What is Design Thinking & How we use it for delivering the best possible solutions.
Tags: Software Development, Design Thinking, Solution Design, Technology, People And Culture

What is Design Thinking & How we use it for delivering the best possible solutions. Arion Follow Aug 26 · 12 min read

So first things first, What is Design Thinking?

There’s been a lot of fuss around this concept. The number of articles in management literature and weekly magazines, as well as in the academic research have taken it to the level of hype or even the status of “a fad”, some may argue. The term was coined in 2008 by Tim Brown, current Executive Chair of IDEO, the global design company that is one of the main promoters of this tool and an organization responsible without a doubt for its increased popularity. However, discourse around design methodologies application to other fields is much older, being around 50 years old with the first attempts to scientize design reaching back to the 60s.

Trying to define Design Thinking (DT) is easy and hard, which is not a contradiction. We can simplify it, and address it as a packaged solution to approach it in a more practical and pragmatic way, and we will take this path here. But one can’t avoid pointing out a key issue: we are talking about design. Design, as a term, exists in many contexts and has many connotations, and as a discipline it seems to be constantly growing and evolving, which also means the definitions evolve and change continuously.

If we try to explain it shortly, Design Thinking was described as “a methodology that imbues the full spectrum of innovation activities with a human-centered design ethos” (Brown, 2008). But what does this all mean? Design thinking provides a framework for product development in which we place the user at the center of it all, and that tackles designer’s empathy to match the users needs with what is technologically feasible and what is viable from a business perspective.

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.” — Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO.

Design thinking is all about empathizing, asking the right questions, powerful creative collaboration and prototyping, all these in an iterative process. But in order to get each of these right there are some core mindsets that teams need in order to develop their full innovative potential, which are the basis of what is known as “Psychological safety”. Powerful mindsets that can unleash not only the full power of the teams but of each individual at the organization, and at Arion we have imbued them in every aspect of our culture as we believe that an environment where everyone can feel comfortable voicing their ideas and where trust and respect are the basis of all interactions, is the core for a place where great ideas can flourish. (Check out Adrian’s article to get more insights on our culture!) This was well documented by Google in a humongous research effort (2 years and 280 teams) done to shed light into what makes successful teams different.

The trait singled out in the quest for the perfect team: Psychological safety.

“Psychological safety is the biggest distinction in innovative teams.”–Frederik Pferdt, Chief Innovation Evangelist at Google

Teams with psychological safety are teams where people can share their ideas freely, feel safe taking risks and trying new things, and are comfortable asking each other for help and acknowledging mistakes. Getting a team to feel this way is no easy task, but it is fundamental for creativity to flow. Psychological safety efficiency and its importance in teams’ performance has been well documented, as well as its fragility.

So, how do we foster such teams at Arion? Promoting 3 mindsets that are tricky to achieve but have great impact in our everyday work and help build psychological safety:

● Surf the vulnerability loops with pride and honor

● Look through learning lenses

● Keep your senses honed, curiosity unveils great treasures

Surf the vulnerability loops with pride and honor

Vulnerability is always about loops, the way the receiver reacts is as important as the one sending the message, be it asking for help or admitting a mistake. Jeffrey T. Polzer, an organizational behavior researcher at Harvard is the one to have pointed to these “vulnerability loops” that are created when we share a fault and our counterpart that feels the vulnerability reacts doing the same, bringing both parts closer to each other. At some point we all get the feeling that deeper bonds are developed when we give space to being more open and vulnerable, and this makes cooperation across teams much easier.

Getting comfortable with being vulnerable, especially taking into account how fierce competition is outside and how much it’s been drilled into our heads the relevance of striving for individual success, is never a simple task. We’ve all been there once, starting a project or a document, not really sure of how to or where to start from or dreading having made a mistake, but struggled with whether to say something about it. How would others react? When is it right to say it? Who should we talk to about it? and would there be consequences? All this uncertainty creates barriers, and robs us of precious time and brain energy.

The earlier we tackle mistakes the faster they get solved, and the same goes for asking for help: the earlier one asks for help the faster things get going. That is how we encourage everyone at Arion to see it. Every team member is responsible for their work, but all teams members are also responsible for the success of all team members. The success of all and every member is what makes our teams, squads and tribes excel (If you haven’t read Mateo’s piece on our Operational model check it out!). So team members are encouraged to guide each other towards success, learning and growing together.

Look through learning lenses

This is quite straightforward: if we knew everything, and everything had already been solved, then there would be nothing left to create or discover. It’s not about knowing the answers, it’s about finding them, exploring the unknown, experimenting new things, and learning all the time that there is always space to go beyond. And mistakes are the most fertile grounds for learning, a great source of insights. That’s how we want our people to experience them, so they may take risks with bold solutions!

Keep your senses honed, curiosity unveils great treasures

Curiosity is what helps us understand better everything and anything. It’s what takes us in exploration quests about topics, that lead us to a deeper understanding of the matter in front of us. It’s also what keeps us open to new information and knowledge. We encourage our teams to ask a lot of questions, the more they ask the better they will be prepared to deliver the best solution.

This is the stepping stone, the foundation for the process: arming the teams with psychological safety so that they can embrace a truthful creative collaboration process as design thinking. So how do we start to apply it?

Let’s start from the general step by step of Design Thinking. There are several

“schools” regarding this: D-School Stanford’s Design School, The British Design Council, IDEO and others. Each has their proposed naming and stage division. Regardless of this, in spirit they are all the same. Let’s take a look at it.

Stages of Design Thinking

Empathize and Discover. The first step is understanding the quest at hand and

connecting with the people we are designing for. It’s a stage for gathering insights and deepening the understanding on the matter, and the needs and expectations of users and other stakeholders.

Define and Frame. With the information gathered the next step is to define the problem and unveil the core challenge.

Ideate. We’ve found an opportunity to address a problem, now it’s time to search how to solve it. How might your product help solve the matter at hand? Multiple ideas will be proposed through searching diverging ideas in brainstorming and then prioritized, searching for the best fit.

Experiment and Prototype. It’s the moment to start shaping the solution and bring the product to reality. By building prototypes and experimenting with them, the solution is honed and polished.

Assess and Evolve. Testing with users helps to get new insights and deepen our empathy with them. With the feedback and new insights gathered, it’s time to evaluate, give and receive feedback, and integrate it into the product.