Implementing user focused methods that businesses are using to improve their product experiences.
Design thinking is about gaining insights into your users experience to provide a product or service that will help to benefit their needs.
Simply, anyone of any title can benefit from design thinking for their clients. Your mindset should be focused on showing the client how your process will benefit their pain points, not just telling them how it will.
Let’s focus on a few terms before we go further.
- User – the client(s) who will be engaging with your product
- Empathy – the ability to understand and share the feelings of another
- As-is – the current state of a user’s experience
- To-be – the future state where a design thinking solution has been employed to a user’s pain to improve their experience
- Time box – The act of defining a length of time that a task should take and execute those parameters
There are many design thinking methods that can be used for the benefit of your client(s). However, methods are only a small part of design thinking. Methods such as empathy maps and user journeys will lead to better insights into the clients needs and while that is important, the main importance is the intent behind the user. You may share traits with your users however, you are not the user and it is up to you as a design thinker to try your hardest to separate your own biases and assumptions from the process and learn the needs that your clients truly wants. Assumption themselves are not bad but it is only when we do not acknowledge when we are or when we are not assuming or testing those assumptions, that we see problems arising in our design thinking. Your goal should be recognizing any biases during the process as often as possible for the best experience of your client. So remember to use your empathy and keep your ego in check during the process because, we may let our bias come into play the more passion we hold for a product/service. You will come up with a far more impactful idea if you constantly stay open to serving your client and stay compassionate with yourself in your process.
You may not always get the answer right away but design thinking takes a significant amount of critical thinking. Once you see the gratitude from your clientele, then you will know that you have found your correct answer you were searching for.
Empathy Maps
Empathy maps are not the exact representation of every single client you are aiming your product to. Empathy maps are however, a strategy to test different demographics. We must remember that these maps are only just assumptions until we can prove if they are right or wrong about our clientele.
Journey Maps
In the previous stage, empathy maps, we focused on using data collection to test different client demographics. This provided us with a map of the our users overall character but, in this stage, we will move into a more specific experience. When comparing empathy maps and journey maps, the two factors that will differentiate them is time and action. We use journey maps to map out the clients experience with our product/service from start to finish. All of our journey maps are used to help us find out our user’s pain points and the motivations for wanting to invest in our product/service. Pain points are the obstacles in a user’s experience. These pain points can be physical, emotional, or technological and the severity will vary with each example.
Storyboarding
Storyboarding is a visual form of storytelling that we use to show our client’s journey. Story boards can be thought of as a comic strip that is filled with an artistic depiction and their respective text that helps to address the qualities of our big ideas for our client’s journey.
Roadmapping
Roadmapping is an important factor when it comes your ideas. You do not want to simply give out your concepts and leave, but rather, see them mature as you work on improving your user’s experience with your product/service. You need to plan for long term scenarios as evolution is required to stay competitive in any market. The best way to show the evolution of your user’s experience with your product/service is through a roadmap. This technique is based on time when looking at design decisions and the impact it has on your user’s experience. Roadmaps are a solid way to wrap up a depiction of your ideas.
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What is design thinking?
Design thinking is about gaining insights into your users experience to provide a product or service that will help to benefit their needs.
What are empathy maps?
Empathy maps are however, a strategy to test different demographics. We must remember that these maps are only just assumptions until we can prove if they are right or wrong about our clientele.
What is storyboarding?
Storyboarding is a visual form of storytelling that we use to show our client’s journey.
What is roadmapping?
Roadmapping is a technique that is based on time when looking at design decisions and the impact it has on your user’s experience. Roadmaps are a solid way to wrap up a depiction of your ideas.
