An Introduction to Design Thinking

What is Design?
A plan/ Specification
 For the construction of an object/ or system or
 For the implementation of an activity or process

in the form of a prototype, product or process

DESIGN IS A PROCESS...
Examples of design
• Historically a designer would come along and make an already established
idea seem more desirable:
• Ad campaign
• Pretty packaging

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http://www.iheartkroger.com
Examples of design
• Now designers are being asked to change what is being produced to better meet the
needs of consumers
• Tangible goods
• Processes
• Interfaces
• Entertainments
• Services

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What is design thinking?
• A Method of focusing innovation on people and designing based on:
• What people need and want
• What people like or dislike
• In regard to production, packaging, marketing, retailing, support, or all of
them
• A skill that allows a designer to align what people want with what can be done, and
produce a viable business strategy that creates customer value and market
opportunity
Intersection Where Design Thinking Lives?
Divergent and Convergent Thinking
Three Core Activities of Design Thinking
How the Journey of a Project Feels
 The Stages of Design Thinking

 Stage - 1: Empathize - Research Your Users'

Needs
 Stage - 2: Define - State Your Users' Needs and
Problems
 Stage - 3: Ideate - Challenge Assumptions and
Create Ideas
 Stage - 4: Prototype - Start to Create Solutions
 Stage - 5: Test - Try Your Solutions Out
The Stages of Design Thinking
Stage - 1: Empathize
EMPATHY MAPPING
 Empathy

Sponsor User – Give Users a Seat at the table.

 Invite them to Observe, Reflect & Make with You
Take-Back Tips -
 Sponsor Users are users or potential users that
bring their lived experience and domain expertise to  Design for Real Target users rather
your team. They aren’t just passive subjects – they than imagined needs
are active participants who work alongside your  Sponsor Users should attend
team to help you deliver an outcome that meets Playbacks
their needs.
 Involve your whole team
 While sponsor users won’t replace formal design
research and usability studies, every interaction you  Potential users are all around us,
have together will close the gap between your therefore select the sponsor user
assumptions and their reality. with authenticity
  On March 2, 2015, a line of people stretching
What Design Thinking Is Doing for around the block waited to get into the Rickshaw
the San Francisco Opera Stop on Fell Street in San Francisco. This was not
like most nights at the funky music venue and bar;
the people in line weren’t waiting to see an indie
band, or dance to music spun by a DJ.
 This night the entertainment would be opera … of
a sort. The evening, organized by the San Francisco
Opera (SFO), was called “Barely Opera,” with the
slogan “This Isn’t Your Grandmother’s Opera.”
 Complete with a “Wheel of Songs” that audience
members could spin to select the next song, a live
DJ, opera-themed drinks, and costumes for
attendees to try on, it was designed to remove the
intimidation often felt by those new to opera and
introduce a younger, hipper audience to operatic
music.
Inspiration
 Barely Opera was the result of a project that was
part of a course at Stanford University’s Hasso
Plattner Institute of Design (“d.school”).
 As part of the course, two students worked with
SFO to help the Opera think about how to best use
a new 299-seat facility that would open in early
2016.
 But they hoped that the benefits would extend far
beyond this objective - that the project would
introduce the Opera staff to new ways of thinking
that offered the potential to fundamentally change
how it operated.
  An important part of the city’s cultural scene, the San
The Challenge Francisco Opera dates back to the 1850s.
 SFO’s facility, the 3,146-seat War Memorial Opera
House, was funded by a voter-approved municipal
bond in 1927.
 Where most opera houses are funded by wealthy
patrons, this “people’s opera house” was paid for by
ordinary citizens.
 The new facility would enable the performance of
programs not well suited to the large opera house.
 As one of the world’s leading opera companies, SFO
has traditionally focused on perfection in all aspects of
its performances.
 Matthew Shilvock, the company’s new General
Director, described this drive for perfection as, “our
blessing in allowing us to produce moments of
exquisite theater, and our curse in terms of not giving
us the flexibility to adapt quickly.”
  Like almost every non-profit organization, SFO has
The Challenge limited resources.
 Ticket sales cover just a fraction of its production and
administrative costs, with the balance coming from
donations, grants and endowment.
 To survive and thrive with the conflicting demands of
performance excellence and constrained resources,
SFO has developed a highly structured organization.
 As a result of these factors, previous “experiments” had
typically been meticulously planned, and executed at
extremely high levels of quality. Given the drive for
perfection ingrained in its culture, the natural response
to poor results was that the quality level had not been
sufficient, and other potential lessons were often lost.
This blend of perfectionism and limited resources
meant that experiments were rare events at SFO.

