Design Thinking 101

Setting the Stage

$13,500 monthly process

Brainstorming is an…

…not an innovative strategy

Innovation is key to being competitive

The Innovation Issue

Let’s get social800 million Facebook users 300 million Twitter users

80% of all Americans use Social Media

3.5 billion pieces of content shared daily on Facebook

1.4 million new blog posts

Over $3 billion spent on advertising on social platforms

35 hours of new video every minute

Engagement and innovation are key

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and positing solutions in the design

and planning fields. As a style of thinking, it is generally considered the ability to combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the generation of insights and solutions,

and rationality to analyze and fit solutions to the context.

Design Thinking (/dəˈzīn/ /ˈTHiNGkiNG/)

Human Centered Design Method

Visually Focused

d.Mindsets

d.Mindsets

The Process

Empathize

Empathy is the foundation of a human-centered design process.• Observe• Engage• Immerse

Understand the audience - the problems we are trying to solve aren’t our own.

Find (or create if necessary) experiences to immerse yourself to better understand the situation that your users are in, and for which you are designing.

How can we empathize with our clients since we don’t directly interact with the audience?

Define

Define Goals• Develop a deeper understanding of your audience and design

space• Come up with an actionable problem statement (your POV)

Scope a specific/meaningful challenge by unpacking and synthesizing empathy findings.

Your POV needs to be a guiding statement that focuses on specific users, needs and insights.

The problem statement should inspire the team, provide a reference for completion, fuel “how might we” statements, and not be all things to all people.

This should be the question posed to the team by the strategist.

Ideate

Take the problem statement defined by the strategy team and start exploring solutions.

Goal:Explore a wide solution space – develop many diverse ideas.

“Flare” don’t focus.

Create fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety) in your innovation options.

Drive the team beyond obvious solutions in the initial small team brainstorms – don’t feel like you have to develop the final product/solution/strategy.

Prototype

Prototyping is getting ideas and explorations out of your head and into the physical world. The process allows you to quickly investigate many possibilities. Prototypes are most successful when you can interact with or experience them.

It could be a wall of post-it notes, a roll-playing activity, an object or even a storyboard.

Bring prototypes to the big team meetings – something visual will help develop ideas into solutions.

After an idea is presented – the team takes a few minutes to focus it.

Test

Refine solutions and make them better. Place the ideas generated in the context of the user’s life.

Prototype as if you know your right, but test as if you know you’re wrong.

The strategist should take ideas generated from the team and find ways to test them with the client. What are some ways we can test since we don’t always have direct access to our end users?

Brainstorming

1. Pick a Facilitator – one person from the strategy team• Energy – keep the ideas flowing, tweak the scope • Constraints – add constraints to spark new ideas

2. Flare - Focus 15-30 minutes of high engagement idea flaring • Quantity over quality• Headline!• Build on the ideas of others• Encourage wild ideas• Be visual• Stay on topic• Defer judgment – NO blocking

3. Scribe – Write ALL ideas (use post-it-notes or a white board)4. Selection

• Group ideas – some ideas might fit well with others to make a more complete thought.

• Vote on the group’s favorite

Techniques

Empathy Map• Helps synthesize your observations and draw out unexpected

insights.• Unpack what your audience says, does, thinks and feels.• Identify Needs – the physical and emotional necessities.• Identifying Insights – something you could leverage to respond

to challenges.

Techniques

Composite Character Profile• Can be used to bucket interesting observations into one

specific recognizable character.• Group “typical” characteristics, trends and other patterns

identified in the user group.• Give them a name!

Techniques

Powers of Ten• “What if we had more than a million dollar budget?”• “What if the budget was $0.25?”• Nationwide? Local? International?

Lets Try It!

Problem Statement• Portland Perks

• Develop ways to promote Perks in 2012.• Primary target audience: women 35-64 living in

Washington (except SW region) (think Seattle) and BC, Canada (think Vancouver)

Directions• 10 minutes: Write down as many ideas as possible (just

headlines)• 20 minutes: Select your favorite, develop a pitch and a

prototype• 5 minutes: Pitch it to the team

Resources

Bootcamp Bootleghttp://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/

Dan Roam @ Googlehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuA_yz7aTo0

ABC Nightline – IDEOhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM