Unfortunately, I was absent for the first day of the workshop, but through the second section and the insight of my classmates, I believe I came away with a strong understanding on design thinking. Here are some of my biggest takeaways:
1. Importance of Customer Interviews: Throughout the entire design thinking framework, customer interviews play an integral part into understanding the products or services that will truly resonate with the market. Let’s use the cell phone example from class. When you begin by asking a potential customer what issues they have with a facet of their life, in this case cell phones, you begin to understand the true pain points that they are experiencing. A big mistake that a lot of people make is assuming that everyone shares the same perspective on a certain topic as you do. By conducting extensive interviews across varying demographics, you can either confirm or iterate on such an issue.
So after speaking with a variety of people and identifying a consistent issue with cell phones, one can begin to prototype a solution. At this stage, it is crucial to maintain contact with customers in order to see what they think of the product. It is naïve to assume that you will be able to hit the nail on the head your first time through, so you must continue to iterate the prototype based on customer feedback. This back-and-forth process of creating and receiving feedback helps a product or service develop fluidly.
2. Avoiding an Anchoring Bias: An anchoring bias occurs when someone is reluctant to change his or her initial stance on a matter, despite the introduction of new, potentially contradictory evidence. If new evidence arises through interviews, market research, or product evaluation, you must be willing to iterate accordingly. It is very difficult to change or even completely pivot away from an idea that you truly believe in and have put a lot of time into, but you must be open to the notion. If you fail to innovate over time, your initial product may become obsolete.
3. Defining the Problem is the Most Important Step: This is purely personal opinion, but I believe that out of all the phases of design thinking, defining the problem is the most important. This stage sets the framework for the following stages and how accurately you are able to define a problem will indicate your success down the line. I’ll use my cell phone innovation as an example. So the problem I pointed out is that people spend too much time on their phones, and they may be doing so unwillingly. An ample solution I thought of is an app that tracks your daily use over time, so you can be more cognizant over your behavioral patterns. However, if you think through the topic more closely, maybe the issue isn’t that people don’t know how much they’re using their phone, but rather that they wish they weren’t using their phones during certain hours of the day. The more you talk to people, the more you will be able to understand a problem, which enhances your ability to create the best solution.