The Design Thinking Initiative
 The SFO project began in January 2015.
 Zena and Madhav’s (the students who worked on this
project) first step was to take the SFO team working on
the d.school project to meet with people from outside
the world of opera.
 Christina Augello, founder of the experimental EXIT
Theatre and organizer of San Francisco’s Fringe Festival.
She described the struggle of experimenting on a tight
budget, something she considered to be an essential
part of the creative process - a sign on the wall read
“No Risk, No Art.” At EXIT Theatre, everyone worked as
a community, sharing roles, pitching in where needed.
 Hodari Davis, the Artistic Director of Young, Gifted, and
Black, and the National Program Director of Youth
Speaks , emphasized the importance of going out into
the community, insisting that you can’t “wait for the
community to come to you. Don’t build a space and
think that the community is coming to you. You have to
go to the community.”
The Design Thinking Initiative
 These conversations energized the SFO team, who
 Zena also brought in James Buckhouse, an opera and
ballet fan who works at venture capital firm Sequoia
Capital and formerly with Twitter. He was scheduled to
be the Master of Ceremonies of an under-40 night for
the San Francisco Ballet, which shares the War
Memorial Opera House with the Opera. Planning for
the event had just started, and it would take place in 30
days.
realized that they usually communicated and learned
from within the opera community. There was also a
useful sense of competition - if the Ballet could put
something together quickly, why couldn’t the Opera?
The group brainstormed around this idea, and began to
conceive a dramatic new prototype that would enable
them to attract a new, younger audience.
  To gain insights into audience perceptions, SFO team members
Empathy approached strangers near San Francisco’s Ferry Building and
asked if they would be willing to give 5-10 minutes of their time
for some feedback.
 Once they agreed, they were given tickets and told to walk
through some imaginary doors.
 The “audience members” were warmly greeted by the SFO
team, given a mask, and directed to three stations, each with
an iPad providing information: one station had food menus on
the iPad and a person playing a bartender, one station showed
a video of a wig maker, and one station had videos of a singer
performing. Afterwards, each participant was debriefed.
 This exercise taught the team that people in different age
groups have very different needs, and also that there’s much
variability within age groups. For instance, among people in
their 30s, parents were vastly different than singles. They also
learned that audience involvement (tested by giving
participants the mask) was far more powerful than previously
anticipated. They got useful input on menu items and prices.
  Most importantly, the SFO team learned the power of rapid
Empathy Leading to prototyping.
Definition & Ideation  It had taken them just two hours to pull the materials together
and three hours in the field, and they had gained valuable
insights.
 Although they were a bit embarrassed by the low-budget
feeling of the prototype, they were surprised at the depth of
the insights they gathered in such a short time.
 The feedback was so much more useful and empowering than
information from surveys.
 There were also setbacks during this early stage. Zena and
Madhav challenged the SFO team to go to some event that
they would never ordinarily attend, something that made them
feel uncomfortable - and do it within the next two weeks. The
idea was to gain empathy for their new audiences, who would
be asked to come to a new experience put on by the SFO. They
wanted the SFO staff to talk to people at these events to learn
more about them. But only two of the seven team members
completed the exercise.
  Zena and Madhav scheduled another prototype to get the SFO
Prototype team into the community, interacting with people outside the
opera.
 The team went to a park in nearby Hayes Valley, played opera
music, and tested ideas about including drinks in ticket prices
(an idea that was not well received), various menu options for
the new venue, and whether people would want to take food
and/or drinks into the performance.
 Their d.school classmates weren’t impressed by this prototype:
With the SFO team in the room, they criticized it as being too
safe and encouraged Zena and Madhav to push the SFO team
further outside their comfort zones.
  As the SFO team walked out of the disappointing design review at the
Building a d.school, they told Zena and Madhav that they were thinking of taking
over a bar for their next, more ambitious prototype. Zena and Madhav
More Ambitious Prototype challenged them to put on the event in just two weeks, by the end of
the class, which was far sooner than the SFO staff thought possible. In
less than a week, the SFO team had booked the Rickshaw Stop, an
alternative music venue just three blocks from the Opera, which had a
stage and space for an audience of 400 people.
 Zena and Madhav formed three teams to plan and carry out the
event: programming (what the performance would be at the venue),
experience (things surrounding the performance), and engagement
(audience engagement before the event, and feedback afterwards).
 The seven SFO project members joined teams that were outside of
their comfort zones. For instance, the marketing person was on the
programming team, and the woman who would be responsible for
programming at the new SFO venue joined the experience team.
 Each team then recruited three more people from amongst the staff,
for a total of 5-6 people per team. While the whole event was
intended as an experiment, each team also designed experiments
within their area to provide additional insights.
 Building a
More Ambitious Prototype
 They came up with a name, Barely Opera, at a brainstorming session
10 days before the event, involving all 20 people from the teams plus
Zena and Madhav.
 As soon as the name was chosen, the engagement team bought a
URL, developed a website, created a logo - all within a few hours, and
without having to go through the approval process normally required
for decisions at the opera. The SFO teams found this autonomy
liberating.
 They advertised the event on social media and on local blogs, charging
a $10 “cover charge” (not ticket price). A list of songs was developed
with the Adler Fellows, a group of young resident opera singers in
training, who would perform with piano accompaniment. Their hope
was modest: to attract 100 people.
  When the doors opened on March 2, 2015, a line of nearly 400 people
Building a stretched around the block. Just inside the door was a photo booth,
with costumes from the Opera’s inventory that people could put on.
More Ambitious Prototype To make guests feel welcome, six opera-loving volunteers served as
