Design Thinking and Innovation

Design Thinking is an innovation technique that can be adopted by anyone, anywhere, and at little to no cost. It is a problem-solving technique that can be applied to small or large problems. It can be used to address business or non-business problems.

Most people think that innovation requires one to be an artist or highly creative. In our experience, we have heard people we are training to conduct these workshops say, “I’m not really a creative person” or “I’m not an artist.”

According to Alice Flaherty, an American neurologist and author of The Midnight Disease, “A creative idea is defined simply as one that is both novel and useful (or influential) in a particular social setting.” Flaherty explains that this applies to every field, including programming, business, mathematics, and the traditional “creative” fields, like music or drawing.

Thus, Design Thinking and innovation are very misunderstood. Many people believe that innovation occurs when brilliant ideas spring out of nowhere or that innovation requires the right creative personality type or the right team of people and skills. While these conditions can be beneficial and some people do use time in the shower or when they are half asleep to come up with great ideas, Design Thinking is a much more widely inclusive approach.

The Design Thinking approach to innovation combines intent, exploration, and the views of a diverse group of people. People taking part should have an open mindset and be willing to fail in order to learn. More brains working on a problem enables focus on the problem from different perspectives and results in creation of a multitude of possible solutions. Diverse groups of people can think about and sort out complex problems, even when they haven’t experienced the problem before or have limited information or context about the problem.

The mind is an amazing problem-solving organ. There are different parts of the brain that are activated when intentionally focused on a problem (prefrontal cortex) vs. not focused on a problem (anterior cingulate cortex). Our brains are always working on sorting out challenges and problem, even when we aren’t focused on it.¹

The belief that innovation can spring out of anywhere is true, but it’s way more valuable and exciting when used to solve a critical or pressing problem. As Plato has stated, “Necessity is literally the mother of all invention.” A need or a challenge is the spark that ignites the imagination to create and invent ways of solving a problem. Additionally, one idea alone is good, but the power of multiple ideas to solve a problem exponentially increases solution quality.

The authors believe that the first idea generated isn’t always the best idea. A volume of ideas or solutions promotes the opportunity for careful consideration of the best fit to solve a problem. It can take many people to create the needed volume even in situations where some individuals are gifted in creating such volume.

According to the book How to Think Like Leonardo da Vinci: Seven Steps to Genius Every Day, we should be curious, test knowledge, learn from mistakes, improve our experiences, embrace ambiguity or paradox, use whole brain thinking, use the physical world, and see the interconnections between things. Specifically, we should use the creative and evaluative sides of our brains to solve challenges.

Picasso was a prolific producer of artwork with 147,800 completed projects. Picasso once said, “Give me a museum and I will fill it up.” The Louvre exhibits 35,000 pieces of art; thus, he could fill this museum more than four times over. But not every one of his pieces is in a museum. Quantity doesn’t equal quality. But quantity ensures a better selection pool for the best ideas.

Many people think art is the same thing as design. While both share a need for creativity, they are not the same. Good art inspires and pushes one to ask questions, to ponder, to feel, and to respond with emotion and thought. Artists use their own perspectives, feelings, emotion, insight, and experiences to create, but their creations do not need to solve problems or answer questions. Rather, their creations pose them.

In comparison, design’s purpose is to function well in solving problems. Design has both purpose and intent. It must meet requirements to be successful, and it must serve a purpose in order to derive value. Good design is more restrained and focused on the best way to solve a problem so many draft versions or iterations are typically created and tested before a final solution is employed.

Everything is designed – cars, chairs, tables, clothes, software, roads, services … everything. Thus, adopting Design Thinking can be a widely applicable and powerful tool.

When organizations build products and services, some don’t realize they need to include in their designs how to attract, retain, and support their clients and customers. Lack of thoughtful design is still design, but it is neglected design. Good design is outcome-oriented and process-driven. The intent guides the process and direction, but the path taken should be very flexible and considered a learning opportunity.

Overcoming Fear of Failure

Many people fear a structured approach to design because they don’t want to fail. They are afraid to start because they want their design to be perfect. Perfection paralysis is a real problem for many. It can stop many entrepreneurs and software developers from doing anything.

Failure is a recognized ingredient in Design Thinking. It is seen as presenting an opportunity to learn what doesn’t work. Designs evolve using new insights and parameters that failures uncover. Thus, one needs to embrace failure as part of the process.

