Over the course of seven weeks, I dove into the steps of the Design Thinking process and how it related to user experience (UX). I learned about the five steps – empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test – and how they affect the process of solving problems for customers.
When learning something new, you have to begin with the basics. The Stanford Design Thinking Crash course was a really cool introduction to how the Design Thinking process works. I enjoyed this introduction and also got to know one of my classmates, Michelle, which was a fun experience. The exercise showed us how to create a problem statement, analyze our partner’s needs and create a solution.
In addition, I researched Puma’s Clever Little Bag campaign, which is a great example of the Design Thinking process and how a company turned a problem (cardboard waste) into a creative business campaign.
FEEL and NEED Statements
With the Design Thinking process comes the art of learning about customer’s psychological tendencies. The way we feel when we use objects or services directly impacts our return to that specific product or object. FEEL and NEED statements help us understand why certain objects or products appeal to us more than others. I analyzed three tangible objects – Starbucks coffee, my gym and my camera – to see how those objects make me feel and why I continue to use them.
The ideas behind why we continue to use the same products or gravitate back toward familiar areas in our lives is correlated with the Design Thinking process and how researchers make products and services better for their users.
Empathizing with the User
Analyzing a customer or user’s needs leads us into the beginning stage of the Design Thinking process – empathy. Researchers and designers use empathy maps to dissect user’s needs, thoughts, feelings, actions and pains in a situation or experience. In an exercise, I analyzed an episode of Undercover Boss and created an empathy map for the experience. An empathy map is a visualization tool that is used to express information about a user’s needs. It’s like a window into people’s minds.
An important quote or “mantra” about user-centered design is “know thy user, for they are not you.” As a designer or researcher, you must take your own thoughts or opinions and set them to the side, as your customers and users are the ones you are creating solutions for.
Personas
Creating a persona can help designers and researchers understand more about their customers. A persona is a unique tool that gives a designer an inside look and summary on different types of users that are using a product or service. Research is needed to create personas; the more information you have on a specific user, the better their experience can turn out. Creating a persona for myself as a shopper for Anthropologie.com and one for an influencer, helped me understand the persona process and how it influences the Design Thinking process.
After analyzing your users and customers, it is important to dive into the problem. Why is this happening? What problems are arising for these customers? Can we make it better for them?
Problem Statements
These questions are important to ask, and they will help lead to solutions. Problem statements help designers and researchers focus in on the problem at specific, detailed points. Sometimes a problem is too board, and a problem statement can help the researchers focus in on a smaller part of the problem. I used the Undercover Boss episode’s problems to create problem statements for a few of the characters.
In most cases, researchers won’t have to look too far to find out where their problems lie. Customer reviewers are a great way to take stock of your service and to see what customers like, don’t like or have problems with. I analyzed the customer reviews for the Pandora, Starbucks and Aaptiv apps and discovered a few problems. After understanding what problems the customers had, I then tried to create solutions for each app.
Ideation
The step in the Design Thinking process that involves creating solutions is called the ideation step. This step is used to generate ideas in broad terms that could be configured to make solutions and prototypes. There are many ideation techniques – some require you to have a large group of people to brainstorm and bounce ideas off of each other, and others are for individuals who can create ideas on their own. Storyboarding, braindumping and brainwriting are examples of other ideation techniques.
One of the last pieces of the Design Thinking puzzle comes with creating a map about the customer experience. A journey map is a creative infographic that details the customer’s journey in completing a task or general activity with an end goal. Designing journey maps for personas helps researchers and designers target specific problems and create solutions for those problems.
Conclusion
The Design Thinking process is all about the user. How can we help make this user’s experience better or more satisfactory? Is there a way to make this process more efficient? What does the user care most about? We can ask these questions to help us understand the user and their needs more.
The Design Thinking process is something that I did not know much about going into this course. But, I realized very quickly that the process is worth the work. I discovered a lot about myself as a consumer through the Design Thinking process, as well. The process targets the things we need most from our products, and services and it highlights the flaws, too. This course helped me understand more about User Experience design. It broke down the process and helped me understand what it takes to create an efficient product or service for users.
MAGGIE PRUITT 