hosts — dressed in full costumes, wigs, and makeup. They greeted the
attendees, took photos with attendees, asked for feedback, and
served opera-themed cocktails and tamales.
 The idea was to flip conventions on their head. The greeters were in
extravagant attire, but the singers themselves were casually dressed -
just jeans and t-shirts. The audience members were invited to try on
opera costumes, but that’s where the formality stopped.
 Audience members selected songs by spinning a “Wheel of Songs.” As
each song was performed, a projection screen behind the stage
provided translations in the form of memes (a funny image sometimes
accompanied by text.) For instance, when the final singer hit a
dramatic high note, a picture of Beyoncé was shown. The audience
loved it.
 The event was a huge success. But the real purpose was not the single
event; it was to help SFO staff top change how they think about their
mission and to develop new ways of operating.
 Building a
More Ambitious Prototype
 The next day, everyone met to debrief.
 As Madhav described it, “We had decided ahead of time that we were
absolutely not going to focus on the outcome of the experiment.”
They did not want the event to be the end, but rather the beginning of
an ongoing process.
 A few days later, when the group met up again, after 10 minutes of
celebratory champagne, strawberries, and cupcakes, Zena and
Madhav asked, “What were our failures?” The entire group then
celebrated the committee that had the most failures - and celebrated
the freedom to experiment and try things outside their comfort zones.
 Building a
More Ambitious Prototype
 The next day, everyone met to debrief.
 As Madhav described it, “We had decided ahead of time that we were
absolutely not going to focus on the outcome of the experiment.”
They did not want the event to be the end, but rather the beginning of
an ongoing process.
 A few days later, when the group met up again, after 10 minutes of
celebratory champagne, strawberries, and cupcakes, Zena and
Madhav asked, “What were our failures?” The entire group then
celebrated the committee that had the most failures - and celebrated
the freedom to experiment and try things outside their comfort zones.
Keeping the Creativity  The project opened the eyes of Opera personnel to the power of
Going experimentation, spurring “a new commitment to innovative thinking
and creative brainstorming” as Shilvock put it. The Opera
subsequently formed a number of innovation groups (iGroups) drawn
from different departments to work on issues related to opening the
new facility.
 These in turn gave rise to a new production arm called “SF Opera Lab”
to stage productions at the new facility, now named the Diane B.
Wilsey Center. SF Opera Lab would experiment at the Wilsey Center,
but also in other venues around the city.
 For the new theater’s first season, lasting from March through May
2016, events included an a cappella opera, a one-man show, a film
concert, and a program of music featuring the opera’s promising
young performers (again, the Adler Fellows) and members of the
Opera’s orchestra.
Keeping the Creativity  Ticket prices for these events were considerably less than for the
Going opera, ranging from $25 to $125.
 The web page for each event had a box titled “Who’s Gonna Love It,”
describing the type of person who would be most attracted to the
event.
 For instance, “Svadba-Wedding” is an a cappella opera about a
Serbian bride-to-be and her friends preparing for her wedding day.
The “Who’s Gonna Love It” box read, “Fans of Pentatonix, World
Music lovers, or anyone planning a wedding.”
 Through Wilsey Center performances and casual pop-up events
around the city, the SFO team began to learn what younger audiences
wanted from an opera experience.
 The art form (opera) wasn’t a problem – they thoroughly enjoyed the
performances – in fact, the singers performed some pop songs at the
pop-up events, but the audiences seemed to react more strongly to
the opera songs.
Keeping the Creativity  The problem for younger audiences were some of the trappings and
Going traditions that surrounded the art form - the feeling that there were
lots of rules made for an intimidating experience. For instance, Zena
attended an opera at the War Memorial Opera House and noticed a
sign at the main stage that encouraged people to take selfies and to
share them via a particular hashtag. When she did so, an older patron
scolded her, saying taking pictures wasn’t allowed.
 The atmosphere at the pop-ups was much different. It was informal.
There was an emcee that explained the songs, why the singer was
doing a particular song, and who generally made everyone feel
welcome and comfortable. The singers also enjoyed the less formal
events, in which they were able to interact with the crowd in a
different way than during staged operas. They could tell jokes, talk to
the crowd, and see reactions up close. They were accessible to the
audience, and the audience was accessible to the singers.
Keeping the Creativity  Yet, as with all innovators who challenge the status quo, the iGroups
Going faced challenges. The SFO culture had a strong bias towards
maintaining the highest possible production values. Not all members
of the Opera’s staff and management had embraced the design
thinking “fail early, fail often” approach. And some felt that
experiments like Barely Opera had diminished the Opera by not
incorporating the high standards of a world-class opera company. The
success of the pop-up events helped overcome this resistance. Sean
Waugh, who led the SFO project team, observed that more and more
staff were attending the pop-ups, where they realized “how thrilling it
is to go to an opera event and see that the majority of people there
are under the age of 35.”
 Given the strong cultural pull of perfection, there was a risk that the
pop-up events, which originally had a high degree of spontaneity,
could become too polished. That SFO would get comfortable with a
successful formula, and that it would lose those attributes which
made it successful. For the audience and performers, keeping the
show authentic, real, and unpredictable was part of the appeal.
Keeping the Creativity
Going
 But now the Opera had a way of fighting these impulses. As Shilvock
puts it, “Design thinking is liberating for a company tightly constrained
by contracts and expectations!” The d.school project “opened the
door for us to be a more creative, questioning, and iterative
organization, a little more willing to try and fail.”
 Waugh agreed that the effect on the organization had been
transformative. “This is an organization that has done almost a
complete 360 after this process. Before it was an organization that
was very, very, very adverse to change, not open to the idea of failure,
and now we’re embracing change to a greater degree, making SFO a
more fun place to work.”
 To which we can only say, “Bravo.”
Tools That Will Help You for Empathy

