Design thinking can be applied to products, services and processes and can ultimately be implemented within any kind of business. Here are 5 simple steps towards thinking like a designer and the related benefits for your business strategy:
1. Focus on your customer
Understanding your customer is one of the main steps to developing innovative solutions. By observing your customers’ interaction with your products and services, you should be able to identify inefficiencies making room for innovation and improvement.
2. Identify the problem
Design thinking involves viewing problems from a variety of perspectives which encourages interaction between different teams and departments. Many businesses tend to explore problems that aren’t worth the time and effort whilst losing focus on the customers’ needs due to personal preferences. Using observations taken from your customer research will help to filter through problems and identify those that are going to make the greatest positive impact when resolved.
3. Produce ideas
Fear of adapting existing business structure is one of the main issues that hinders innovation. Instead of focusing on what is or isn’t viable, businesses should firstly look to explore a multitude of ideas and let imaginations run wild. In order to be successful and stay relevant with current trends, businesses may need to alter working structures to become leaders within their industries.
4. Test solutions
Sharing draft solutions with the consumers you observed will allow for a more honest response to evaluate the effectiveness and impact of each idea. Most designers communicate draft solutions through a variety of simple mediums. Services and processes are commonly represented through paper mock ups whilst more physical prototypes are made using card. Observing how your consumers interact with each idea will spark further creativity and help you to realise the most successful solution.
5. Execute the final idea
Feedback from prototypes will help you to choose the most appropriate and effective solution for the problem originally identified. There is also likely to be further development and improvement based on your consumers’ reactions to your ideas although you should now have built on your confidence to move forward with a final proposal.
By Dawood Pathan
For further information on your business’s brand design, contact Offbeat Creative at hello@offbeatcreative.co.uk or call 020 7060 3121