Design thinking (DT) means different things to different
people. Here I would like to present my view of 4 core tenets of DT. This view
is influenced by various champions of DT such as D-schools at Stanford and
Potsdam
(especially Lakshman
Pachineela & Prof.
Ulrich Winberg), Prof.
Karl Ulrich of Wharton, Ideo folks (Kelley brothers: David
& Tom, Tim Brown),
Gandhi, Steve Jobs, and of course, my own experience as a practitioner and an
educator.
Empathy: Census of India (2001) says that 72% of all households in India use
traditional cooking stove (chulha). This would be a useful data point. However,
it doesn’t tell you what the cooking stove means to the people in the
house. What all individual and social behaviours are associated with it? What
does the activity of collecting wood mean to the women? Through observation and
interviewing DT tries to gather insights beyond what people say – their
behaviours, attitudes, artefacts, context etc. DT borrows a lot from
ethnography here. “Getting
people to talk: An ethnography & interviewing primer” by
Gabriel Biller and Kristy Scovel is a great video tutorial on various
techniques used in this kind research.
Bias for experimentation: Indian
education system advocates thinking through the problem well before taking any
action. Whether you are in 1st grade or doing an MBA, you are
groomed and tested on analytical problem solving. DT has a different take on
this – something closer to what Gandhi advocated. It says think a little –
experiment a little - learn and iterate. Why experiment? Well, there are
several advantages. One, a low-cost experiment reduces the anxiety of unknown.
Two, the learning from the experiment generates more ideas. Three, it validates
whether you have access to the right skills to put the idea into action. Four, a
prototype helps you communicate your idea better. In fact, prototyping has been useful for clarifying requirements during the design of Boeing 747.
Process focus:
Depending upon whom you talk to you may hear that DT as a process involves 4 (Prof.
Ulrich@Wharton), 5 (Stanford D-school) or 6 (Potsdam D-school) steps. In the
end, it doesn’t really matter. All perspectives incorporate immersive research,
framing of the challenge or a point of view, generation of ideas,
experimentation and validation. DT is not like an ISO which demands exact
conformance to a standard. In fact, jumping off from research to prototyping or
refining the challenge multiple times is very common and encouraged. Iteration
is an expectation and typically you iterate tens or sometimes even hundreds of times.
How do you get the empathy created for teams who are sitting far from business "offshore" and who neither feel nor know if they can feel the pain of the business?
ReplyDeleteA couple of approaches -
ReplyDeletea) simulate such an environment (set-up and people) and role play. Not as good as face-to-face but still better
b) request for a video recording 'a day in a life of .....'. Need not be for the whole day. Some different 4 to 5 short clips across the day.
c) teleconferencing - the last option