Why Design Thinking Matters?

Digital technologies are disrupting the way companies manage business. In present scenario, where a plethora of different digital solutions are booming and the attention of both practitioners and scholars is growing, little is known about how to make the most of such technologies. However, the business environment today is less defined by whether a firm “Works in Technology” or not. All businesses must embrace the power of scale, Design Thinking, and disruptive digital technologies, whether they are in the consumer (B2C) or enterprise (B2B) businesses.

Nevertheless, some businesses haven’t yet fully embraced everything that disruptive technology has to offer. Whether it is due to a lack of resources or lack of execution, these businesses need to embrace everything that digital transformation has to offer. According to the World Economic Forum, digital transformation is set to add $100 trillion to the world economy by 2025.

How do the enterprises implement digital transformations in current scenario when economy is badly hit by COVID-19 pandemic and the “New Normal” has disrupted the way these organizations used to spend on their transformation initiatives?

One of the best ways is through “Design Thinking”. Design Thinking is an effective way for all sizes organizations to compete in a digital world. As explained by MIT Sloan –

Coming up with an idea is easy. Coming up with the right one takes work. With design thinking, throwing out what you think you know and starting from scratch opens up all kinds of possibilities.

Design Thinking is not just for “designers”..!! It is a lens through which one can solve problems in creative and unique ways. To put it simply, design thinking is centered on understanding the people (Customers) for whom we are designing Products or Services. While there are several different variations of design thinking, they all come down to similar principles - all of which have Empathy at their core. One of the most famous is from Stanford University’s legendary d. school, which has five core tenets for design thinking:

• Empathize with your users

• Define your users’ needs, their problems, and your insights

• Ideate by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions

• Prototype to start creating solutions

• Test solutions

Design Thinking approach is a solution-based approach to solving problems. Instead of following antiquated procedures or doing things a certain way because - we’ve always done it that way!!

Design thinking can be a game-changer- especially if it is used in the context of Digital Transformations. With the ultimate goal of integrating disruptive digital technologies into business practices, design thinking can substantially increase the chances that organizations’ digital transformation best serves their customers, and the most important component of Design thinking is “Digital Empathy”.

By combining Design Thinking with digital transformations, organizations are not only implementing technology for the sake of implementing that technology. Instead, technology is used as a catalyst to solve problems that your customers are experiencing.

Digital Empathy is the cornerstone of any successful design project. It encourages a fully human-centric approach. Users – who might be consumers or employees – are the subjects of observation and intensive questioning. Being integrated members of the team, they provide inspiration and insights for meaningful change, helping to define the problem and ultimately solve it. In fact, Empathise is the first phase of any design thinking project.

The empathise phase requires one to set aside his/her assumptions. It’s human nature to assume that others will think and feel the same as your situations, but of course this isn’t always the case. We always do mind reading to create our assumptions that you know another person’s thoughts, feelings, or intentions. We humans instinctively figure out another person’s thoughts by their words, body language, and visible displays of emotion. Although simply asking the other person may yield more accurate results, mind reading can bypass that step. However, it can also lead to significant misunderstandings.

The first step in empathising with your users is to suspend your own view of the world around you in order to truly see it through your users’ eyes. When it comes to Design Thinking and human-centered design, it’s time to stop assuming and start gathering real insights about the user! As the old saying goes, “When you assume, you make an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me.’”

Organizations fail in transformation when they view problems through the wrong lens. This might be organizational, technological, or data driven. They need to adapt to a more unfamiliar mindset that starts with empathy for the user and combines those insights with what’s technologically feasible and economically viable.

It is people and their experiences that drive business change. All too often, businesses rely on data as the key input. Often, they believe that a problem lies with a piece of equipment, code that makes up software, the mix of features or a system or process, without thinking about who is operating, managing and using those tools.

By taking a human-centric approach, businesses can minimize the uncertainty and risk that innovation often brings. Design Thinking is just a buzzword unless it’s used as a way of focusing on the right problem first and delivering meaningful, highly functional solutions supported by traditional business metrics.