Design Thinking

Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People
think its this veneer- that the designers are handed this box and told, Make
it look good! Thats not what we think design is. Its not just what it looks
like and feels like. Design is how it works.

Steve Jobs

Nowadays landscape demands marketers and brands to be consumer-

centric. Take a walk in their shoes. And design thinking can be seen as the
idea that can drive this revolution towards a mutually beneficial relationship
between brands and consumers. By primarily focusing on their audience
needs, brands can optimally navigate through this new environment that is
in a state of flux, of uncertainty. If the revolution eventually takes over,
capitalism will be replaced by customer capitalism where consumer
satisfaction is the most sought-after quality. When design principles are
applied to strategy and innovation, the success rate for innovation
dramatically improves. Design thinking is at the core of effective strategy
development and organizational change. Design can be applied to products,
services, processes, physical locations anything that needs to be optimized
for human interaction. You can design the way you lead, manage, create and
innovate. the four main rules of design thinking: the Human Rule it always
has a predominant social dimension as it puts human beings at the center of
the equation-, the Ambiguity Rule no preconceived ideas, stereotypes, or
idea-stifling mechanisms should be embraced, but rather create areas with
no clear boundaries that welcome wild ideas-, the Re-Design Rule see past
designs as ideas where we can build upon and ultimately enhance-, the
Tangibility Rule creating prototypes can serve as a means of streamlining
communication. When it comes to the design thinking stepwise process,
there are various models yet all have share the same consumer-centric and
iterative characteristics. IDEO, the design-thinking firm par excellence,
breaks down the process into five steps: Understand thoroughly look into
the underlying consumer behavior and motivations-, Observe go out and
talk to people, see how they interact with your product or service, be an
ethnographic researcher-, Visualize come up with as many ideas as
possible, engage in brainstorming with the aim of a great design on the
horizon-, Evaluate/Refine test ideas, make prototypes-, and finally
Implement.

Key learnings from the workshop:

 Design thinking is not restricted to organizations, it can be applied to
issues in daily life also.
Design thinking must pass through a cycle of Inspiration, Ideation and
Implementation.
Initiate by making a customer journey map
After that Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test
Iterative cycles continue after that until succeeded.

Experiences:

1. Interaction with local people

2. Entirely different perspective of looking into a problem
3. Learning through case studies
4. Generation of ideas using brainstorming, role plays and other methods.

The problem given to my team was the food in mess/canteen at our

campus.

We started with a customer journey map treating ourselves as the

customer where we wrote about cycle, touch points and expressions.
We divided ourselves into 3 groups.
One group interviewed all the touch points including the mess staff,
the other interviewed the tuck shop owner and the third interviewed
the outside shop owner.
After conducting in-depth interviews with all of them, we came out with
many surprising insights.
This helped us to narrow down our problem statement to, The mess
in-charge needs to understand that their cooking style is old and
localized and does not match the taste of the students as they have
come from diverse regions.

Then we began the process of design thinking to solve this problem by

following these steps-

Defining the problem

Described the stakeholder and its characteristics. We tried to capture as

much information as possible to empathize with the stakeholder. We
looked upon the needs of the stakeholders. We kept the needs apart from
the ideas in order to keep them unbiased.
 Ideate

We tried to think of as many ideas as we could without any limits or

constraints. Some were very silly but interesting. We did not judge any
idea. Just kept on noting down them all. Our ideas were Tutorials for the
mess staff, External help etc. out of all we selected the best two.

Empathize

We tried to find out the feelings of the stakeholders in their own words.
We observed their reactions, experienced their problems first hand,
explored their environment, and understood the process.
Then we extracted the meaning of what they were saying. What is it
they were thinking when they said what they said?
We also tried to extract the feelings that they expressed in those
words.

Prototype

We chose two ideas and tried to build the simplest prototype possible. Our
prototype was a story board of stick figures depicting our idea.

Test

We look forward to test the developed prototype with the stakeholder. We

will try to capture as much of the reactions as possible. The next prototype
will be based on the output of this test.

Tinker Labs has done a great job in delivering such valuable insights from
their experience and this workshop has truly tapped the creativity in us. It
was a very refreshing break from our tiresome schedule and fairly good
practical experience. It helped us connect with many people in a way which
never happened earlier. Now I try to see one problem from many angles and
get to its core. We also come up with many interesting solutions which were
unimaginable prior to this workshop. It will surely help in my future
endeavors.

And last but not least, its fair to say that design thinking deserves to start to
be included in the education portfolio as a means to nurturing our inherently
creative minds. I personally have started applying it in my daily life,
scheduling my weekly time table so that I can complete all my assignments
and projects on time in this hectic and marathon schedule.

Submitted by-
B Monika Rao (17)