The Empathy Map
 An empathy map is a collaborative
tool teams can use to gain a deeper
insight into their end users.
 The empathy map was originally
created by Dave Gray and has been
gaining popularity with the agile
community.
An empathy mapping session:
Assemble your team and have them bring any personas, data, or
insights about the target of your empathy map
Print out or sketch the empathy map template on a large piece of paper
or whiteboard
Hand each team member sticky notes and a marker
Each person should write down their thoughts about end users on
stickies
Ideally everyone would add at least one sticky to every section
You might ask questions, such as:
What would the user be thinking & feeling? What are some of their
worries and aspirations?
What would their friends, colleagues, and boss be likely to
say while the user is using our product? What would the user hear
in these scenarios?
What would the user see while using our product in their
environment?
What might the user be saying and/or doing while using our
product? How would that change in a public or private setting?
What are some of the user’s pain points or fears when using our
product?
What gains might the user experience when using our product?
 The Empathy Map

Think & Feel

Hear See

Say & Do

Pain Gain

 An empathy map is a collaborative

tool teams can use to gain a deeper
insight into their end users.
 The empathy map was originally
created by Dave Gray and has been
gaining popularity with the agile
community.
Crazy 8 Crazy 8s is an activity that we run as part of every Design Sprint, but it
can be used anytime you want to come up with a bunch of ideas
quickly.
The simplicity of this one is wonderful:
Grab a piece of paper and fold it into eight sections
Set a timer for 8 minutes
Have participants sketch a distinct idea in each section. (Remind
them that the ideas don’t have to be amazing, or even viable. The
point is getting ideas down on paper and not censoring themselves.)
 9 Whys Ask, “What do you want in ______ (the subject matter or challenge at
hand)?
Please make a short list of responses.”
Then ask, “Why is that important to you?”
Keep asking, “Why? Why? Why?” up to nine times or until the
respondent can go no deeper because they have reached the
fundamental purpose for this response.”
By asking “Why?” so many times in a row, you can ultimately get to a
clear understanding of why you are gathering and what the purpose of
your meeting is.

The Nine Whys is a Liberating

Structures activity.
 Double Diamond

Discover - The first diamond helps people understand,

rather than simply assume, what the problem is. It
involves speaking to and spending time with people who
are affected by the issues.
Define - The insight gathered from the discovery phase
can help you to define the challenge in a different way.
Develop - The second diamond encourages people to
give different answers to the clearly defined problem,
seeking inspiration from elsewhere and co-designing with
a range of different people.
Deliver - Delivery involves testing out different solutions
 Double Diamond clearly conveys a design at small-scale, rejecting those that will not work and
process to designers and non-designers alike. improving the ones that will.
 The two diamonds represent a process of
exploring an issue more widely or deeply
(divergent thinking) and then taking focused
action (convergent thinking).
 What is, What if,
What Wows, What Works
Ethnography
Story Spine
 Once Upon a Time …
 And Everyday …
 Until One Day …
 And Because of that …
 And Because of that …
 Until Finally …
 And Ever Since that Day …
 And the Moral of the Story is …
 Design Thinking Model

Needs Needs Concept Concept Development

Integration
Finding Screening Generation Selection Strategy & Planning

Identify Invent Implementation

Design Thinking is an iterative and non-linear process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions and redefine
problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of
understanding
Define & Ideate
Define & Ideate
• We understand
the actual
challenges as said
by the end users
when we showed
empathy with
them.
• These challenges
also challenge out
thinking about
the product/
services and also
about the end
users.
• By doing this we
create new Point-
of-view about the
product/ services
and also about
ourselves.
• These new POVs
create the
framework on
which the
product design
may take place
• In the Ideation
Stage we elicit as
many ideas as
possible without
evaluating those
• In ideation, we
follow the idea of
deferring judgment
– that is,
separating the
generation of ideas
from the
evaluation of ideas
• In the Ideation
stage we shift our
focus to transit
from Problems to
Creating Solutions
• Some of the
Ideation
Techniques include
Brain storming,
Prototyping, body
storming, mind
mapping, and
sketching
 Define Phase

Define Phase is the definition of a meaningful

and actionable problem statement (also called
Design Challenge), which the design thinker will
focus on solving.
 From Empathy Map to
Define Phase

