Design Thinking: A Human-Centered Approach

Design Thinking

• Design thinking balances commercial and technical realities through a human-centered problem-solving approach
• It integrates practices, tools, principles, and a defined process, with empathy as a core component

Stanford's Design Thinking Model

• The model includes the following steps:

Empathize

• Developing a deep understanding of the challenge

Define

• Clearly articulating the problem

Ideate

• Brainstorming potential solutions and selecting the best one

Prototype

• Designing prototypes to test solutions

Test

• Engaging in a continuous short-cycle innovation process to continually improve the design

Design Thinking Process

• The process, where empathy involves understanding and observing, starts with understanding people before defining the problem
• Iterating towards a solution is preferred over assuming the correct answer from the start
• Defining the problem occurs mid-process, after gaining confidence in understanding the needs
• The process is dynamic, with previous steps revisited as more information is gathered

Case Study: Embrace Team

• In 2007, Stanford students applied design thinking to address a global problem of 20 million premature and low-birth-weight babies being born annually
• Infant mortality rates in developing countries are high due to the scarcity and high cost of incubators, along with the difficulty of maintaining donated incubators, because most hospitals and clinics don't have enough of them
• Aims to create a solution cheaper than the $20,000 incubators
• The team started need-finding in Kathmandu, Nepal
• The Embrace team discovered that many incubators were empty and there was not a shortage in hospitals in India
• They realized that the majority of premature Nepalese infants are born in rural areas and do not make it to a hospital
• This lead to the team reframing the problem and they needed to create something cheap and easy to use in rural areas to keep infants alive
• They developed over 100 prototypes and as a result created a sleeping bag with a special insert to keep the babies warm
• The team collected feed back from users of the sleeping bag and needed to make sure people would use it, or the problem would not be solved
• The Embrace incubator is small and light, making it easy and cheap to transport and can be sanitized in boiling water
• It costs approximately $25 compared the the cost of a traditional incubator at $20,000
• Embrace now has programs in 11 countries and has reached over 50,000 low birth weight and premature infants

Innovation

• Innovation is a design process, not an event

Divergent vs Convergent Thinking

• The empathy process requires both divergent and convergent thinking
• Divergent thinking is used to generate new ideas and choices
• Convergent thinking is used to refine them

Empathy

• Is achieved by relating innovation, design thinking, and problem-solving
• Empathy gives the confidence of working on a meaningful problem as you take a perspective other than your own
• It involves intellectual identification with another's feelings, thoughts, or attitudes, and this is central to the human-centered design process
• Empathy requires understanding the needs and experiences of others to designing suitable solutions
• Fully grasp the experiences of others through observation, interaction, and immersion
• In the empathy stage you can think through the experience of another by understanding it completely

Observation + Inference = Insight

• Observation, combined with inference helps to generate an insight, enabling continued progress in the design thinking process
• Inference, also known as "adductive reasoning," relies on probability, experience, and intuition
• To develop insight, one should immerse, observe, and engage and connect with people in person to seek stories, feelings, and beliefs, seeing the world through their eyes

Needs

• Defined as physical, psychological, or cultural requirements unmet by existing solutions
• Needs should be expressed as verbs and activities to capture people's motivations and emotions

Exercise

• Interview a partner to learn about their experience getting to the university
• Learn their experience, what they do, how they feel about it and what needs aren't being met

Journey Map

• A journey map is a visualization of the process they go through in order to reach a goal

Assignment

• Create a journey map by watching the video on creating journey maps and conduct an interview with another student about their experience getting to school

insights, Concepts, Solutions

• The design process involves:
• Empathy
• Insights
• Concepts
• Solutions
• Abstract and concrete thinking can be compared using an apple
• Abstract: the word apple
• Pictorial: a picture of an apple
• Concrete: an actual apple

Domains

• Problem domain: the environment is where the solution will come to work
• Solution domain: the abstract environment where the solution is developed
• Differences between the problem domain, and the solution domain are the causes for possible errors when the solution is planted into the problem domain

Empathy Map

• Documents observations and inferences of user beliefs and emotions relevant to a certain situation or experience
• It uses observations or interviews, to structure a process of considering what was heard or seen, and what can be inferred with insights