a great working culture.

ATTRIBUTES OF DESIGN THINKERS

Attribute Description Comment

Ambiguity Being comfortable when Design Thinking addresses wicked =

things are unclear or when ill-defined and tricky problems.
you don’t know the answer

Collaborative Working together across People design in interdisciplinary teams.

disciplines

Constructive Creating new ideas based on Design Thinking is a solution-based

old ideas, which can also be approach that looks for an improved
the most successful ideas future result.
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Curiosity Being interested in things Considerable time and effort is spent on

you don’t understand or clarifying the requirements. A large part
perceiving things with fresh of the problem solving activity, then,
eyes consists of problem definition and
problem shaping.

Empathy Seeing and understanding The focus is on user needs (problem

things from your customers’ context).

R
point of view

Holistic Looking at the bigger context Design Thinking attempts to meet user

E
for the customer needs and also drive business success.

Iterative A cyclical process where The Design Thinking process is typically

improvements are made to a non-sequential and may include feedback
solution or idea regardless of loops and cycles (see below).
the phase

Nonjudgmental Creating ideas with no Particularly in the brainstorming phase,

judgment toward the idea there are no early judgments.
creator or the idea

Open mindset Embracing design thinking The method encourages “outside the box
as an approach for any thinking” (“wild ideas”); it defies the
problem regardless of obvious and embraces a more
industry or scope experimental approach.

The above attributes or characteristics of Design Thinking will help you choose and select
team members for a given Design Thinking work project. Ask yourself questions such as: Which
team members already possess these characteristics? Who would be open to them? Which team
members possess the core expert skills required? You should of course practice these qualities
yourself in your own leading style, but you should also print and hand out this illustration to each
of the team members and explain the attributes featured therein. This will help to develop a great
working culture.
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Level the Playing Field

While you may already have experts in certain fields or specialists working alongside
generalists or less experienced individuals, something to stipulate clearly is the flat hierarchy,
which is needed in Design Thinking projects. The more senior team players’ knowledge and
experience will definitely be important and will be necessary in order to steer the ship in the right
direction so the team avoids becoming completely lost. However, this should not prevent less
experienced individuals from sharing their ideas, putting forward alternative ways of seeing things,
or flagging something that everyone else may have missed. The whole purpose of a multi-faceted
team is to encourage wider perspectives. No one within the team should purposely be allowed to
narrow things to suit his or her specific view. This illustrates how design-led innovation differs
significantly from processes used in traditional business or corporate settings. For instance, just a
mere insinuation a senior player may make towards a less experienced team member could result
in a closed mindset and prevent ideas from flowing.

The Importance of a Good Facilitator

Having a leader to spearhead the mission is important, as there is always a tendency for
team members to resort to familiar patterns, which may not suit the needs of Design Thinking.
Hierarchies may set in quickly and management styles may subvert the mission. A leader who is
experienced in maintaining the right mix of mindsets is essential. An ideal leader is someone who
can maintain high levels of energy and enthusiasm, someone who can steer the group around
obstacles, and someone who has at least some grounding in running Design Thinking or similar
projects.

A Design Thinking Team Manifesto

Venturing into the unknown can make some team members feel uncomfortable, especially
the business executive who has been trained to base decisions and actions on what has worked in
the past. Basing decisions, strategies, and even attempts at innovation on past data means churning
out much of the same, possibly with just a variation in colour or flavour.

If it's clear that the process won't be respected upfront by some of your team members,
more orientation may be required or buy-in sought before getting started. In order to ensure that
there is enough divergence in thinking, it is important to set some ground rules right from the start
and display these on the wall. You can find inspiration in the Attributes of Design Thinking
illustration above. You can actually easily turn this into your Design Thinking Team Manifesto.
However, we strongly encourage you to develop your own manifesto with your team members in
order to involve and engage all members in the Design Thinking process from the beginning. It
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is important to allow and encourage anyone on the team to call up rules. Do so without malice
and in the good positive spirit of exploration and experimentation.

The design process leader should keep the ship steering towards its goals with the help
from a Design Thinking Team Manifesto. Having a guide who is not a person who can be blamed
may be a good alternative for teams who are not quite ready to be led into the unknown by someone
they don't yet know and trust.

