The 3 stages of Design Thinking: A literature review

Introduction

Today’s postmodern world offers various options for consumers to choose from as one of the results of the fast pace of technological changes. It becomes more and more important to innovate solutions which customers do not expect but will still love (Verganti, 2013). Companies need to consider new reasons for customers to buy their products. One possibility to generate new ideas or products at a faster pace is design thinking. This approach is very popular in the management domain, especially for the last decade. Design thinking is closely related to innovation, first because it is an innovative approach for business managers to apply strategies that originate from design professions and second because the outcomes of design thinking tend to be original solutions to problems (Dorst, 2011; Simons, Gupta, & Buchanan, 2011).

Existing literature struggles agreeing on a clear-cut definition of design thinking, although various people have been exploring the field during the last decades. In the early years of research on design thinking Buchanan (1992) already claimed that there is a variety of ideas as well as methods that claim to be part of the overall approach. According to Buchanan (1992) design thinking usually deals with problems that have clients or decision makers with conflicting values and confusing information, thus resulting in indeterminacy of the addressed problems. Rittel (1972) defines this particular kind of problems as wicked problems stating among others that the subject matter of design is potentially universal and hence wicked.

Dorst (2011) suggests that by using design thinking, an open problem-solving approach is applied. Originating from a model that a product and its use result in value, using a closed problem-solving approach to resolve the equation would mean that the value and the use are known and only the product needs to be created. By implementing design thinking as an open problem-solving approach only the value is known, but product and use are unknown and thus have to be explored which leads to original ideas. So in the end, design thinking is considered as an approach to complex problems that are often characterized as undeterminable and uncertain.

In the following, design thinking will be examined more in detail. Continuing with a practical example, the review will end with a conclusion based on the previous findings.

Design thinking

The definition of design thinking varies so often because design thinking contains different stages and various methods that are diversely described by scholars and experts in this field. The core of all descriptions of design thinking can be summarized to 3 stages defined by Brown (2009) as inspiration, ideation and implementation. Overall, Brown (2008) describes design thinking as a method to fit the users needs with what is technically feasible and commercially viable.

So first, the inspiration phase is described as a creative process that is human-centered where a (design thinking) team experiences the problem or opportunity (Brown, 2008; Brown, 2009; Lockwood, 2014). In this phase it is important to focus on the consumer and explore how they think and feel by watching, listening and collecting their stories (Olsen, 2015). Hereby, Olsen (2015) argues that the team should start from customer insights and examine the needs and unsolved problems of customers. A difficult twist can be found in this stage as the team needs to be aware of that a problem given by a consumer does not automatically lead to a good product, so that there is a problem in matching the customer insights to the organizational performance in the right way. However, the goal is to identify an aspect of human behavior relevant to an organization and convert it to a benefit for the customer and a business value for the company (Brown, 2009). So the first phase emphasizes the exploration of a problem as the foregoer of a solution (Cross, 1995).

Second, the ideation phase contains many methods to create and test the ideas that resulted from the first phase. Collaboration is very important at this point (and in general). Further, Beckmann and Berry (2007) propose to create teams with opposing characters in transforming information. Due to the diversity of people’s backgrounds on a design thinking project, the leadership should rotate in every phase to the person that has the best skills for the purpose of that phase or method (Beckmann & Berry, 2007). One of the most important methods of design thinking is rapid prototyping because it is crucial to gain knowledge about the strengths and weaknesses of an idea (Brown, 2009). With the use of prototyping it is possible to visualize an idea and test it thoroughly. Rapid prototyping is also present in the definition of design thinking by Lockwood (2009). One goal of rapid prototyping is to make mistakes as fast as possible to explore new directions of improvement for an idea and in the end, it also minimizes costs and negative surprises close to the launch of a product by uncovering flaws in the early stages of product development (Olsen, 2015).

Third, the implementation phase is defined as bringing the idea respectively the product to the market (Brown, 2009), which includes the development of a communication strategy for marketing purposes. In this stage, it is again important to examine the market and demands for the designed product, so that flaws can be discovered and improved. Hence, iteration is another important characteristic of design thinking as it makes the process a continuous one, always reflecting on changes in customers needs.

