Business Transformation: Leveraging Design Thinking

Entire worlds can exist within the confines of one’s imagination. It can conjure up universes and infinite possibilities. What are the underlying mechanisms that can galvanize thought into reality?

When business as usual has been disrupted, technology has acted as a bridge. For many businesses, the move to being digital first hasn’t been easy. Keeping pace with technological changes can obfuscate business journeys as many business leaders would be unsure about how to proceed. This is where design thinking comes in.

Design thinking is both a method and a philosophy for tackling practical and creative problems. It is mainly dependent on design approaches and procedures, although it has emerged from a variety of professions, including engineering and business.

It is an optimistic process of discovery that focuses on “what may be” and “what if”.  The emphasis is on a different approach than just working on “what should be”.

The approach begins with inquiries and in-depth conversations with end-users or customers to gain a better understanding of their experiences, resulting in rich qualitative data. These observations are then grouped and segregated into themes, resulting in powerful and often hidden-in-plain-sight insights that spark new ideas and motivate people to take action. There are 5 steps in the design thinking process which are as below:

Source: Interaction Design Foundation

Empathize better: Business transformation necessitates the creation of rich and pleasant experiences. Being in the shoes of the consumer can assist firms and marketers gain a better grasp of the precise pain areas, need-gaps, and factors that influence customer decisions.

Keep track of how customers react to your product or service. Take note of what they search for on Google or on the site, examine click-stream data to see how they interact with your site or app, examine chat logs to see what questions they are asking your customer service agents, or even interview your customers to learn more about what they want from their digital experience.

Define problem areas: The define step clarifies the issues you’re attempting to tackle. The knowledge gathered throughout the empathy stage will assist you in determining where you should spend your time and attention.

It’s time to develop a problem statement after you’ve analysed this data. If consumers are constantly contacting you about understanding if your products are made from recycled materials then that is an aspect your business should look at. It can be one problem statement or multiple. All of these problem areas are opportunities for your business to enrich customer experiences.

Ideate: Now that the problem, has been identified with clarity, it’s time to come up with solutions. In order to produce a range of innovative ideas, it is critical to brainstorm utilising the collective wits of a group during this phase. Work cross-functionally in a highly collaborative context rather than relying just on your team. This is not the time to overthink things or come up with a single answer.

Prototype: Here, the business will try out a number of simple and low-cost models in order to swiftly test and evaluate your solution concepts. Prototypes should be evaluated on a small group of people, either through usability testing or a sample of your site’s visitors.

Observe how people engage with the prototype, then gather feedback and utilise it to tweak and improve the next version. This phase should go at a breakneck rate, with rapid and effective changes. Create a safe atmosphere in which it is OK to fail and to learn from those failures in order to continue to improve.

Test: Testing your many prototypes on a regular basis allows you to continually improve. Every connection with a customer is a chance to learn more about how to improve the customer experience. During the testing step, you collect the data you’ll need to go back and review prior phases of the design thought process.

Design thinking is a constantly evolving process as newer ways to do things, new technologies, need-gaps, and perspectives will emerge. It is a methodology that helps business consistently innovate and build a holistic perspective towards their products and services. With design thinking, businesses can avoid falling into the stagnation trap once they have acquired a certain market share.