The Effects of Design Thinking on Teams

Design Thinking is structured in such a way so as to set the scene for specific qualities to
be unleashed within the team and to overcome obstacles that innovation teams typically face.
Some of the aims of Design Thinking's approach are to create:
● greater inclusiveness
● better team cohesion
● higher levels of collaboration and interaction
● increased creative confidence

Everyone thinks, feels, and experiences things differently. Differences are what we need.
Knowing that certain activities are not natural for everyone means that some preparation,
explanation, and trust-building, before the launch, can go a long way towards preventing people
from jumping ship.

Some of the obstacles the process aims to overcome:

● Fear of failure
● Intimidation
● Low self esteem
● Hierarchy
● Creative blocks
● Blind spots
● Specialization bias

In most cases, newcomers to Design Thinking will feel intimidated, confused, and
disoriented by its seemingly chaotic approach. In order to break through this negative tension, a
few short exercises can be implemented to loosen things up and get people feeling positive and
excited about the project.
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Facilitation Step 1: Tell your Team Members about the Overall Process of
Design Thinking
● Explain the five stages in the Design Thinking Process.
● Explain that the five stages of Design Thinking are not sequential steps, but different modes
you can put yourself in, to iterate on your problem definition, ideas, or prototype, or to
learn more about your users at any point in the project.
● Explain how Design Thinking builds a third way – combining the analytical and
information-driven approach of science with the holistic, empathic and creative ways of
thinking in ethnography and design.
● Explain that there are lots of proven methods that you’ll apply along the way, like user
interviews, brainstorm sessions, affinity clustering, sketching, user testing, etc.
● Knowing the background and underlying structure will help your team members to feel
safer as they know that there’s a solid background, and that chaos is not the goal even
though it may feel chaotic from time to time during the process. You could remind your
team members that innovation demands courage and an open mind while progressing
towards the goal:

“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
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Facilitation Step 2: Break the Ice

Icebreakers are important for breaking through barriers when teams need to start working
on something new, or when people don't know or trust each other well enough. Each setting is
unique and the ice that needs to be broken will be different for each situation. It may be as simple
as introducing people properly, or explaining the process they are about to engage in, though at
times it may require more intervention.
A few icebreaker tips
● Consider barriers that may exist in the team and design your icebreakers based on these.
● Ensure that the icebreakers don't alienate anyone or create any further obstacles.
● The idea is not to embarrass but to build confidence and make people comfortable going
forward.
● Icebreakers are not meant to produce winners and losers but are meant to level the
playing field.
● Choose activities which suit the people and setting.

Facilitation Step 3: Get People into the Creative Mood

Co-create a story
A great way to get your Design Team members to relax and enjoy co-creation is the act of
group story telling. You may begin with a completely unrelated story, maybe even something
familiar to the team or something related to the challenge space being explored. Start the story off
with a brief intro and move it around the team in a circle, with team members adding on their
sentences as it passes on.
A set of story Cubes may help even further, especially with those who may be too shy to suggest
something different. The story cubes come with a range of objects, actions, and themes that can be
mixed and matched to create or encourage randomised story telling. It's also an excellent tool for
getting people in the mood for brainstorming.

Visual telephone
Another similar activity which encourages visualisation rather than spoken stories is the
visual telephone. The team starts off with the first player drawing a simple picture in secret, and
then passing it on to the person beside her/him, who will then look at the image without showing
the others, and will write down her/his interpretation of what the image relates to. The next person
will then take that explanation and draw an image to show it, and so on, until the telephone has
moved through the entire team. The entire team will then review the end results to find out how
each person interpreted the message they received.
● Mindtools provides a good icebreaker outline with some examples for icebreakers in
different settings
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● Gamestorming is a book and method by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James Macanufo,
which contains a wealth of ideas for encouraging visual thinking and action-oriented
problem solving. It contains tons of advice on how to get people out of their seats and
comfort zones.
● The icebreakers above are merely ways of getting people ready, but it definitely doesn't
end there.

