Why Design Thinking? Put the Customer First by Shifting Your Approach

Design thinking, an approach to innovation and nonlinear thinking for businesses, has been on a slow boil for more than two decades, and yet it’s only recently become a buzzed-about topic. There are many reasons why design thinking is on the rise. Among them: It focuses on solutions, puts the customer first, helps teams think outside the box, and highlights the importance of validating an idea before throwing all your energy behind it.

Tim Brown, CEO of design firm IDEO, says:

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

IDEO is a pioneer of using design thinking for business, applying it through four phases: Gather, Generate, Make, and Share.

But theirs isn’t the only version: One characteristic of design thinking is that it lacks standardization. Stanford’s d.school offers a design thinking crash course and Upwork uses a model inspired by research and work by designer (and part-time nomad) Laila von Alvensleben.

How can you use design thinking to level up your process for getting things done? Here’s a look at one approach to brainstorming and a glimpse into how one of Upwork’s teams learned to use it.

One approach to user-centric brainstorming

Jonathan Cofer, senior creative director for Upwork, says using design thinking can be hard to wrap your head around at first. But at its core, design thinking is actually quite simple:

“First define the problem you are trying to solve, next come up with ideas and narrow down to the best one, and finally validate that it solves user’s problems before you build it—that’s it. What design thinking provides is a process and exercises to accomplish the above.”

Upwork’s design thinking process is loosely structured into four steps:

• Understand and empathize with the people involved.
• Define the problem.
• Ideate, prototype, and test—a process that looks beyond measurable data to include emotions and needs.
• Implement and learn, then refine the ideas as needed.

“[Design thinking is] an extremely valuable tool to make sure you’re solving the right problem, generating innovative ideas, and validating those ideas before making expensive commitments,” Cofer explained. Learn more about Upwork’s approach to design thinking…

Remote design thinking in action

“The best way to incorporate design thinking into your process is to just start scheduling workshops with other team members and learn how to run these types of meetings as you go,” Cofer said. That’s what one of Upwork’s teams did to test how well this approach to problem solving could be used with people spread across multiple locations.

As Mark Shekoyan, a design anthropologist and user researcher at Upwork, explained, the engineering team was looking for ways to scale design thinking across its globally distributed organization of remote workers:

“Our engineers have classically been tasked with executing a vision and not coming up with ideas themselves. Our engineering leadership felt encouraging our engineering teams to ideate and ‘fail fast’ safely would help them improve their work and make the organization more effective at implementing design thinking.”

The first meeting organized people from around Europe and the U.S. into teams of 5-6 people, each including a project manager. In planning the logistics ahead of time, Shekoyan and his fellow facilitator, research lead Shipra Kayan, also selected the tools they wanted to use and defined the outcomes they were aiming for.

“We wanted [the engineers] to gain empathy, brainstorm ideas, select a specific idea, build out concepts, and get user feedback,” he said.

To test the process, the groups tackled a mock situation: A traveler having a tough time booking a flight. They worked through the design thinking process to:

• Understand and empathize: They started by looking at the user journey, considering not just what he wanted to do, the hurdles that would pop up, and the actions he would take but also how his feelings would shift at each new step.
• Define: Next, they created a clear problem statement that captured key underlying issues for the traveler.
• Ideate, prototype, and test: Using “How might we…” as a prompt, the teams then looked at different ways the traveler could approach the problem. All ideas were collected and clustered into themes.
• Implement and learn: In this example, each team took the information to create a storyboard and wireframe; feedback was quickly solicited via online voting.

Shekoyan says there were four key lessons to be learned from this exercise which will be applied as design thinking continues to roll out across the organization. Learn more about this case study…

Shifting the way your organization thinks isn’t easy, but there are plenty of benefits and measurable value to be gained when you do.

The Design Value Index (DVI), an investment tool created by Motiv Strategies, identifies a portfolio of companies that fit specific design management criteria and measure them against the S&P Index. For 2016, this portfolio “showed a 211% return over the S&P 500, marking the third consecutive year that the index has shown an excess of 200% over the S&P.” Just look at Apple to see how a design-centric approach can have a major impact on a company’s bottom line.

To learn more about design thinking and how your organization can implement it, check out these articles and others from Upwork’s Hiring Headquarters.

 

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