 Empathy map provides four major areas to focus our

attention on, which gives us an overview of a user’s  From this, unpack user stories and ask yourself, what
person’s experience. does this tell you about the challenges and problems
 What the user: Said, Did, Thought, and Felt. they’re experiencing?
 From
Empathy Map to Define Phase
Empathy map consists of four categories in which the
user data is organized and analyzed:
 Said: Word choice and what the user says
 Did: behaviors and actions observed
 Thought: consider what they’re thinking based
on beliefs, motivations, goals, needs, and desires
 Felt: Emotional responses based on subtle body
cues and word choice
From here, we can unpack or synthesize what this
information means:
 Share what you observed and found with other
designers.
 Capture the important parts visually
 Record all the information into one place, such as
a board or wall, so you can analyze it as a whole.
 Begin noting connections, patterns, and themes.
 Problem Statement
A good problem statement should thus have the following traits. It should be:
 Human-centred - This requires you to frame your problem statement according to specific
users, their needs and the insights that your team has gained in the Empathize phase. The
problem statement should be about the people the team is trying to help, rather than focusing
on technology, monetary returns or product specifications.
 Broad enough for creative freedom - This means that the problem statement should not focus
too narrowly on a specific method regarding the implementation of the solution. The problem
statement should also not list technical requirements, as this would unnecessarily restrict the
team and prevent them from exploring areas that might bring unexpected value and insight to
the project.
 Narrow enough to make it manageable - On the other hand, a problem statement such as,
“Improve the human condition,” is too broad and will likely cause team members to easily feel
daunted. Problem statements should have sufficient constraints to make the project
manageable.
As well as the three traits mentioned above, it also helps to begin the problem statement with a verb, such as
“Create”, “Define”, and “Adapt”, to make the problem become more action-oriented.
 Techniques to Define a Problem
Statement
Methods of interpreting results and findings
from the observation oriented Empathize phase
include:
 Clustering and Bundling Ideas and Facts -
Space Saturate and Group and Affinity
Diagrams
 Empathy Mapping
 Point of View – Problem Statement
 “How Might We” (HMW) Questions
 Why-How Laddering
 The Take Away
Analysis
 Analysis is about breaking down complex concepts and
problems into smaller, easier-to-understand
constituents.
 We do that, for instance, during the first stage of the
Design Thinking process, the Empathize stage, when we
observe and document details that relate to our users.

Synthesis
 Synthesis, on the other hand, involves creatively piecing
the puzzle together to form whole ideas.
 This happens during the Define stage when we organize,
interpret, and make sense of the data we have gathered
to create a problem statement.
 Ideation Phase

 Ideation is the creative process of generating,

developing, and communicating new ideas.
 Where an idea is understood as a basic element of
thought that can be either visual, concrete, or
abstract.

Ideate = unleashed imagination + no judgment

 Ideation Phase
 In this stage, first we explore suggested ideas to solve the problem (that is defined in the define
stage) from all the members.
 After all the possible suggested ideas are gathered, discussed and visually represented, individuals
and teams begin “considered selection.”
 Design thinkers narrow down numerous ideas to two or three with the potential for rapid
prototyping.
 Some experts suggest dividing the ideas into categories — “wild,” “darling,” or “practical” or “most
likely to delight,” “the rational choice,” or “the most unexpected,” and have group members vote
on which ideas deserve further consideration.
 The goal of ideation is to move to the rapid prototyping space with more than one idea. That limits
the power of group think and majority rules, because Single ideas agreed upon by a majority may
not be the best solution to meet the needs of the users (product, service, experience or system).
 To ideate is to embrace an approach that allows multiple voices and ideas to compete, percolate
and evolve.
 Ideation increases the likelihood of arriving at the most creative and appropriate solution through
rapid prototyping and testing.
 Ideation Phase
 The whole process of ideation discourages linear thinking that supports one idea, often the
“pet idea” of an authority figure or aggressive team member, arrived upon through a narrow
group think brainstorming approach.
 Individuals or teams who embrace the ideate space accept that the “right” solution is not
usually the first or most practical solution.
 Experienced design thinkers suggest that ideation helps to:
 step beyond obvious solutions, increasing innovation potential of a solution set;
 harness the collective perspectives and strengths of teams;
 uncover unexpected areas of exploration;
 act as a catalyst for fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety) among creative options; and
 get obvious solutions out in the open, leaving space to push toward new levels of
innovation.
 Techniques of Ideation

Some of the Ideation Techniques include

 Mind mapping
 Body storming
 Brain storming
 Prototyping and
 Sketching
 Mind Map

 A mind map is a graphical way to represent

ideas and concepts.
 It is a visual thinking tool that helps structuring
information, helping you to better analyze,
comprehend, synthesize, recall and generate
new ideas.
 Characteristics of Mind Map

 The subject of attention is crystallised in a

central image
 The main themes of the subject radiate from
the central image as branches
 Branches comprise a key image or key word
printed on an associated line.
 The branches form a connected nodal
structure.
 Enrich Mind Maps with colour, pictures, codes
which will aid creativity, memory and recall.
 Lets Practice

