Literally, “design thinking” means thinking like a designer, and that is precisely what the Design Thinking approach aims for: that we think like designers when creating or planning any project. And of course, that can also include online sales projects, digital marketing and branding campaigns, or end-to-end customer experience improvement projects.
Design Thinking aims to help us develop knowledge of and empathy for our users and, instead of looking for a single, definitive solution, explore key points and references throughout the stages to create an iterative, non-linear process of constant development and improvement.
“Designers don’t try to search for a solution until they have determined the real problem, and even then, instead of solving that problem, they stop to consider a wide range of potential solutions. Only then will they finally converge upon their proposal. This process is called DESIGN THINKING“. —Don Norman, author of The Design of Everyday Things
Design Thinking and its stages
- Empathize: to design around users’ needs and wishes, you have to dig deep and understand what really matters to them. There are different methods for this: in-depth interviews, observing users in context, focus groups or benchmarking.
Online, you can also carry out broad research: keywords users search for, competitor websites, analysis of user behavior on our own website or social media analysis by topic or profile.
- Define: we’ve gathered a lot of information; now it’s time to converge and find the famous Insights, that is, users’ deep motivations. A simple way is to write sentences such as:
The (persona) needs/fears/expects/wants/wishes for (x) because (insight)
At this stage it’s important to define the focus, knowing exactly what our goals are. For example: “increase followers and engagement on social media”
- Ideate: we have the information and the challenge to solve; now we need to come up with solutions. Brainstorming is one of the simplest forms of creativity. It helps if the whole team can write/draw their proposals so you can gather a large number of ideas. It’s also important to encourage wild ideas.
- Prototype: it’s time to bring ideas down to earth and make them feasible. Prototyping lets us fail fast to learn more about the user. In marketing, you can create a Storyboard, a brochure or a simple landing page for the proposed campaign.
- Test: the goal is to see how users interact and validate the hypothesis. From there, you’ll create increasingly refined versions aligned with what users want. The most important thing in this phase is to listen and observe reactions. If the proposal isn’t working, you can go back to earlier stages.
Design Thinking in a VUCA environment
The VUCA environment stands for Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity, and it’s the environment organizations operate in today. It’s a scenario of constant change, where long-term strategic plans don’t work, and where adaptability and speed are key, as is the need to simplify tasks and actions. This is where Design Thinking is most useful, helping us explore, define and communicate. It allows us to face non-linear, intangible change.
First, it lets us get to know our users in depth, which means that whenever the product or service needs to be iterated or changed, it’s done on solid foundations of knowledge and data.
Second, prototyping and testing go hand in hand with the idea of “fail early to succeed sooner,” or “fail fast, fail cheap.” Failure doesn’t exist in Design Thinking: prototyping is for testing and verifying the hypotheses from earlier research. If a test fails, it’s a lesson that will help with the next model.
Some Design Thinking techniques for marketers
- Empathy map: this activity helps you put yourself in the user’s shoes and align with their needs. Draw a large square divided into four parts: Says, Does, Thinks and Feels, then draw your Buyer persona in the middle. Brainstorm with team members and jot down on post-its observations and assumptions about what your target might say, think, do and feel.
- Customer Journey map: this technique helps us analyze the user’s entire experience with a service/product/campaign end to end, including their feelings, pain points and moments of satisfaction at each stage of the process. In marketing it’s very useful for knowing at which stages of the buying process you can make an impact.
- Stakeholder map: for starting a new project, exploring new markets or launching a new business model. This activity helps identify the project’s stakeholders and the relationships between them.
Each post-it represents a stakeholder: teams, executives, customers, users. For each stakeholder, add another post-it with a phrase expressing their thoughts or opinions. Then use groups and arrows to show how they relate to each other.
