This is the method by which we try to understand the user, rethink the problem and find non-obvious alternative solutions.
Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial – 1968
We apply design thinking not only in UX/UI design or product development; it can be applied everywhere, for instance: arranging the furniture in your living room, in business, creating a coffee machine or a rocket, making sneakers, and even just planning your shopping trip.
The 5 phases of design thinking:
1. Empathy
The ability to relive the experience of other people, to understand what excites them. It is important to delve into the essence of the problem, step aside from your subjective thoughts and look at it through the eyes of the user.
2. Focusing
All the information that we received through empathy needs to be systematized, analyzed and we highlight the key problems of the user. This stage formulates a question for which we will seek a solution in the next stage.
3. Generation of ideas
And so, we have identified the problem, now we need to come up with a non-standard solution. We write everything that comes to mind, even if the idea seems to be nonsense.
4. Choosing an idea
We sift all ideas through the filter of the real world. All ideas may seem cool, but you need to select the most viable ones.
5. Prototyping
Now you need to create a budget product that would solve the problem. In this way, we test the performance of ideas in practice.
If our MVP solves the problem, then we analyze and remove flaws, refine, and create a full-fledged product
If the prototype fails, we move on to another hypothesis and try to redefine the problem.
Testing. We test the finished product that was developed during prototyping, analyze feedback from users, refine and improve the product during the test.
As you can see, design thinking is not just something abstract, it is a full-fledged problem-solving process that can be applied in all areas of our life.
We have applied all the ‘Design Thinking Phases’ in the development process of our flagship product OMNI (Intelligent Asset Management Solution).
