Design thinking, in simple words, is a human-centered problem-solving approach that takes you from the problem to a solution. This approach includes understanding the customer needs, empathising with them and finding innovative solutions through an intensive brainstorming session, prototyping and testing.
This process helps you discover new insights, define the problem, develop ideas, and deliver creatively. This approach has helped organisations such as Airbnb, Procter and Gamble, Google, Pepsico, Apple etc., to bring innovative solutions in their work. Design Thinking is widely used in different work sectors to tackle various challenges.
The tenets of Design Thinking can be implemented in both your career and your personal life. Everyone is a designer, and every job or challenge needs Design Thinking. Whether you are creating a new marketing campaign or working on your personal growth, if you are making decisions with a particular goal in mind, you are designing. In addition, empathy, problem-solving and innovative skills play an essential role in our careers and everyday lives.
Some of the few ways in which Design Thinking can help both your personal and professional life are given below:
- Creates Better Products/services and Experiences
Design Thinking is all about being customer-centric. It focuses on finding the needs and addressing the users’ challenges, mapping their journey and uncovering their wants and desires. Then, through channelling the problems and possibilities systematically and engaging with end-users, we develop innovative ideas to meet the goal.
- Generates New Ideas Quickly
Design thinking is one of the most empowering methods for generating ideas. This method allows room for collaborating ideas with people from different walks of life. Collaborating ideas with people who think differently gives a resounding impact on innovation.
- Builds Brand Loyalty
When you use the Design Thinking method to solve problems, you consistently create innovative products/services that delight the customer. This builds your reputation as an organisation that excels in meeting customer needs. Through this process, you also begin to meet your organisation’s values aiding in building your brand value. As the Design Thinking process takes time to learn about the customer’s needs and meet its requirements, eventually, your organisation starts to matter to them beyond the simple functionality of your product.
- Accept Our Mistakes and Uncertainties Easier
Design thinking is a process that can be applied even in our self-evaluation. This method helps us identify our thinking/working pattern and question this pattern to improve ourselves. The inherent idea of Design Thinking is that mistakes and challenges are opportunities for learning and growth.
- Spark Personal Growth
Innovation is often more complex in one’s path than in the corporate world. The thought of taking a risk and making a mistake at our own expense is often scary and makes us think negatively. Our narratives about ourselves often tend to focus on what we cannot do rather than what we can do. The goal of Design Thinking here is to change the narrative to solution-based thinking. It helps you discover the challenges you need to overcome and stimulates you to take small steps towards your goal.
If you want to master the Design Thinking process from inception to validation, enrol for ijaipuria’s online course on ‘Design Thinking for Innovation’. It thoroughly explains the tools and techniques that create value through systematic innovation. It also gives an in-depth study of how to use design thinking and the various approaches to design thinking through real-life case studies of living organisations.
