Design Thinking 101: Principles, tools and examples to transform your creative process


Credit by: http://brainstudioz.com/graphic-design/


Give each step of your process, from brainstorming to creating the final product: a boost
According to the movies and television shows, the design process is quite simple: you are walking your dog / strolling through an all-night restaurant / sitting at your desk, and suddenly you are surprised by a brilliant idea. You sketch it, present it to someone and you have a boom: you have successfully designed a product that is ready to be sent to the world. If you are an artist, an engineer, a product designer or anyone else who is committed to the creative process, you know that it is rarely so simple. The creative process is called process for a reason!
Lately, "design thinking" has been generating a lot of enthusiasm in the design community because it promises to make the creative process simpler and more effective. But what is design thinking and what can you really learn from it?
In this article, we will take you through everything you need to know to transform your creative process with design thinking, which includes:
What is design thinking?
A little history about design thinking.
An overview of the building blocks of design thinking
Strategies and tools to incorporate design thinking into your creative process.
A light bulb is in the middle of a thought bubble drawn on a blackboard.
Design thinking is a way to approach the creative process to generate more (and better) ideas and more effective designs.
What is design thinking?
If you search the Internet for a definition of design thinking, thousands of articles, news and videos will appear, many of them from leading publications such as Forbes and The Harvard Business Review. Design thinking has been written and defined in many ways by many people, but deep down, what is it?
Most sources agree that design thinking is a slight variation in a traditional design process. What distinguishes him from the design work of his parents and grandparents, or even the design techniques he learned at school, can be divided into three main categories:
Attention
Speed
Process
Focus on human centered
The design focused on the human being is exactly what it seems: a design that requires special care to anticipate and meet the needs of its audience. Of course, at a basic level, this is what all designs seek to do. However, design thinking interrupts old ideas about what it means to create a product centered on the human being by recognizing some things:
Designers should look at the project from the perspective of the end user.
People who know the project best may have developed biases in this regard.
The key to creating effective designs is empathy.
Emphasis on rapid iteration
You are not likely to create the perfect design on the first try, so the review is such an important part of any design process. In design thinking, iteration through many different versions of an idea is essential to discover what works well in a design and what does not. To do this, design thinkers use strategies such as:
Relying on prototypes / quick drafts to communicate ideas
Creation of prototypes / drafts that can be easily adjusted.
Produce a high resolution prototype only after several rounds of low resolution prototypes
Increasingly collaborative process
Avoiding your own prejudices and personal opinions is absolutely essential if you want to create a product that really meets the needs of your audience. But how can you know if your idea will be a good solution? Design thinkers verify their own personal biases through collaboration in several ways:
Search and incorporation of comments from interest groups.
Search and incorporate expert advice when necessary.
Brainstorm with a team of designers to find a suitable solution.
Four people hold colored paper cutouts of speech bubbles.
Working with others to exchange ideas and design solutions helps you create better and more effective designs.
Where does design thinking come from?
Although design thinking has begun to make headlines recently, the roots of design thinking go back more than 50 years. In this section, we will give a brief description of the people and movements that have influenced design thinking since the 1960s.
A creative revolution: 1960-1980
The sixties and seventies were revolutionary in many ways: people were creating music, art and changes in ways that the world had never seen before. These two decades also had a profound impact on design.
The emergence of design science and ergonomics, as well as design strategies such as cooperative design, set the stage for what would later become human-centered design and design thinking.
Understanding the creators: 1980-1990
With the basis of established design thinking, the world became increasingly interested in something else: what exactly makes a creative person creative and what differentiates that person from the rest?
During this era, psychologists and sociologists became very interested in how designers work, both on their own and as a team. We began to gather what conditions and processes helped the creative people, well ... to create. This helped to give structure and strategy to the creative processes developed in the previous two decades.
Creativity as a service: 1990-2010.
Design thinking strategies are not only useful for designers, in fact, they can be applied to virtually every field of the market. People began to use design thinking to address problems that were obviously not related to design; Instead of using design thinking to create a better chair, they began to experiment with design thinking to improve work flows and interpersonal interactions.
Another important development of the 1990s and 2000s is that designers began to create new design tools, which could be used by both designers and non-designers. This allowed an unprecedented number of people to begin to experiment with the design and central ideas of design thinking.
Design Thinking Today: 2010-present
Nowadays, design thinking is finally starting to gain widespread recognition as an essential strategy in traditional design disciplines, as well as in a variety of other fields, such as business. Design thinking is transforming workflows for everyone from amateur designers to corporate design professionals, which prepares us for a brighter future.
Three people lean over a table, working on a large design contour.
Understanding the fundamental elements of design thinking allows you to transform your creative process and create spectacular designs.
What are the basic components of design thinking?
So, how do you become a true design thinker? What training do you need to have under your belt? Fortunately, design thinking is based on skills that anyone can develop at any time. To improve your ability to think about design, really perfect these skills:
Observation
Ideation
Prototyping
Tests
Observation
If you are designing a building, a menu, a workflow or something completely different, one thing is certain: before you can create a solution, you must understand the problem. The most complicated part? Sometimes, the problem the client presents does not really get to the heart of the problem. To produce a design that offers a functional and meaningful experience for the end user, it must start from the beginning.
If possible, start with the end users. Talk to stakeholders, organize a focus group, schedule interviews or observe users interacting with previous versions of the product. This step is critical to identify and address gaps in the user experience.
Ideation
For most designers, this is the fun part and the most natural part: generating creative ideas. To promote creativity, increase human focus and eliminate bias, use strategies such as:
Collaboration. Work with a team to ideate. If 2 heads are better than 1, imagine how many solutions you can generate with 3, or 4, or ...
Sticky note idea. The idea of ​​sticky notes is a strategy that allows all members of your team to quickly put on the table all your thoughts by giving each idea, the good, the bad and the ugly, your own sticky note.
Prototyping No, that's not a typo. Before choosing a solution and creating a prototype, create an even faster, lower-resolution prototype known as a prototype to help you solve early design problems and compare different ideas.
Prototyping
After devising, select a solution that appears to be very promising. This is not the time to create a full-resolution high resolution product, you want a prototype that you can manipulate and adjust during the entire testing process if necessary.

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