My Design Thinking Process
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Discovery
- I like to start by asking why a solution is needed.
- Research the problem space & audience. Understand the context of the users; empathize; role-play.
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Synthesis
- Frame the problem from the user's point of view.
- Create or align with a vision or UX strategy.
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Conceptualization
- Come up with many ideas for solutions.
- Prioritize and select a concept.
- Prototype the concept and test.
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Build
- Determine metrics to measure success.
- Select the right tools, teams & resources.
- Communicate, collaborate and remove blocks in the process.
- Launch.
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Iterate
- Collect early feedback from users.
- Identify gaps.
- Iteratively improve the solution.
What is good design?
As industrial and user experience designers, the question ‘Is my design (any) good?’ is a mirror we face every day. So a reflection that I keep going back to is in Dieter Rams’ ten principles of good design. Dieter Rams’ distilled wisdom, could be applied to the activity of creating ‘things’ since the dawn of time, and I think they’d still make total sense.
My role
In the last decade, my understanding of design for user experience has gone through several reboots. Crafting interfaces with the best tools and individual prowess is great, but sometimes in the real world, they can fall short of the original intent. Often in a startup environment, the design process can seem scrappy, but rich in experience and learning. We make a lot of informed assumptions about what the product ought to be, prototypes become MVPs, and we learn as we go, and pivot as we learn. There is growth, and there's the risk of design losing its place in the larger scheme of things. Over time one realizes that to make an impact at large, the designer has to influence or align several factors, not limited to:
- Create a compelling vision for the solution
- Buy-in from stakeholders
- Set in motion iterative learning
- Create processes to understand users and product usage
- Build teams that consistently share knowledge
- Foster a positive environment in which design thinking takes root.
Design in organizations
I've tried to capture a model of a mature practice of design. The trajectory of product design and development go through macro iterations, within which micro-iterations are set in wherein product features get defined & refined. As the cycles of activity – from user research, design, development, release, insights from customer experience – start to feed into each other in higher frequency, teams gain greater mastery over design skills & knowledge. The spiral diverges. If the process is sustained by focusing on improving user experience outcomes, the organization would eventually realize 'institutional value' in the practice of user experience design.
A shift in perspective
This representation of a design process that I created for my portfolio a decade ago is all about an individualistic approach to design - the designer as a lone crusader - a perspective that I have shed many times over since.
Growing with people
Learning to look at user needs with empathy can become a heuristic or cognitive exercise solely unless you can toggle effectively between sensing and feeling, even if you are in front of the user. As with users, to get things done, treating team members as users/customers is a way that often helps me get to the essence of a situation and resolve conflicts. Listening and asking thoughtful questions before judging in order to understand intent I've learned are ways to persuade, motivate, provide feedback, and build trust that endears. Eventually, there's no mantra for finding empathy, its a journey.
My gratitude to everyone that has crossed paths in this process helped stretch my mirror neurons, and better understand myself and the world.