 Place an image or symbol of yourself

in the centre of your mind map.
 Use topics such as skills, education,
family, friends, hobbies etc to create
the ‘branches’ of the map
 Use colour, symbols etc
 Effective Mind Mapping (Gelb 1988)

 Start the map by drawing a picture of the topic

in the centre of the paper
 Use keywords
 Connect the words with lines radiating out
from the central image
 Print the keywords
 Print one keyword per line
 Use Colours, pictures and codes for emphasis
 Free associate, then organise
  Bodystorming is a technique sometimes used in interaction design or
as a creativity technique.
Bodystorming  The idea is to imagine what it would be like if the product existed, and
act as though it exists, ideally in the place it would be used.

 Structure: Semi-structured,
Unstructured
 Preparation: Understanding of
users’ situation
 Deliverables: Ideas, Concepts,
Reports
Bodystorming
 The essence of Bodystorming is group sketching/ acting out
ideas with our bodies & Props
 Bodystorming is a unique method that spans empathy work,
ideation, and prototyping.
 Bodystorming is a technique of physically experiencing a
situation to derive new ideas.
 It requires setting up an experience - complete with necessary
artifacts and people - and physically “testing” it.
 Bodystorming can also include physically changing your space
during ideation.
 What you're focused on here is the way you interact with your
environment and the choices you make while in it.
 Why Bodystorming
 We bodystorm to generate unexpected ideas that
might not be realized by talking or sketching.
 We bodystorm to help create empathy in the
context of possible solutions for prototyping.
 If you're stuck in your ideation phase, you can
bodystorm in the context of a half-baked concept to
get you thinking about alternative ideas.

 Bodystorming is also extremely useful in the context of prototyping

concepts.
 Have a couple concepts you're testing? Bodystorm with both of them to
help you evaluate them. Developing any sort of physical environment
demands at least a few bodystorms...
 How to Bodystorm?

 If you are trying to ideate in the context of hospital patients, try walking
through the experience to come up with new ideas.
 If you are designing products for the elderly, rub some Vaseline on your
glasses to view the world through older eyes.
 Bodystorm by moving around and becoming aware of the physical
spaces and experiences related to your solutions.
 Pay close attention to decision-making directly related to your
environment and related emotional reactions. Dig into the "WHY"!
 Empathy Map
 Space Saturate
 Affinity Diagrams
 Point of View – Problem Statement
 Crazy 8
 “How Might We” (HMW) Questions
 Why-How Laddering
 The Take Away
 Brain Storming
 Body Storming
 Prototyping
 Sketching