Failure using this approach is sometimes referred to as failing forward. As John C. Maxwell writes in Failing Forward: Turning Mistakes into Stepping Stones for Success, “I want to help you learn how to confidently look the prospect of failure in the eye and move forward anyway… Because in life, the question is not if you will have problems, but how you are going to deal with them. Stop failing backward and start failing forward!”

Innovative design should be a purposeful learning opportunity with the expectation that you won’t get it right on the first try. It likely won’t feature gifted artistry, perfection, or a clear upfront definition. However, it does require a thoughtful and creative approach to problem-solving that we are going to discuss throughout this book.

During our lives, solving problems is how we experience the world. From our first moment of learning to walk, eat, and play, there are problems to be solved. Early learning challenges such as how one should move, where one might go, where one places a foot when walking, and how one makes shapes with a pencil to write letters or words are examples of areas where we make mistakes and eventually succeed. Those incremental steps in problem-solving are what helps us learn new skills.

As we age, the challenges become more complex. Examples include social situations, applying for and keeping jobs, financial responsibilities, and physical challenges. All these provide opportunities to learn and grow.

When we face business challenges, collective teams working to solve problems might appear to increase complexity. But a richer base of experience grows as teams learn from failure, adapt to new insights, and evolve their thinking to make things, processes, and people better. Design Thinking is all about improvements – making things better, more useful, more functional, more beautiful, more usable, more valuable, and/or more important.

Approach Is Everything

Since one can choose from many approaches to solving problems, some tend to go with what has worked for them in the past. However, not all past experiences produce the best results. The authors believe that some approaches are productive while others are not. The approach used, either individually or as a team, impacts the results and efficacy of the solution produced and must be taken seriously.

Behavior and psychology play a big role in Design Thinking and problem-solving and can impact individuals or a whole team dynamic. Before embarking on the Design Thinking journey, consider the benefits of taking a productive approach over one considered as non-productive.

A non-productive approach can result in missed opportunities for success, frustration, less impactful results, solving for the wrong problem, dissention in teams, a breakdown in communication, and not partly or fully solving the problem. Bias might come from a single person or from the collective group. One should try to identify any of these signs early and instead adopt a creative, proactive, curious, humble, and service-oriented mindset.

The way you approach solving problems can affect the outcome or solution you end up with. Design Thinking employs productive and systematic methods. It requires more than one person to consider the problem more thoroughly prior to jumping into considering solutions.

While Design Thinking can be done by anyone and can be done anywhere at minimal cost, it requires teams with dedicated time to think, discuss, and define problems carefully before working on solutions. It enables and encourages collaborative understanding and alignment and ownership of problems and solutions and drives ownership of next steps.

The recommended size of the teams varies from two to twenty people. However, keep in mind that as more people take part, it will take more time for groups to hear everyone’s ideas. The ideal or optimal group size in our opinion is four to eight people. All voices can be heard in conversations without taking too long, and ideas and concepts can be tested more rapidly. As an additional benefit, it can be inexpensive to feed them with a pizza or two!

A Brief History and Frameworks

Design Thinking developed as an approach to problem-solving beginning in the 1950s within the industrial design, science, and technology communities. In the 1960s, inclusive and collaborative problem-solving began to replace a closed-off and selective approach. Gathering of user feedback in the design process became popular. Increased usage of computers and technology led to the start of human-computer interaction design in the 1970s.

Beginning in the 1990s, a shift to specialization within the design process made its presence apparent as the so-called wicked problems in Design Thinking. In 1991, IDEO was formed as a company, resulting from a three-way merger, and invited diverse experts from anthropology, business strategy, and other disciplines to create design teams.

For the past 20 years, the Design Thinking approach and its ability to drive innovation in business and drive revenue has caught the eyes of many executives. A variety of frameworks have appeared that define the phases and steps used in Design Thinking engagements and workshops (as a search for “Design Thinking” via an Internet search engine will readily demonstrate).

Each framework should be evaluated for its effectiveness in solving your problems and for your situations. Additionally, the methods and time spent within each phase of a framework might also be different from project to project. You could find that you might go in reverse or skip phases depending how the problem and information unfolds.

