These Days, Everyone Needs To Engage In Design Thinking – Forbes

Design thinking takes practice and patience.
When just about all business activity — both with customers and employees — was hurriedly moved to digital a few months ago, one could be forgiven for not paying close attention to the nuances of the interfaces and software that was part of the switch. Zoom, for example, could be quirky and less than perfect in resolution, but it was easy to launch and got the job done.
Now is the time, however, to take a step back and really consider how well customers and employees are interacting with systems, and how these interactions can be improved, humanized, and made more intuitive. The time is ripe for design thinking.
Mention “design thinking,” and people typically think about product design, such as the look and feel of mobile phones, the navigability of apps, the grillwork on the front of cars, or the layout of buildings. But design thinking is much more than that — it’s about looking at problems in new ways, from new angles, and coming up with new ways to accomplish things. It isn’t just the domain of product designers; it should be part of everyone’s job.
“Designing is more than creating products and services; it can be applied to systems, procedures, protocols, and customer experiences,” said Linda Naiman in European Business Review. “Design is transforming the way leading companies create value. The focus of innovation has shifted from being engineering-driven to design-driven, from product-centric to customer-centric, and from marketing-focused to user-experience-focused.”
Thirty-nine percent of 328 organizations participating in a Forbes Insights survey from a couple of years back had adopted the key precepts of design thinking, and there was a direct connection to organizational growth. The most essential activities involved close communication and collaborative work with customers and end-users.
Among the most forward-looking companies, close to 90% expected to increase their investments and resources significantly in design-thinking-related activities, three times the level of their less digitally advanced counterparts.
How do managers and professionals adopt a design-thinking mentality, and weave that into their day-to-day jobs? A four-step approach was recently developed by Leigh Thompson and David Schonthal, both professors at Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management:
Get better at “noticing things.” The first step in the design-thinking process “is to observe a situation and notice what is actually happening,” said Thompson and Schonthal. This is easier said than done. “People are very limited in what they’re able to perceive in their visual world when they’re focused on one thing.” The way to get better at noticing things is to abandon pre-existing notions and become more open-minded. “Next, they must learn inductively, making inferences based on limited information,” and then look for patterns.
Frame and reframe the problem. “Ask a question no one else is asking,” according to Thompson and Schonthal. “Design thinkers look at a problem from multiple vantage points, trying on different lenses to determine the best approach to finding a solution.” For example, “understanding a customer’s motivations for using a product or service are important for developing something that works for the customer.”
Approach brainstorming with rigor. “Imagine and design.” Brainstorming, they say, “is about focusing on quantity over quality, building on one another’s ideas, and encouraging the most outlandish suggestions, all while avoiding criticism.” Thompson and Schonthal advise starting with “a smaller ideation group…. Or consider switching from brainstorming to brainwriting. In a brainwriting session, participants spend a set amount of time writing down as many ideas as they can, before a facilitator collects them all. Groups are stimulating. They make us feel all warm and fuzzy/ But it isn’t necessarily the best way to have a creativity and innovation meeting.”
Fail faster. Learn sooner. “When it comes to actually building and testing solutions—the final step in design thinking—a successful designer must understand that failure is simply an expected part of the process and will ultimately make the work better.” Success, Thompson and Schonthal point out, comes “through practice, not through innate talent. Failure becomes a way to learn, not proof of incompetency.” One way to foster a growth mindset, they explain, is to use “How Might We” (HMW) questions that get design thinkers to push past constraints. “Groups that adopt a HMW focus are more likely to persist and be creative than those who don’t think about possibilities.”
Design thinking is no longer the fun stuff exclusive to product designers — it affects every part of the organization, and the experience customers and users have with the people and systems with which they interact. Every enterprise needs good design.

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