The Takeaway
● Bring together a diverse team with different thinking styles and specialisations.
● Develop an innovative team culture, which embraces inclusiveness, collaboration, and
co-creation.
● Level the playing field to allow for a diverse set of perspectives to influence the process.
● Ensure the right person is in charge.
● Break the ice with some creative exercises to loosen things up.
●

THEORY AND PRACTICE IN DESIGN THINKING

Design thinking is a human-centric methodology that requires a

multidisciplinary team and can be applied by regular, non-creative’ individuals

Design thinking can help develop new offers, increase levels of organizational innovation,
and accelerate growth in existing businesses or new ventures (i.e. startups). Design thinking is
considered a powerful approach in helping people envision new opportunities and become
comfortable with uncertainty. Design thinking is a human-centric methodology that requires a
multidisciplinary team and can be applied by regular, ‘non-creative’ individuals. ‘Creative’ people
are not geniuses, but rather people who boost their creativity by triggering positive emotions
through the activation of intrinsic motivation. Therefore, design thinking provides processes to
experiment with and learn how to uncover creative insights and innovative solutions following
clear and guided processes, consequentially transforming regular people into creative ones.

Design thinking is an approach for innovation, a systematic approach that aims to identify
customer dis-satisfactions and build innovative solutions through iteration. Therefore, design
thinking is a problem-solving approach.
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Leaders now look to innovation as a principal source of differentiation and

competitive advantage; they would do well…

Even though design thinking is about launching an innovation in the future — counter-
intuitively — it does not start with thinking of the future, but the present. Because the objective is
to ensure the desirability of the solution by addressing a real customer need. Once desirability is
validated, then business viability and technical feasibility will be addressed. It is, therefore, a
multidisciplinary process that favors collaboration between designers, social scientists, business
people, and engineers.

Design thinking and the creation of innovative value by Tim Brown CEO of IDEO

Design thinking is a systematic approach for innovation, a creativity method, a

problem-forming and solving approach, and a mindset, that is based on the following three
principles:
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● Empathy with the users for whom the innovation is developed, to fully understand their
pains and problems.
● The invention of something new that does not already exist or that enhances current
solutions. It’s about imagining and creating the future, rather than accepting current norms.
● Iteration, because it is hard to develop a deep understanding of user needs, requiring to test
and position the imagined solution for users.

The design in design thinking

A good design is associated with a product or service that is easy to use and interact with.
For example, consider your smartphones, they have been designed to be addictive, to have
consumers hooked. Or consider push notifications on social media applications such as Instagram
or Facebook; these notifications are triggers of interaction with the content of interest to increase
engagement rates with the service. This is the design in design thinking.
The 3 elements that make smartphones so hard to put down, explained by Google’s former
design ethicist. For a successful design to happen, designers, scientists/engineers, and business
people come together to collaborate and share skill sets in the following ways:
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Design thinking and the creation of innovative value by Tim Brown CEO of IDEO
(simplified version)

● Designers — ensure the desirability of the product/service, because they can empathize
easily with the end-user and are good at capturing and expressing emotions. They create
new things and are used to creating mock-ups and sketches to visualize their ideas and
share them with others, which is key for experimenting and testing.
● Business people — research existing market offerings. They perform competitive analysis,
collect data about the size of the market and interview experts looking for trends, either
social, environmental, technological or political, and read industry reports. They provide a
recap of findings in presentations, with market forecasts and make strategic
recommendations, supported by calculations on expected ROIs.
● Engineers/Scientists — conduct technological research, researching patents, reading recent
findings, technical documents and potential sources for product/service development. They
analyze crash reports and conduct calculations. They sum up findings with technical notes
and reports and suggest alternative technologies or designs.

With the descriptions above, on the one hand, designers look for subjectivity, human
experience and emotion in their work. Their approach is qualitative, experiential, intuitive, and
novel.
The intuitive mind is a sacred gift and the rational mind is a faithful servant — Albert
Einstein
But novelty does not necessarily create value. And even if a value is theoretically created, it needs
to be executed to generate profits for the business. Therefore, business people, engineers, and
scientists are used to think rationally and objectively based on quantitative data. Their objective is
to reduce uncertainty by pursuing control and stability.
Steve Jobs on Failure
In design thinking, one core strength is that it’s okay to be wrong, to be breaking things, it’s okay
to put something out there and have people critique and challenge it, because there’s a nugget
inside something failing, and design thinkers will only find the ‘right — solution’ after failing.