Keep in mind that a framework is simply that. It should be flexible to bend to what you need and help to drive proper outcomes. Additionally, the methods within each phase of the framework should be just as flexible.

Methods can be thought of as exercises or activities that produce insight or information. There are thousands of methods that can be applied within each phase, and each phase is subjective to the outcome you need to achieve. For example, in the Stanford d.school framework (described in the next subsection), you could use a persona, empathy map, interviews, surveys, and data on website visits or do shadowing to gain outcomes involving a group of people during the define phase.

Each method will yield only a portion of information needed. Interviews provide qualitative data such as sentiment or why someone does something. But you might not see hard numbers or facts. With surveys, you will get the numbers and quantitative facts, but not the why. Carefully consider what information you need before you invest time, money, and resource in a method that doesn’t yield the full view of results and information you need for decision-making.

Stanford d.school Framework

As you might expect given Stanford University’s long history of teaching Design Thinking in its Institute of Design, it has defined one of the more popular frameworks being used. Key phases in the Stanford d.school framework are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. These are illustrated in the diagram in Figure 1-1.

During the empathize phase , the focus is on interviews, shadowing, seeking to understand, and non-judgmental methods. In the define phase, the focus moves to understanding personas, role objectives, decisions, challenges, and pain points. In the ideate phase, ideas are shared, all ideas might be considered worthy, a diverge and converge method can be used, ideas might be extended using a “Yes and” method, and prioritization frequently takes place. During the prototype phase, mockups and storyboards might be created, a “keep it simple” approach might be applied, and methods of failing fast and quickly iterating might also be applied. In the testing phase, gaining an understanding of impediments, an understanding of what works, evaluating tests through role-plays, and performing tests in fast iterations are the methods that might be used.

IDEO Framework

Another popular framework is IDEO’s Design Thinking methodology. Key phases in this framework are discovery, interpretation, ideation, experimentation, and evolution. These are illustrated in Figure 1-2 using a representation like that in Figure 1-1 so that you can see the similarity to the Stanford d.school version.

During the discovery phase , the focus is on understanding the approach to a challenge by understanding what it is, preparing research, and gathering inspiration. In the interpretation phase, stories are told, there is a search for meaning, and opportunities are framed. In ideation, creation ideas are generated and refined. The experimentation phase consists of making prototypes and getting feedback. Evolution includes tracking learnings and moving forward.

Double Diamond Design Methodology

At the heart of the original framework that most other innovative design frameworks are based upon is the UK Design Council’s design methodology, the Double Diamond – a clear, comprehensive, and visual description of the design process. Launched in 2004, the Double Diamond has become world-renowned with millions of references to it on the Web. (See the Appendix for a reference that we used in this book.)

The Design Council’s Double Diamond clearly conveys a design process to designers and non-designers alike. We illustrate the Double Diamond in Figure 1-3.

The two diamonds represent the problem space and solution space in this approach. The left portion of each diamond represents a process of exploring an issue more widely or deeply (divergent thinking), while the right portion of each diamond represents taking focused action (convergent thinking).

Key phases in the Double Diamond are discover, define, develop, and deliver. Discover and define are part of the problem space, while develop and deliver are part of the solution space. The phases are fixed within this methodology; however, the objectives or intent within these phases can change depending upon what we know (or don’t know).

Within the problem space diamond, we gain an understanding, rather than simply assuming, what the problem is. We begin collecting requirements within the discover phase. Typical objectives in this phase include

• Setting scope – Defining an initial problem or vision statement

• Determining people/stakeholders – Who is impacted or influenced

• Determining what is the current state – Good or bad

During the define phase, we seek to understand what problem we really need to solve for. The insight that we gained from the discovery phase should help us to define this challenge in a new way, and we should leave this phase with our problem much better defined. It is important to remember that the first problem that was identified might not be the most important problem to solve for. We must also understand why solving a specific problem really matters.

We are now ready to enter the solution space. We focus in the design phase on ideating on ways to solve the defined problem. Our diverse attendees are encouraged to provide a wide variety of potential solutions. During the determine phase that follows, we prioritize these solutions around their value and effort required. We then begin to iteratively test the ideas to figure out which one(s) might work and would be best to improve upon and which ones will not. After going through these iterations, we will have a solution defined.

