2019.04.29 / Viewpoint

Design thinking starts with design. Ultimately we need to return to design

to redefine design thinking

Design thinking is a methodology of cognitive expansion and thinking transformation. In recent years, it has been frequently promoted and applied in various fields such as business, society, education, and government departments.

From the day design thinking started to the present, the business environment has undergone great changes. Almost every market is undergoing transformation and disruptive innovation, just like various types of products and organizations.

Design thinking itself has also been reshaped due to changes in external factors. In March 2019, Tim Brown launched a new version of "Change by Design". In this book, he further extended the "design thinking" he proposed 10 years ago. In an article written for Fortune magazine, he elaborated his latest thoughts on design thinking. He said that design thinking is not the so-called "invisible hand". Design thinkers and designers have a responsibility to clearly understand the results they are designing. Design should be a "visible hand", and designers must consciously choose the way technology serves humanity.

Today, the definition and conception of design thinking should include the following aspects:

"Systematic and Diversified Thinking"

Integrate teams of different professions, with diverse design, business and technology concepts.

"Future-oriented, trace-oriented"

Clearly understand what may happen in the future and the views of personnel involved, starting from the "what may be" in the future, and use this to promote the formation of business decisions.

"Pay attention to the end-to-end experience"

Persevere in the focus on promoting interaction between existing or potential customers, partners and employees.

"Digital Factors"

Integrate technological factors such as the Internet of things, robots, consumer analysis, and predictive models into all plans.

"Flexible team"

The team's organizational structure can be centered on creating value for customers, and has the ability to deploy and reorganize small cross-functional teams as needed to solve problems, release new products, enter new markets, or create entirely new businesses.

"Agile innovation"

It has complete business processes and methods to cope with rapidly changing products, customer experience or even the entire business.

Master the necessary premise of design thinking

The core of design thinking is to combine analytical thinking that relies on historical data and intuitive thinking that advocates unthinking, using traceability logic to improve and perfect existing knowledge to face the puzzles of the 21st century VUCA era.

Unlike traditional deductive logic and inductive logic ("what should be" and "what is actually") which represent the main lines of logic, traceability logic starts from "what may be". In other words, traceability logic is the process of systematically reasoning about known facts and deriving the most appropriate explanation for a problem or event.

Any new ideas, new concepts and new ideas cannot be confirmed in advance, and all innovations can only be revealed through the prediction of future events. Therefore, in order to promote the development of knowledge, we must first abandon the dependence on "evidence" and "certainty", and use "logical leap thinking" to explore how the future may be and what the truth may be.

Design is a process of hypothesis and hypothesis verification. However, the hypothesis can not only be deduced and summarized based on known data and analysis, but also requires the designer to try to build at a certain point and produce "creativity".

Design thinking, in simple terms, is the method used by designers to think and solve problems. It is a series of thinking tools that stimulate creativity and solve problems. This is a method that everyone can learn to use, but if they want to be a good ones, design thinkers have prerequisite requirements, and individuals need to have a complete knowledge system.

First of all, you must have a clear self-awareness, clarify your position and goals, understand that everyone has prejudice, and have different cognitive frameworks.

Furthermore, you must learn and master a large number of tools to sort out your thinking and recognize the world, and choose the right tools to solve problems and improve efficiency.

The last element is experience. A mature design thinker must have rich experience. Self-cognition, tool mastery and experience interacts and influence one another.

The self-cognition and the tools mastered will directly affect the accumulation of experience, and more experience will help us acquire and master more new tools and a clearer standpoint.

Design thinking is neither deductive nor inductive, nor a subject field in which a degree can be obtained in a university. Such thinking ability is a highly professional skill that needs to be trained for a long time, and it is the ability that needs to be accumulated and practiced by using "personal experience" outside of theoretical learning. There is no shortcut to develop such integrated and systematic thinking, The only way is to "use it repeatedly" and "practice it deliberately".

The practical application of design thinking in business

Many companies today begin to pursue user-centered, research-driven design, and have more or less experience in design thinking.

According to a 2016 survey by Forrester, 96% of corporate executives believe that design thinking is very or extremely important to their company, but only 37% of companies believe that their company has strong or expert design thinking skills.

How can companies use design thinking to bring new vigor and thinking to their teams, and promote innovation and growth? Where should new ideas come from? The answer is simple: the difference.

In fact, many people do not know that there are methods, tools, steps, and systems for innovative design. As Dr. Nicholas Negropont, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the founder of the MIT Media Lab said: "Creativity comes from an incredible intersection".

In addition to establishing an organizational culture that encourages innovation, enhancing their own design capabilities and paying attention to design, companies must also have emotional resonance, creativity, and overall thinking about solutions, and integrate them into business or technological progress from the inside out. In addition, all members of the team should actively explore new innovations and digital experiences.

Companies should also make use of experienced design thinking experts outside the company to provide external perspectives and assistance to help members of the company create more valuable output.

In the practical application of business, design thinking methods are implemented by project members with professional skills, which can help project members to define clear problems, find needs and insights through observation and research, and then develop creative concepts that take into account human nature, business and technology.

But to produce truly executable innovation and change, if it is just thinking and imagination without real action would be unrealistic. So once it reaches the stage where the design concept is to be implemented, that is, when the actual design is used to solve problems, it should be done by a professional designer. This is also the final stage of design thinking: implementation; make the design concept takes effect, ensure that the solution is specific, and reach end user's life. This is the most important part of design thinking, but it is most often overlooked. As Don Norman said: "We need more design." Design thinking can't let you get rid of actual design, it is not magic. Many of the world's top consulting companies are actively embracing design thinking while the business environment is changing rapidly, and find that design itself is of great commercial value. Everyone gradually realizes that the potential of using design to drive business growth is huge. The design and M & A activities in recent years clearly illustrate this trend. From 2004 to 2017, a total of more than 70 design agencies were acquired, and more than 50% of these mergers and acquisitions were completed from 2015 to 2017. M & A activities, large consulting companies quickly integrated the methodology of design thinking and have professional designers added to their team.

Design thinking + professional design

Working images is an innovative consulting design firm established in 1990 in Australia. Since its establishment, it has worked together closely with the University of South Australia. It has a solid academic background and knowledge system support.

Through cutting-edge innovative design methods, with brand strategy as the core, market and user insight as the guide, and design as practice, we develop customized solutions to help customers solve business models, products, services, digitalization, space, marketing , organizations, processes and other issues, and achieve the achievable with measurable results.

We use the "human-centered" design concept to build brand strategy, brand image, brand experience, brand communication, and provide systematic design application and design management services.

We are committed to helping companies find a differentiated blue ocean advantage in a homogeneous red sea competition. In a constantly changing external environment, they can accurately position, strengthen brand advantages, and maximize business value.

Looking forward to co-creating with more companies to help companies improve their design thinking ability and achieve high-quality professional design results. If you want to know more about Working images services, please contact us by email: contact@workingimages-group.com

Or on the official website www.workingimages-group.com