Design thinking is ‘intuitive — thinking’

Design thinking is a systematic approach that enforces the combination of intuitive
(designers) and analytical thinking (business people and engineers).
On the pattern of reasoning in innovative design
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Simulating the design process of artifacts by computers requires the modeling of design
reasoning in a logical…

When it comes to analytical thinking, there are two lines of reasoning in:
● Deductive reasoning — is useful to make sense of new information, based on existing
knowledge. ‘Deduction’ is the logical reasoning that, using a general rule, infers a
conclusion after observing an event or finding evidence. The crucial task with deductive
reasoning is to select the appropriate rule to apply and then confirm or refute the conclusion.
● Inductive reasoning — is logical reasoning that infers a rule-based upon observations of
a cause and effect. The inferred rule is credible given the premises and follows the theory
of evidence. In inductive logic, any new evidence consistent with existing beliefs and
mental models reinforces the beliefs and mental models, while other evidence is simply
considered anomalous. Therefore, inductive logic can prevent individuals from interpreting
evidence in alternate ways; it lacks intuitive thinking.

But design thinking starts with intuitive thinking — and intuitive thinking is based on abduction,
reasoning that infers and proves an explanatory hypothesis for a body of recently discovered
observations. For example, abduction happens when a product manager suggests an explanatory
hypothesis to account for the patterns and insights observed in the user behavior data collected on
a mobile application. If the hypothesis is validated, it becomes a rule that feeds deductive thinking
for a larger group of users.
Deduction, Induction, Abduction by GeorgiaTech

There are two types of abductive reasoning:

● Explanatory abduction — is used when we observe an anomalous or surprising event, by
which we infer a hypothesis to explain the new observation. Explanatory abductions give
sense to new observed behavior and data collected.
● Innovative abduction — is used when we don’t know the means to achieve the desired
outcome. Here we infer two hypotheses, one that connects the strategic option to the desired
outcome and one that connects the strategic option to its implementation or mode of
operation. The desired outcome is the only given or known data point. The strategic option
explains what should exist to achieve the desired outcome and the mode of operation
explains how the strategic option will be realized and executed. Innovative abductions lead
to a strategic option and its implementation method to deliver a new outcome.

For example, consider we want to improve the citizens’ recycling behavior. Here, we first
start by developing empathy with the citizens and observing their recycling behaviors. This
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observation reveals a potential explanatory hypothesis or insight: ‘People will only recycle if the
product is useful to someone.’ At this stage, the formed insight is neither true nor false, it’s a
hypothesis that needs to be tested. For that purpose, you run experiments to generate data on the
motivations for recycling, experiments on recycling with and without intrinsic and extrinsic
incentives. As a result, the hypothesis is validated, allowing you to trust your hypothesis and
further extend it to all other citizens. This is the power of abductive reasoning.

DESIGN THINKING IN ACTION

The 3-phases of design thinking

There are three phases to design thinking:

IDEO’s 3 phases of design thinking

● Inspiration — this involves going in the field, interviewing several segments of
stakeholders, observing them, living their experience, collecting data with pictures, videos,
interviews, and taking it back to discuss within the team until patterns and hypotheses
emerge. These findings should explain the users’ behavior and help them understand their
needs and pains.
● Ideation — this refers to the generation of ideas or solutions to address user problems and
needs. These ideas are combined in comprehensive solutions that could potentially address
the needs and pains.
● Implementation — in this phase, teams rapidly build rough and low-cost prototypes to
put concrete solutions into the hands of users, thereby testing problem-solution-fit.
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Duration of phases
Inspiration and implementation phases take the longest to complete:
● The inspiration phase is concrete, it’s about understanding the users and their pains and
problems and takes time as teams need to deep dive into users’ mindset and behaviors.
● Ideation is abstract and imaginative. It needs focus and it’s intense. But it should not take
a large amount of the team’s time. The more time is spent here, the less we can interact
with users to test the solutions.
● Implementation is once again concrete. It’s about experimenting by confronting ideas with
reality. Teams put the prototypes in the hands of the users. Here again, it takes time to build
the prototypes, test them, gather feedback, and reiterate designs.

