Design Thinking

On 30th March, 2019 I was privileged to facilitate at a conference of over 100 young professionals and undergraduates, the theme of the conference was design thinking.

The discussions on Design Thinking commenced with my favorite quote these days “See failure of Government as an opportunity to win big, to solve wicked society problems, to better your life and the lives of those around you”

Most start-ups in Nigeria were born out of the failure of government.

Andela – failure of government in education and capacity building

Gokada – failure of government in transportation and logistics

Muster – failure of government in housing

When government fails you, it’s not an opportunity to criticize or an excuse to fail yourself rather it’s an opportunity to solve, an opportunity to win for the society.

The whole idea of the theme of the conference was to change the thought process of Participants, to teach them how to design their thoughts for better ideas and results.

Lately “design thinking” has been creating a lot of buzz in the design community because it promises to make the creative process simpler and more effective. But what is design thinking, and what can you really learn from it?

In this article, I will attempt to take you through what we discussed at the conference and some basics you need to know to transform your creative process with design thinking.

What is Design Thinking?

“Design thinking is a human-centred and collaborative approach to problem solving, using a designed mindset to solve complex problems.” Tim Brown

There are quite a number of other definitions of the concept but the following are common:

Focus: on end users – humans, customers, clients etc.

Collaboration: avoid personal biases, seek and incorporate feedbacks, brainstorm with a team

Speed: quick prototypes and drafts to communicate your ideas

Iterate: It’s not likely that you’ll create the perfect design on the first try, so iterate through many different versions of your idea.

How it all began...

In the 60s towards the 80s, people were creating music, art, and change in ways the world had never seen before. Design science and ergonomics emerged to set the stage for what would later become design thinking and human-centered design.

A decade after the 80s, the world became increasingly interested in something else – what exactly makes a creative person creative, and what sets that person apart from everybody else? This helped give structure and strategy to the creative processes developed in the previous two decades.

Between 1990 and 2010, people began using design thinking to tackle problems that weren’t obviously design-related. Beyond product design, they began to experiment with using design thinking to improve workflows and interpersonal interactions.

Today, design thinking has gained popularity in a changing economy and is increasingly becoming a valuable tool for large enterprises that are challenged with finding new revenue streams.

As a result, Google, IBM, Microsoft, HP Enterprise and many other global companies and IT vendors are hiring design thinkers to help them get to know these new customers and create new features, products and services that meets their needs and brings in revenue.

How to become a design thinker – the 5 phases/processes of design thinking

What training do you need to have under your belt to become a bona fide design thinker?

Interestingly, design thinking is based on skills that anyone can develop at any time. To improve your design thinking ability, you only need to hone in on the following skills found in the design thinking process itself.

Empathy: the ability to understand your customers/users and their burning needs. It is this skill that gives a local somewhere in the remote villages in Nigeria over an Inventor in the United States. The latter cannot easily emphatize without living the struggle, unlike you, the struggle is yours. You imagine why the idea of gokada did not come from US? It couldn't have because they don't commute with bikes the way we do.

Define: from your understanding of the needs of your customers, come up with actionable problems, define clear project/business objectives. Problems that are technically feasible, with business viability and will lead to solutions that are desirable by users.

Ideation: explore ideas and solutions to the defined problems.

Ideation is the fun part and the part that comes naturally to most people – generating creative ideas. Collaboration is key at this stage, collaboration is the reason why most start-ups have co-founders rather than ‘one founder’

If 2 heads are better than 1, imagine how many solutions you can generate with 3, or 4, or…

Sticky note ideation comes in handy at this stage, it is a strategy that lets all members of your team quickly get all of their thoughts out on the table by giving every idea – the good, the bad, and the ugly via a sticky note. Don’t cut out any one/idea at this stage.

Pretotyping. No, that isn’t a typo. Before you pick a solution and prototype it, create an even faster, lower resolution prototype known as a pretotype to help you work out early design kinks and compare different ideas.

Prototyping: After ideating, select a solution that seems to hold a great deal of promise. This isn’t the time to create a full-blown, high-resolution product – you want a prototype that you can manipulate and adjust throughout the testing process if need be. Your goal is to convey the look, feel, and functionality of your design as quickly and easily as possible.

Consider prototyping in the form of: Mockups, simulations, process sketches etc

Testing: This is where the human-centered magic happens. Testing should be a participatory experience involving not just your client but also end users. Encourage participants to interact playfully with your prototype and give genuine feedback. Observe carefully. Once you have gathered all of the information you possibly can, it’s back to the drawing board for another iteration.

Te be a bona fide designed thinker, you need to find your comfort zone in any of the 5 processes explained above, it could be one or two or all, but remember you need to collaborate radically to be a Design Thinker.

To drive the message home, we showed Participants a traffic jam scenario, the audience were quick to identify and emphatize with the road users in traffic.

They defined the problems of the road users and were quick to ideate and proffer solutions to their problems. A lot of unique perspectives and solutions were proposed.

We didn’t have time to prototype or test, rather we introduced legends and professionals who have prototyped and tested category king products and services.

We called on Sherifat Akinwonmi of GSK and Ibraheem Babalola of Muster to provide sauce to lessons on design thinking. They were to provide context to the design thinking lessons on innovation, career growth and how to transform organisations.

Ibraheem Babalola is the co-founder and CEO of Muster, he used the design thinking process to explain how Muster came to be. He shared unique lessons on the challenges he had finding the right co-founders and investment partners. Ibraheem's contribution was a masterclass on start-up.

Sherifat! the most qualified speaker in the conference. Her qualifications and experience are intimidating and motivating. Sherifat shared notes on how to grow. She shared experiences on her career successes and misses.

We then invited the legendary Dr. Fatai Olajobi and Sulaimon Arigbabu to provide context on design thinking and social entrepreneurship.

Dr. Olajobi had resigned from full-time medical practice as deputy medical director at the time to teach troubled children mathematics and other science-related subjects. Apparently, he is a passionate problem-solver and a user-centric design-thinker. His notes almost gave a perfect context to the fact that design thinking is all about humans and their problems.

The best way to summarize the contributions of Sulaimon is to say he has been everywhere doing everything including activism.

As always with our conferences, Mutiat Olagoke was there spicing the event up with her sweet mouth.

Like all other participants, it was a great experience for me. I now look forward to the invitation of your Company to facilitate a design thinking session and train your employees on how to mine ideas that will transform your organisation.