Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test: The Design Thinking Innovation Process
The Design Thinking Innovation Process
As a process, design thinking puts human-centered practices at its core. The five key steps of this innovation methodology are Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
The first step, empathize, involves understanding real users and their needs. This is done through user research, which may include personas. The second step, define, brings together observations and insights.
Empathize
The empathy phase is the first of five steps in the design thinking innovation process. It focuses on gathering deep insights about users. This is what makes it human centered and different from other problem-solving methods. There are several ways to do this, including observing user behavior, conducting interviews and surveys, developing personas, etc.
In this stage, designers should try to eliminate their assumptions and see the world through their users’ eyes. They should try to identify common themes and patterns in their observations. This will help them create a problem statement and point of view for the project.
Then, they should think of solutions to those problems. They can do this by using creative brainstorming techniques. It is important to use open-ended questions to encourage more ideas and avoid asking yes/no or closed questions.
Define
Once teams have collected insights from users, they analyze and synthesize them to create a problem statement. This step helps ensure that teams avoid introducing bias or assumptions during the process. It also helps to keep creative ideas human-centered.
The team then brainstorms alternative ways to view the problem. This may involve creating personas to help keep efforts focused on human needs. It can also involve using a method such as systematic inventive thinking to help identify creative solutions that solve the problem.
Once the team has a list of potential solutions, they evaluate whether they can be implemented given the organization’s current resources and foreseeable future. If not, the team may choose to iterate the solution to make it more feasible or implement other innovation management strategies.
Ideate
Once you’ve gathered insights from your empathize and define phases, it’s time to brainstorm potential solutions. During ideation, you will come up with ideas that tackle the problem from technology, user, business and emotional angles.
You can approach this stage with the help of various tools, such as systematic inventive thinking, to overcome cognitive fixedness. Be sure to avoid making assumptions and keep the user in mind.
This is where your team puts their heads together and brainstorms ideas for how to solve the problem at hand. Once you’ve narrowed down your ideas, you can turn them into prototypes. These prototypes will then be tested with real users to see which ones can yield positive results. This is another iterative process, which is a central part of the design thinking methodology.
Prototype
The prototype stage is an experimental phase where the product, design or development team turns the creative solutions developed in earlier steps into a bare-bones model to investigate their viability and usability. The purpose is to ensure that the new concept will solve real problems and meet users’ needs before investing too much time in it.
The results of this testing are often used to redefine the original problem and/or one or more of the solutions, looping back to previous steps in the process to continue the cycle of creativity and experimentation. It is also an excellent opportunity to gather competitor analysis information. This can be done by surveying your target audience or observing them in their natural environment. This will help you to better understand their behaviors and motivations.
Test
After a prototype is developed, it needs to be tested with users. This step is crucial to ensuring that the team has a clear understanding of whether or not the solution meets users’ needs.
Observations should be documented without assumptions or biases. Then, these observations should be shaped into a problem statement or question that guides the next step in the design thinking innovation process.
Then, teams can brainstorm solutions and focus on divergent thinking, which encourages the development of a wide range of ideas that are not immediately practical. This allows teams to find the “dark horse” idea, which may ultimately be a winning solution. The head, heart, and hand model provides a structure for this human-centered design process. This approach combines strategy, problem-solving, and research to help teams understand users’ problems.