The ideation funnel

During the design thinking process, it is common to generate as many as 250 ideas, which are then
narrowed down to as few as 25 concepts. This widening and narrowing at each phase are called
divergent and convergent thinking.
● Divergent thinking is about opening the choices, looking broadly and considering many
different options. The rationale of divergent thinking is to avoid being trapped in the usual
setting of the problem within a pre-existing set of solutions.
● Convergent thinking is the process of narrowing down options and selecting the most
promising ones to be further explored and tested.

IDEO Human-Centered Design Process — Image by source: Eventbrite.com

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The people and the environment

Design thinking’s guided and systematic process is followed by people from different
backgrounds, skills, and expertise, gathering in a specific place that favors sharing and building a
constructive and collective mindset. In other words, the design thinking process is sequenced and
clear, but it has to be contextualized to the environment of the organization it is immersed in.
Within the design thinking process and in the long term, people and the environment they are
working in is the most important pillar to successful design thinking efforts. After all, one needs
talented and happy designers to run design thinking activities.

Visualization is key to success

Visualization is the transformation of information into images. It makes data and ideas
tangible, accessible and interpretable with emotion and intuition. Designers favor drawing over
text because while the text is open to various interpretations according to your interlocutor, a
drawing reduces the possibility of mental models. This is why startups build user personas in their
early days when trying to define their customers.
Visualization is important at every phase of the design thinking process:
In the inspiration phase, photographs and sketches are used to capture the observations.
Visual thinking is also required to synthesize and structure data and look for patterns and insights.
In the ideation phase, the brain is creating images, and concepts are coming out of our imagination.
In the implementation phase, more detailed diagrams are needed for prototype development and
to represent how the user will interact with the solution to identify the main points of vigilance and
friction.

Storytelling
Just like a comic, a story has a narrative that involves emotions, enabling people to
understand issues and create engagement. Storytelling is the human way of conveying information.
And since design thinking is a human-centered approach, every phase of the process needs
storytelling.
A story adds context to the data gathered. The inspiration phase is about listening to and
interpreting human stories, writing them down, and developing empathy with user personas and
pains. In the ideation phase, storytelling makes ideas real, concrete, and tangible. In the
implementation phase, storytelling on-boards stakeholders and engages them to have their
feedback and comments included in the suggested solution.
How to Create Stories (and Products) People Want — with Shonda Rhimes and Marc Andreessen
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

Project types best suitable for design thinking

Design thinking is not adapted for all types of innovation projects but can work wonders
in any project that needs to connect deeply with the customers, transform insights and data into
actionable ideas, or create and implement new solutions with fast and effective business impact.
There are five criteria to consider when deciding to use design thinking:
● The project needs to be human-driven
● The project has a high degree of uncertainty. Uncertainty is a situation where its
probability of occurrence and degree of impact are unknown.
● The project has a poorly defined problem
● The project is complex, meaning it has interdependent and dynamically moving parts and
therefore can’t be modeled using links between causes and effect. So it is difficult to know
where to start.
● It lacks data or the available data is not organized and well-framed

Therefore, if humans are not at the heart of the problem, if there is a clear and shared
definition of the problem if you can accurately predict and determine cause and effect in advance,
if the problem is decomposable into parts, and if you have well-framed and structured data, then
design thinking is not suitable for such a project.

Design thinking is an approach that we can follow to reduce uncertainty levels through
experimentation and testing and not through prediction — which is generally used in risk
management projects. Design thinking is suitable and should be adopted when there are many
stakeholders involved and everyone has their definition of the problem. When time and effort are
required to learn about the context of the problem. When it is not possible to prove that any
particular solution will work until it is tested and when several expertise and specializations are
required over a collaborative team effort.

