Design Thinking Fundamentals

Giving and Receiving Feedback

• As a giver of feedback, focus on improving, not criticizing, and be constructive.
• Explain why you think what you do as a giver of feedback.
• As a receiver of feedback, separate your ego from your work, listen with curiosity, and don't defend or justify.

Design Thinking Principles

• Desirability: consider what makes sense to people and for people.
• Feasibility: consider what is technically possible within the foreseeable future.
• Viability: consider what is likely to become part of a sustainable business model.

The Design Thinking Process

• Starts with taking action and understanding the right questions.
• Embraces simple mindset shifts and tackles problems from a new direction.
• Asks four key questions: What is?, What if?, What wows?, and What works?

Benefits of Design Thinking

• Understand the unmet needs of the target audience (customers, clients, students, users, etc.).
• Reduce the risk associated with launching new ideas, products, and services.
• Generate solutions that are revolutionary, not just incremental.
• Learn and iterate faster.
• Collaborate better and tap into the creative potential of individuals and teams.

Phases of Design Thinking

• Frame a Question: identify a driving question that inspires others to search for creative solutions.
• Gather Inspiration: inspire new thinking by discovering what people really need.
• Generate Ideas: push past obvious solutions to get to breakthrough ideas.
• Make Ideas Tangible: build rough prototypes to learn how to make ideas better.
• Test to Learn: refine ideas by gathering feedback and experimenting forward.
• Share the Story: craft a human story to inspire others toward action.

Essence of Design Thinking

• Human Centric
• Possibility Driven
• Options Focused
• Iterative

Real-Life Example

• In Denmark, 125,000 senior citizens rely on government-sponsored meals, with an estimated 60% of seniors in assisted living facilities or residential care units having poor nutrition.