75
  A tangible/ visible, testable representation of your idea
Prototype
 Way to represent an idea that is testable

 Exploring & Experimentation
 Learning & Understanding
 Engaging, Testing, & Experiencing
 Inspiring and Motivating
Some of the purposes that prototypes fulfil are:
 You can use prototypes to explore problems, ideas, and
opportunities within a specific area of focus and test out
the impact of incremental or radical changes.
 Use prototypes in order to better understand the
dynamics of a problem, product, or system by physically
engaging with them and picking apart what makes them
work or fail.
 Use prototyping to engage with end users or
stakeholders, in ways that reveal deeper insight and
more valuable experiences, to inform design decisions
going forward.
 Use prototypes to sell new ideas, motivate buy-in from
internal or external stakeholders, or inspire markets
toward radical new ways of thinking and doing.
 Prototypes do not need to be full products
 you can prototype a part of a solution (like a proposed grip handle of a wheelchair) to
test that specific part of your solution
 Simple sketches or storyboards
 Rough paper prototypes
Forms of Prototype -
 Digital Prototypes
 Html Prototypes
 Role-playing to act out a service offering an idea
 Other Forms
 Kinds of Prototype
 Form: Is it a hand-drawn prototype, or a digital one? Is it for mobile or desktop?
 Fidelity: How detailed and polished is the prototype? You’ll often hear the terms high-fidelity
and low-fidelity in relation to prototypes.
 Interactivity: How functional is the prototype? Can the user click on it or interact with it, or is it
view-only?
 Lifecycle: Is the prototype a quick, disposable version that will be replaced with a new and
improved version? Or is it a more enduring creation that can be built and improved upon,
potentially ending up as the final product?
 Types of Prototype
 Low-Fidelity Prototyping - Low-fidelity prototyping involves the use of basic models or examples
of the product being tested. For example, the model might be incomplete and utilise just a few of
the features that will be available in the final design, or it might be constructed using materials
not intended for the finished article, such as wood, paper, or metal for a plastic product.
Examples of low-fidelity prototypes:
✓ Storyboarding.
✓ Sketching/ Process sketches (although Bill Buxton, a pioneer of human-computer
interaction, argues sketching is not an example of prototyping).
✓ Card sorting.
✓ Mockups
✓ Simulations
✓ 'Wizard of Oz'.
 High-Fidelity Prototyping - High-fidelity prototypes are prototypes that look and operate closer to
the finished product.
For example, a 3D plastic model with movable parts (allowing users to manipulate and
interact with a device in the same manner as the final design) is high-fi in comparison to, say, a
wooden block.
 Low-Fidelity Prototyping
Pros Cons
 An inherent lack of realism. Due to the basic and
 Quick and inexpensive.
sometimes sketchy nature of low-fi prototypes, the
 Possible to make instant changes and test new
applicability of results generated by tests involving
iterations.
simple early versions of a product may lack validity.
 Disposable/throw-away.
 Depending on your product, the production of low-
 Enables the designer to gain an overall view of the
fi prototypes may not be appropriate for your
product using minimal time and effort, as opposed
intended users. For instance, if you are developing
to focusing on the finer details over the course of
a product bound by a number of contextual
slow, incremental changes.
constraints and/or dispositional constraints (i.e.
 Available to all; regardless of ability and experience,
physical characteristics of your user base, such as
we are able to produce rudimentary versions of
users with disabilities) then basic versions that do
products in order to test users or canvas the
not reflect the nature, appearance or feel of the
opinions of stakeholders.
finished product may be of scant use; revealing
 Encourages and fosters design thinking.
very little of the eventual user experience.
 Such prototypes often remove control from the
user, as they generally have to interact in basic
ways or simply inform an evaluator, demonstrate or
write a blow-by-blow account of how they would
use the finished product.
 High-Fidelity Prototyping
Pros
 Engaging: the stakeholders can instantly see their
vision realised and will be able to judge how well it
meets their expectations, wants and needs.
 User testing involving high-fi prototypes will allow
the evaluators to gather information with a high
level of validity and applicability. The closer the
prototype is to the finished product, the more
confidence the design team will have in how people
will respond to, interact with and perceive the
design.
Cons
 They generally take much longer to produce than
low-fi prototypes.
 When testing prototypes, test users are more
inclined to focus and comment on superficial
characteristics, as opposed to the content (Rogers,
Preece, and Sharp, 2011).
 After devoting hours and hours of time producing
an accurate model of how a product will appear
and behave, designers are often loathed to make
changes.
 Software prototypes may give test users a false
impression of how good the finished article may be.
 Making changes to prototypes can take a long time,
thus delaying the entire project in the process.
However, low-fi prototypes can usually be changed
within hours, if not minutes, for example when
sketching or paper prototyping methods are
utilised.
 Types of Prototype
 Low-Fidelity Prototyping - Low-fidelity prototyping involves the use of basic models or examples
of the product being tested. For example, the model might be incomplete and utilise just a few of
the features that will be available in the final design, or it might be constructed using materials
not intended for the finished article, such as wood, paper, or metal for a plastic product.
Examples of low-fidelity prototypes:
✓ Storyboarding.
✓ Sketching/ Process sketches (although Bill Buxton, a pioneer of human-computer
interaction, argues sketching is not an example of prototyping).
✓ Card sorting.
✓ Mockups
✓ Simulations
✓ 'Wizard of Oz'.
 High-Fidelity Prototyping - High-fidelity prototypes are prototypes that look and operate closer to
the finished product.
For example, a 3D plastic model with movable parts (allowing users to manipulate and
interact with a device in the same manner as the final design) is high-fi in comparison to, say, a
wooden block.
 Qualities of Prototype

 Representation – This form of the prototype is mainly structured for presentation and keynote
uses. That may be a Paper-pen, digital or code.
 Precision – The fidelity of the prototype is defined here. It explains the level of the details,
realism, and final design. Such as Low-fi, High-fi and so on
 Interactivity – The functionality opens for the user. i.e., fully functional, partially functional or
no interactions at all.
 Evolution – The lifecycle of the prototype. Some are built to re-iterate and re-iterate until it’s
precisely done and some are just designed and thrown it away after the certain outcome is
made.
 Guidelines for Prototyping

 Just start building - Design Thinking has a bias towards action, therefore, creating a prototype
will help you to think about your idea in a concrete manner, and potentially allow you to gain
insights into ways you can improve your idea.
 Don’t spend too much time - Prototyping is all about speed; the longer you spend building your
prototype, the more emotionally attached you can get with your idea, thus hampering your
ability to objectively judge its merits.
 Remember what you’re testing for - All prototypes should have a central testing issue. Do not
lose sight of that issue, but at the same time, do not get so bound to it so as to lose sight of
other lessons you could learn from.
 Build with the user in mind - Test the prototype against your expected user behaviours and user
needs. Then, learn from the gaps in expectations and realities, and improve your ideas.
Digital Prototypes
Testing
 Testing

 It is the stage where you get the real life and real time feedback
about your prototype from the real users.
 Testing will help to understand what actually works and what
does not.
 This step can be the most rewarding, if the prototypes succeed
to give positive results, or can be the most annoying, if the
prototype fails.
 After testing, the entire process of design thinking may have to
be repeated. If the end user approves the solution, then the
process of design thinking stops here.