EXPLORE PRESENTATION SIGNERS ACROSS GLOBE

MVP OR PROTOTYPING

Prototypes and Minimum Viable Products (MVP) are a critical part of product
development. Sure, you could dive right in, spend months developing an expensive product with
all the bells and whistles. Only to find that at launch, nobody wants it. Or you’ve built it completely
wrong. Or you could have built something way better if you’d pivoted halfway through.
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

Not testing your ideas is a great way to fail fast. That’s where MVPs and prototypes come
in! They help you to find your product-market fit, get stakeholder and user feedback, and start
building buzz around your upcoming launch. They’re also a great communication tool between
you and your designers/tech teams, and they help you understand what it is you’re building.
But what is the meaning of ‘prototype’ and ‘MVP’?

Well, an MVP is a lightweight early-version of your product. A prototype is also a

lightweight early-version of your product.
Done! …if only it were that simple. While in theory MVPs and prototypes seem like the same
thing, and both are part of agile product development, there are a few key differences.

Here we’re going to take you through everything you need to know about prototypes and
MVPs. We’ll look at:
● What a prototype is for, and the forms they can take.
● What an MVP is.
● Examples of MVPs that became huge, successful products.
● The main differences between a prototype and an MVP.
● Tips on how to build your own.

What is a Prototype?
A prototype is the theory behind your product made into form. Instead of having a vague
idea of what you want to eventually build, you make something tangible.
Prototypes can vary in size and how much time and effort you put into them. It might be a simple
sketch on paper or it might be something more functional and interactive.

The main benefit of a prototype is that it helps you to communicate with your design and
engineering teams. You need to show them what to build! Think of it as the packaging of an empty
box. It shows you what’s inside and what it looks like, but there’s currently nothing going on
underneath.

Depending on your skill level, you can make your prototype as complicated or as simple
as you like.
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

Different Types of Prototypes

Image credit: Sunny Cui, ‘A Guide to Paper-Prototype Sketching‘

Paper sketches: This is the lowest level of prototype. If you can wield a pencil, you can manage!
Draw out a basic idea of what your user interface will look like. If you want to make something
visually appealing to communicate to investors/stakeholders, work with a designer to create
something that fits your vision.

Digital prototypes: You can also create a working mock-up of your envisioned product, and there
are many tools to help you do so.
The rule of thumb when picking prototyping tools is their complexity: you might not need all the
features in the world to make your project scream SUCCESS.
For a web-based app, if you’re just starting out and don’t have a big budget/powerful computer,
we can recommend Proto.io. In terms of standalone apps, InVision, Figma, Balsamiq, Axure RP,
Sketch (for Mac only) and Adobe XD are good options.

Prototype Inspiration
Need some ideas? Check out these awesome prototype examples!
● Household Energy Monitor
● Framer Web Beta
● Stay Home App
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

What is an MVP?
The meaning of MVP is Minimum Viable Product. It’s the bare minimum version of your
product that still solves the problem for your customers. Eric Ries describes it perfectly in The

Lean Startup.
Think of it like this: if someone needed transportation between Point A and Point B, and
they’re not sure how best to get there, the first thing you give them wouldn’t be a Tesla! You might
start with a skateboard, or a scooter. You get the feedback that they want something motorized, so
you get them a motorbike. It does the job, but now they want something waterproof, with some
kind of entertainment system. So eventually you give them a car with built-in radio.

Without testing, and understanding what works and what doesn’t, you might have given
them a skateboard with a Nintendo Wii strapped to the front instead.

Examples of MVPs that became products

1. Groupon: A WordPress site and PDFs

While they didn’t exactly invent the voucher (extreme couponing has been a hobby for
generations!) Groupon helped it become a staple of our social lives and shopping habits.
It started out as a real bare-bones operation. At launch, they had a very basic WordPress site, and
would email normal PDFs as vouchers to subscribers. Once they proved that there was a demand
for an online voucher marketplace, they invested in building a more elaborate backend.
As of 2018, they have sold 1.5 billion vouchers to almost 50 million annual active users. To put it
lightly…not bad.

