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Design Thinking

The document discusses the importance of empathy in the design thinking process. It provides examples of projects that both lacked empathy and demonstrated empathy. The Google Glass project failed due to a lack of understanding user needs and social contexts. In contrast, a team that developed a portable infant warmer called the Embrace Warmer was highly successful because they took time to empathize with new mothers in remote areas to understand their needs. The document advocates spending time observing and understanding users to gain insights that can lead to more effective and innovative solutions.

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114 views12 pages

Design Thinking

The document discusses the importance of empathy in the design thinking process. It provides examples of projects that both lacked empathy and demonstrated empathy. The Google Glass project failed due to a lack of understanding user needs and social contexts. In contrast, a team that developed a portable infant warmer called the Embrace Warmer was highly successful because they took time to empathize with new mothers in remote areas to understand their needs. The document advocates spending time observing and understanding users to gain insights that can lead to more effective and innovative solutions.

Uploaded by

api-484250989
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© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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DESIGN THINKING

Read an Article: Drop that Pipette: Science by Design


EMPATHIZE or RESEARCH
WHOSE problem are you trying to solve?

Walk a while in your user’s shoes.

Understand first-hand who you are designing for.


Designing Without Empathy: Google Glass
Google launched its first wearable product, the Google Glass, with much fanfare in 2013. The head-mounted wearable
computer, while being technologically impressive, failed to perform well, and a lot of that comes down to a lack of
empathy towards the users.

Although the Glass allows users to take photos, send messages and view other information such as weather and
transport directions, it does not actually fulfil the real needs of users--things you need or want to get done.

Also, the Glass is generally a voice-activated device, and in our current social environment, saying commands out loud
in the streets such as, “Okay Glass, send a message,” just isn’t a socially acceptable thing to do. If the user has to
perform socially awkward or unacceptable acts to be able to use your product, you can be sure that few people would
be willing to use your product.

Lastly, the Glass featured a nondescript camera which resulted in privacy concerns for those people around the Glass
user, since there was no way of knowing whether or not they were being filmed.

Google’s lack of empathy when they designed the Glass is summed up nicely by the MIT Technology Review in one
sentence: “No one could understand why you’d want to have that thing on your face, in the way of normal social
interaction.”
https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-getting-started-with-empathy
Success with Empathy: The Embrace Warmer
With empathy, we can gain insights that could not be gathered by any other methods short of highly
accurate calculated guesses. A team of postgraduate students at Stanford were tasked with developing a
new type of incubator for developing countries. Their direct contact with mothers in remote village
settings who were unable to reach hospitals, helped them to reframe their challenge to a warming device
rather than a new kind of incubator.

The end result was The Embrace Warmer, which has the potential to save thousands of lives. The
Embrace Warmer is capable of going where no incubator could go before, due to its portability and
dramatically reduced production costs. The Embrace Warmer is an ultra-portable incubator which can be
wrapped around an infant and be used while the infant is held in the mother’s arm. Instead of needing to
deposit their babies into far-flung hospitals, mothers in remote villages can use a portable warmer that
serves the same need instead.

Had the team only thought of designing incubators, they may have developed a semi-portable lower cost
incubator, which would still not have made it into remote villages. However, with the help of empathy—
i.e., understanding the problems mothers in remote villages face—the design team designed a human-
centred solution that proved to be optimal for mothers in developing countries. The objective of
empathic research is uncovering, at times, intangible needs and feelings, that indicate what should
ideally change in the product, system, or environment we're focusing on.
DEFINE or HYPOTHESIZE
Unpack your empathy findings into needs and insights.

A good point of view preserves emotion and the individuals you are
designing for.

Include strong language and sensical language to describe your insight.


Design Thinking process requires a meaningful and actionable problem statement to solve. The
definition of a problem (also called a design challenge) will require you to synthesise your
observations about your users from the first Empathize stage.
● Human-centered. Frame your problem statement according to specific users, their needs and
the insights that you have gained in the Empathise phase.
● Broad enough for creative freedom. Do 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 project.
● Narrow enough to make it manageable. On the other hand, a problem statement such as ,
“Improve the human condition,” is too broad. 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.
IDEATE or BRAINSTORM
Generate radical design alternatives.
Explore a wide variety of diverse solutions.
Seek out innovative concepts that might stretch the “norm.”

Ideation is often the most exciting stage in a Design Thinking project because almost
unrestrained free thinking can occur within the given field. The aim is to generate a large
number of ideas — ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas — which you can then
filter and narrow down into the best, most practical, or most innovative ones.
Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a plan, or a goal: Identify
the core subject or the main aim of the exercise. For example, what are you trying to achieve?
Are you trying to improve a certain feature? Are you focusing on ways to improve the overall
experience?

Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas: Free thinking may produce some ideas that are wide
off the mark, but brainstorming is about drawing up as many ideas as possible which are then
whittled down until the best possible option remains.

Aim for quantity: Brainstorming is effectively a creative exercise, in which design thinkers
are encouraged to let their imaginations run wild. The emphasis is on quantity, rather than
quality at this stage.

Be visual: The physical act of writing something down or drawing an image in order to bring
an idea to life can help people think up new ideas or view the same ideas in a different way.
Watch to Identify Design Thinking

Mileha Soneji: Can Simple Innovations Improve The


Lives of Parkinson's Patients?
6:47

Amos Winter: How Do You Build An All-Terrain Whee


lchair For The Developing World?
10:57

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