 User testing saves time
and money
Why to Conduct User Testing
 By catching errors and usability issues early on, you ensure that the
product you eventually launch is the most bug-free, user-friendly product it
can be. What happens if you skip the testing phase in favor of getting the
product developed as soon as possible? You’ll spend considerable time and
money correcting the product post-launch. Not only is this frustrating—it’s
also bad for the bottom line.

 User testing reveals  No matter how thorough your initial user research was, or how convinced
unexpected insights you are that you’ve designed the optimal solution to your user’s problem,
there are always new insights to be uncovered. Seeing real users interact
with an early version of your product will highlight issues that you would
not have anticipated otherwise.

 User testing improves user
satisfaction
 Design Thinking is all about putting the user first. By gathering first-hand
user feedback, you can make informed design decisions—improving user
satisfaction in the long run. As a designer, prototyping and testing will keep
you focused on the user at all times. Of course, satisfied customers are
good for business, too!
 Why to Conduct User Testing

1. Concept testing
2. A/B testing
3. Usability testing
4. First-click testing
5. Tree testing
 1. Concept Testing

 In the very early stages of the design process, you’ll want to test
out your initial concepts before actually designing them.
 Low-fidelity prototypes - a simple sketch, or even static images -
can be used to communicate your idea to your target users.
 You’ll then interview your users to gauge how they feel about
the concept. Is it a product or feature they’d be interested in
using? Does it have the potential to solve the user’s problem?
 You can learn more about the value of concept testing in UX
design here.
 2. A/B Testing

 A/B testing is used to compare two different versions of a

design.
 This method can be used at any stage of the design process,
whether you have paper prototypes or fully clickable digital
ones.
 In A/B testing, you’ll create two different prototypes and test
each version on a different set of users.
 You might test two different layouts, for example, or different
copy for a certain CTA (Call to Action) button on a certain screen.
 It’s important to only A/B test one variable at a time so as not to
skew the results.
 3. Usability Testing

 A crucial user testing method that should be used repeatedly

throughout the design process, usability testing shows you how
easy your design is to use.
 Usability testing is usually an observational exercise: you’ll ask
your users to complete certain tasks, and observe them as they
do so.
 Throughout the test, you’ll see which aspects of the design
caused problems for the user, as well as which aspects appear to
be user-friendly.
 In doing so, you’ll identify usability issues which you’ll seek to fix
in the next iteration of your prototype.
 4. First-click Testing

 When designing an app or a website, you want to make sure that

the user takes the intended action whenever they land on a
certain page or screen.
 First-click testing shows you what your users first steps are when
they encounter an interface; in other words, where do they click
first?
 This helps you to determine which visual elements and content
should take priority, where buttons, icons, and menu items
should be located, as well as the kind of language you should use
for buttons and labels.
 First-click testing can be conducted using both low and high-
fidelity prototypes.
 5. Tree Testing

 Once you’ve come up with the information architecture of your

digital product, you can use tree testing to see how user-friendly
it really is.
 You’ll present the user with a “tree” of information -
representative of how your site menus would be laid out - and
ask them to find specific items.
 If users struggle to locate certain information, you’ll need to
rethink your information architecture.
 Tree testing is often conducted as a remote, unmoderated study,
but it can also be done in person using paper prototypes.
 How to conduct user testing: A step-by-step guide

1. Set an objective
2. Build your prototype
3. Create a plan
4. Recruit participants
5. Gather all the necessary equipment
6. Document your findings
 1. Set an objective

 The very first thing you’ll need to do is set a clear objective.

What do you want to learn from your user tests? What question
do you hope to answer?
 Setting a clear objective will help you to build the right kind of
prototype and choose the most appropriate user testing
method.
 For example: If you’re designing an ecommerce app, your
objective might be to test how easy it is for your users to add an
item to their wishlist.
 2. Build your prototype

 You know what you want to test; now it’s time to build your
prototype.
 If you’re in the very early stages of testing an idea, you’ll stick to
low-fidelity prototypes.
 Once you’ve decided on a concept, you’ll want to test the finer
details, such as information architecture or microcopy, using mid
and high-fidelity prototypes.
 3. Create a plan

 For the sake of consistency, it’s important to create a plan for

your user testing session.
 Your plan should include your objective or question; the method
you intend to use to test your prototype; the number of users
you’ll test on; a list of all the equipment you’ll need; and how
you’ll document and measure your findings.
 Depending on your chosen method, you may also want to create
a script in order to keep the session focused.
 4. Recruit participants

 Another crucial aspect of user testing is recruiting the right

participants.
 You want to test on users who represent your target audience,
so spend a bit of time identifying some key criteria.
 If you’re designing an over-50s dating app, for example, it
wouldn’t make sense to run user tests with a group of 18 year-
olds.
 5. Gather all the necessary equipment

 Having recruited your participants, you’re ready to get the

session underway.
 Refer back to your plan and make sure you’ve got everything you
need to conduct the tests: screen recording software if you’re
conducting remote testing, pens and paper for taking notes, and,
of course, your prototype!
 6. Document your findings

 Throughout each user test, be sure to document your findings.

 You’ll need a thorough record of each test in order to analyze
your observations and compare the results of each session.