What Is Design Thinking And Why It Is So Popular?

Whenever most people hear the term, Design thinking, they first think of it as something useful for the product designers only. People don’t consider it to be useful for the common person.  It's a big Myth.

Design thinking originated from the designers. But design thinking is also 100% useful to people who have nothing to do with the creative design field. With my experience of practicing Design thinking for more than a decade now, I can confidently say that it is a way of thinking, which can be applied very well outside design studios too. It can help everyone in finding solutions to challenges in their life.

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 It is a simple process that can be applied to your work area, team or family matter, organizing events, and many other situations in life. The design thinking process stands on the solid pillars of empathy, lateral and creative thinking, and the art of prototyping. Here are the steps of the design thinking process steps.

1. Feel

The first step to solving any problem is to clearly understand it from the perspective of all stakeholders affected by it or involved in it. To do the same, the best thing one can do is to Empathize with all stakeholders.

Empathy means trying to see the problem by stepping into the shoes of others. As part of empathizing with stakeholders, we can interview the stakeholders, individually or in groups, do research on the problem on the internet, visit the field to meet people and personally experience the scenario on the ground, or use any other method required. Still, the bottom line is that we need to understand the situation on the ground.

The second step is to review and Re-Define the problem statement or details to cover the challenges and expectations of all stakeholders.

2. Ideate 

During the Ideation, we need all of our creative juices to find possible solutions to the problem/challenge.  We need to think creatively and laterally, without constraints, and create a list of all possible solutions.

Once the solution bank is ready, we should start reviewing it and canceling the obvious solutions that will not work due to the constraints of the problem domain. So, at the end of the Ideation phase, we will have a list of solutions, that seem to be practical at the first site, along with the order in which we would like to try them out.

3. Try

It is one of the most important and interesting steps in the design thinking process. As part of the Try stage, we should Prototype our possible solutions one at a time and systematically Test and record their results.

We can use any of the available prototyping techniques like sketches, storyboards, physical models, software models, and others. For each prototype, we should test it on various well-defined parameters, if possible, get a review from stakeholders, and record all the results.

We should continue prototyping, testing, reviewing, and refining until we find the solution or exhaust the possible solution list.

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 If we find the solution, we can move to the next step, and if not, we need to get back to the ideation stage and continue the design process again.

4. Share

When we find a possible solution, we should present it to all stakeholders and implement it on the ground. Even after implementation, we need to review the solution at regular intervals and keep refining it as and when required.

Sharing our knowledge is also an essential step of the Design Thinking Process, and it helps everyone to grow.

To understand the design thinking process better, please refer to the video. Small students of a school are trying to find a solution to the water filtration problem.

Design Thinking Skills are among the Top 10 21st-century skills that everyone requires for jobs in the future. Each one of us will face unknown challenges or problems in the future, and hence, we need to have a problem-solving attitude and positive thinking. Design thinking helps us build both of them, and therefore, I feel that every child should learn and practice Design thinking right from their school days, so it becomes a habit for them rather than just a skill.

I request all the educators in the world to adopt design thinking in their lives and also encourage their students to do the same.

Happy Thinking and Solving problems in life.