Solution design and determination is not a linear process. Many organizations learn something more about the underlying problems using this methodology, and this gained knowledge can send them back to the beginning. Making some assumptions and testing of early stage ideas can be part of discovery. And in an ever-changing and digital world, no idea is ever “finished.” We are constantly getting feedback on how products and services are working and iteratively improving them.

The design principles behind the framework describe four core principles for problem-solvers to adopt so that they can work as effectively as possible. These are

• Put people first – Start with an understanding of the people using a service, their needs, strengths, and aspirations.

• Communicate visually and inclusively – Help people gain a shared understanding of the problem and ideas.

• Collaborate and co-create – Work together and get inspired by what others are doing.

• Iterate, iterate, iterate – Do this to spot errors early, avoid risk, and build confidence in your ideas.

The Design Council has authored, adapted, or adopted a portfolio of design methods, which help clients to identify and address their challenges and achieve successful outcomes. They have structured these methods in three areas to help in using the design process to explore, shape, or build in order to create a culture of success:

• Explore – Challenges, needs, and opportunities

• Shape – Prototypes, insights, and visions

• Build – Ideas, plans, and expertise

So, you might now be wondering which framework to choose and what methods and approaches might be applied to meet your own objectives.

Design Thinking, DevOps, and Adoption

Design Thinking helps organizations discern unmet needs, create value from these insights, and create competitive advantages. Today, it is often used in conjunction with the DevOps approach adopted by many software and AI developers.

While DevOps has helped teams of developers organize around their development challenges, Design Thinking helps businesses solve real business complex challenges using innovation. Change is hard for many, but Design Thinking gives order to chaos. It’s a way to navigate, explore, and test ideas to ensuring value, business viability, and technical feasibility. Combining the two approaches fosters a collaborative and user-centered culture with an iterative approach to fail forward with change.

In the past, innovation was often approached from the top down. This approach was omnidirectional and not very scalable at any level. Incorporating Design Thinking removes silos, invites healthy conflict in discussion to challenge the norms, and creates ideas that are valuable. These, in turn, help businesses create revenue and deliver customer and/or employee satisfaction.

Many organizations do not do this well. The transition to Design Thinking needs to be driven from an executive level to help build innovative design into an organization’s DNA. It should trickle down into every software or AI project being considered along with the challenges those project charters are trying to solve.

However, in the authors’ view, proven benefits from leveraging a Design Thinking approach (and the necessity to react more quickly to emerging business challenges) are helping to speed adoption in many organizations. In Chapter 7, we describe how change management is an important part of speeding this adoption.

One advantage to using a Design Thinking approach is that it helps an organization more deeply understand the root cause of problems, the contributing factors, context, and reasons for the problem. Learning about the cause can sometimes point to a solution. Such insight may not have been available during earlier approaches used in addressing the problem.

Design Thinking also creates a sense of ownership for the teams working in collaboration to help solve the problem. This unified approach can create alignment. Specifically, as the team works together to understand and clarify various points of information, perspectives, opinions, and thoughts, they can synthesize the information in to a collective and more holistic point of view.

Additionally , Design Thinking ensures that the final product, service, or solution meets the initial objectives or client requirements. Since part of the process is defining success and testing if ideas deliver success, the value of results is ensured. Since Design Thinking is iterative, continuous iterative loops through changing information, ideation, validation, and implementation can result in a continuous improvement process that builds on the success and failure of the last iteration.

The ultimate benefit is the solution continually gets better as more information, knowledge, and ideas are applied.

Summary

As we come to the end of this chapter, you should better understand how Design Thinking helps organizations identify and solve problems more rapidly and helps drive innovation. You should also see how this iterative approach provides a means to get beyond setbacks that occur in projects and use those setbacks as learning experiences.

You should now recognize some keys to taking a productive approach (as well as some of the non-productive methods and approaches that should be avoided). You also had a brief introduction to popular frameworks that help ensure a productive approach will be taken. We’ll explore methods and exercises in typical Design Thinking workshops in Chapters 3 and 4 that neatly align to the Double Diamond.

Finally, you should now think of Design Thinking as complementary to a modern DevOps approach. And you should understand its benefits and how those can help drive adoption.

We begin a deeper exploration of applying the methodology in Chapter 2 as we discuss preparing for a Design Thinking workshop.