Building Better Products with Design Thinking

Presented by Tolulope Saba at the Usable October 2019 Meetup

Transcript

1. Building better products with design thinking. Tolulope Saba
2. What is design thinking? Design thinking is a process we use as truth seekers to uncover innovative solutions to problems whose solutions don’t seem apparent at first. How do we improve sales? How do I know what product to make? How do I know what features to add? Problems like:
3. What’s the end goal? Design is the goal but information and data guide the way. As truth seekers, our main quest is finding the key underlying principle of the problem and to come up with meaningful, usable, and enjoyable solutions to the problem we face.
4. Problem solving Problem Solution
5. Problem Solution Design thinking Problem solving
6. How does design thinking help? Understanding user needs Understanding the motivation behind these needs Challenge assumptions Time and cost effective way to find solutions that work
7. Who is design thinking for? I can’t create something like this, so I can’t be a good design thinker Design thinking is useful for solving both design and non-design related problems. ANYONE CAN BE A GOOD DESIGN THINKER! ! " When say design, our brain leans towards the artistic side of things rather than the analytical. Creatives first before designers.
8. Creativity =/= Artistry In design thinking, creativity is not the same as artistry. What makes you a creative is your ability to communicate design solutions effectively and your willingness to participate in exercises that make problems easier to solve. You don’t need to be a protopie or Invision guru to be any good at design thinking.
10. Empathy (Know your user) Understanding and sharing the feelings of another person. The first stage in design thinking is the most crucial because if not done correctly, it makes design thinking redundant. It allows you gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve, typically through research and/or interviews. It is a crucial phase because it lets you set aside own assumptions and bias, and gain real insight into users and their needs.
11. Plastic bowl Example A vendor in a boarding school sells plastic bowls to students. He notices a decline in sales over the last term and wants to come up with a solution to this problem.
12. Don’t be generic, be specific. (Design on an individual level) Don’t create products for the middle. You’ll end up with a product that does something for everyone but not enough for anyone. Empathy (Know your user) Who am I making this for? What problem does this product solve? What factors might affect the way the user reacts to this product?
13. Ask why Drill down to the root cause of a problem. “As truth seekers, our quest is to find the key underlying principle of the problem and to come up with meaningful, usable, and enjoyable solutions to the problem we face.”
14. Reason They are difficult to get clean. Why are students no longer interested in this product? Reason When I use them, I always need a lot of soap to wash them Why are they difficult to get clean? Reason Because most of our foods are prepared with oil Why do you always need a soap to wash them? Reason Our school made changes to our diet a little while ago. We eat mostly oily foods now. Why is that so?
15. Reason I prefer having one bowl I use for all my meals. Why don’t you just use a different bowl for oily foods? Reason They all end up getting stolen so I prefer having one I can simply put in my bag and take everywhere I go. Why just one?
16. Define Synthesize your information Analyze your research and identify the problems your users have. Present these problems in the most human-centric way possible.
17. Define Crafting problem statements User + need + reason = Problem statement A problem statement is a concise description of an issue to be addressed or a condition to be improved upon.
18. User Tunde, a Jss2 boarding school student Need Something he can easily wash Reason His school now serves oil based foods that leave tough stains on plastic bowls. **You can create multiple problem statements
19. User Tunde, a Jss2 boarding school student Need Something that fits into his backpack Reason To guard against theft. **You can create multiple problem statements
20. Ideate Brainstorm for solutions around your problem statements. Don’t be keen on finding the perfect solution right away. Write down the first thought that comes to your mind and just keep going.
21. Ideate When you have a bunch of ideas, each can be examined separately to appraise their usability.
22. Ideate Example cont. Porcelain (Ceramic), stainless steel.
23. Prototype After coming up with possible solutions, you need versions of them presentable enough to the user for the aim of collecting feedback. In our field, they can be printed out wireframes or clickable prototypes generated from Invision or XD (If you feel fancy)
24. Prototype Prototype as quickly as you can, even wireframes can be used to gather feedback. Prototypes allows the exploration of concepts before useful resources are spent on actual finished products.
25. Test After creating prototypes, test them out with your users to see how they stack against your user’s expectations. Tests are carried out to learn and improve your design so it’s important not to defend your designs. Based on your feedback and level of iteration required, go back to ideation or prototype phase.
26. Test Example Cont. Stainless steel Porcelain Easier to clean Easy to clean My bag fell and nothing happened to it. My bag fell and it broke
27. Take away
28. Take away After going through the steps a couple of times, depending on feedback, you’ll see your product being more useful to the end user. Design thinking isn’t always a linear process as results and observations from certain stages give us more insight and may require revisiting a previous stage to refine and make alterations.
29. Thank you