2. Airbnb: From 3 guests to 400 million

The Airbnb we know and love today, started out as AirBed&Breakfast, a very basic website
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

which provided accommodation to people who came to San Francisco for a design conference.
The problem that founders Brian Chesky and Joe Gebbia were trying to solve was that they
couldn’t afford the rent on their loft apartment. Short-term rentals were arduous and often involved
big bills to middlemen.
After testing their idea on 3 paying guests during the conference, Airbnb grew organically
to the powerhouse we know today. It even involved Brian Chesky staying in early listings to give
the platform some traction.
Had they not tested, they could have built an extravagant system, with all the cool features
Airbnb has in 2020, only to find that people didn’t want to stay in other people’s homes. Luckily
for them, they were onto something…

3. Dropbox: The product that didn’t exist

Dropbox is a fantastic example of product-led growth done well. But in the beginning, they
didn’t have a product at all!
Instead of building a full product, they came up with a working MVP, created a video
explainer, and essentially pretended that it existed.
This helped them to test their idea. Had they built the complicated backend, only to
find that nobody wanted their product, they would have lost countless hours of work.
From their introductory video, they received over 70k email addresses from people wanting
Dropbox ASAP. They’d proved their idea had legs without spending a lot of money getting it to
walk.

4. Spotify: Do one thing and do it well

When Spotify first launched its MVP to the world, it aimed to do one thing: stream music.
They built an MVP which only streamed songs, without all of the extra features (playlists,
podcasts, video, mobile app etc), and launched a closed beta to test their idea. Everyone loved it,
and the freemium model was popular with users.
Knowing that their MVP was a hit, and their business model was proven, they rolled out a
full launch and have experienced year on year growth ever since.
At the end of Q1 in 2020, Spotify had 130 million premium subscribers.

What is The Difference Between Prototype and MVP?

If we had to break it down very simply, we could say that the main differences are:
1. Scope
2. Commitment
3. Audience
The scope of a prototype and an MVP vary greatly. A prototype is something that you can put
very little time and effort into. The idea is to come up with a variety of prototypes, and be able to
change, adapt, and throw away ideas very quickly.
With an MVP, you’ve picked an idea and you’re rolling with it, which means putting in a little
 INNOVATION and DESIGN THINKING

more effort. You’re likely to use more resources and have more people involved.
Because of the different in scope, your commitment level is also different. Once you’ve
invested time and resources into an MVP, you’re less likely to completely scrap it. While the whole
concept of MVP is based on the ability to be cost-effective and make rapid changes, it’ll still be
painful to get rid of it entirely and start from scratch.

With a prototype, it can be as easy as crumpling up the paper and starting again! Although
more complex prototypes certainly take up more resources, you’re still less tied to them than you
are to a fully realized MVP.
Your prototypes and your MVPs will also be intended for different audiences. Prototypes
are mostly internal. Mainly intended for your teams, or others in your company. At most, you’ll
give them to the press to create a bit of buzz, or use them for crowdfunding purposes. But they’re
not intended for your target market en masse.
An MVP, as we’ve now seen, is intended to be launched to your target market in order to
assess its reception. The P stands for Product after all. An MVP is something that the public will
be judging you on, and something which people may remember when the time comes to commit
to V2.

Tips for Building Your Prototype or MVP

Now you know the difference, you might be thinking about how to build a prototype or
MVP. While the resources and data you’ll need are different for each, there are a few golden rules
that you can apply, no matter what you’re building.

1. Stay customer-focused: So many of the world’s most successful companies credit their
customer-focus as the secret to building winning products. The goal of your product is to provide
value, so be sure to focus on who you’re building for.

2. Stay data-driven: You don’t have to be a data scientist to be a product manager, but don’t
think that numbers shouldn’t matter to you. You might not have an extensive data set if you’re
building your first ever product, so think about what data you want to collect from your
prototype/MVP. It’ll help you later in development, and for future releases.

3. Kill your darlings: You might really love your prototype/MVP. But if no one else
does…it’s time to rethink! The only thing waiting for you if you launch something nobody wants,
is failure.

4. Just build the thing! You can agonize over perfecting your prototype before committing
to an MVP. You can also spend months working and reworking your MVP before you feel ready
to launch it. If you want to build products, eventually it’s time to let go and let people see them!