Iteration

Starting with taking a closer look into the meaning of iteration for design thinking, it becomes clear that design thinking is not a linear process. Lockwood (2009) integrates concurrent business analysis in his definition of design thinking. Iteration is key to all stages of design thinking, because the more often a process is repeated, the more flaws can be discovered and improved. Even when the product is already in the market, by concurrently analyzing the market, the product can be developed and altered trying to fit the user’s needs at every point in time.

Collaboration

Further, as already pointed out, some scholars regard collaboration as central to design thinking (Liedtka, 2014; Seidel & Fixson, 2013; Beckmann & Berry, 2007). Olsen (2015) describes that by collaborating the creative potential of the team can be discovered and Beckmann and Berry (2007) propose that the leadership should rotate at every stage to the person who is best skilled in that particular stage. Liedtka (2014) even argues that by collaboration in design thinking it is possible to reduce cognitive bias and mistakes in the decision-making process. Garud, Jain and Tuertscher (2008) highlight collaboration between teams of professionals and users stating that the distinction between them blurs and a community of co-designers emerges.

Learning

Many scholars point out that learning is also central to design thinking. Beckmann and Berry (2007) even explain design thinking as a model of learning and also Lockwood (2009) reports fast learning as a part of his definition of design thinking. Owen (2007) states that to maximize learning design thinking avoids making choices as long as possible and in doing so uncertainty is reduced. Further, Razzouk and Shute (2012) affirm that by building experience in a domain, people identify problems faster. Overall, some scholars argue design thinking to be a learning model (Beckmann & Berry, 2007; Dorst, 2011) because different methods of gaining and using knowledge are used to challenge different minds to come to original solutions by working together.

Role of designers

In the past, the role of designers was a rather small one by finishing off a final product (Brown, 2009), whereas now, it is constantly growing in importance. Brown (2008) states that originally designers were included at the end of a process when the idea itself was ready and only needed to appeal visually to customers. Now, designers are involved from the beginning and create ideas that meet the needs and desires of customers much better and thus create new forms of value (Brown, 2008). There is a high demand for designers in every industry and although their profession has been stretched to diverse areas, they are often referred to as doing the same (Kimbell, 2011). Kimbell (2011) criticizes that the similarities of designers are highlighted and the development of different professions and institutions have been neglected which is a problem that still needs to be overcome. Furthermore, with the evolution of design thinking, other agents such as consumers and people from other domains became more and more important, too, as they bring in new perspectives to projects that might be stuck at one point. Olsen (2015) states that repeated brainstorming sessions can only be effective when new members with new information join the team.

Role of consumers

To elaborate roles apart from designers, the role of consumers will be explored. Nowadays, consumers are not only more active in their decision-making process, they are even collaborating with brands to enhance their own experience (Nishikawa, Schreier, & Ogawa, 2013). Also Garud, Jain and Tuertscher (2008) highlight the blurring distinction between professionals and users. As the design thinking approach involves all parties concerned with a problem, consumers are also part of it and can contribute to find solutions. This fact was nearly unimaginable in the past, but brings a lot of potential for todays and tomorrows participatory culture.

Another point Kimbell (2011) states is the problem that designers are in the spotlight and other stakeholders like users are undervalued. Indeed, one key to design thinking is a human-centered approach (Lookwood, 2009). So, it is necessary to explore the users needs and desires to be able to fit the product to the user namely by working together with users and creating a new product ‘with’ them instead of ‘for’ them (Olsen, 2015). Therefore, the role of the user is a central one and in contrast to other approaches, design thinking involves consumers on many different levels.

Practical Example

Brown (2008) gives several examples on how the design thinking approach helped companies to solve problems and improve their performance in many different aspects beyond the original problem area. An interesting one is the case of Kaiser Permanente, an American company focusing on health care. One of their initial goals was to adjust shift changes for nurses. With the help of Brown’s company IDEO, a diverse team was arranged. Starting with the inspiration phase, the team sat together with operating nurses to point out all problems during shift changes. A major problem turned out to be that all nurses had different approaches in informing the next nurse about the status quo, that it took 45 minutes to do so on average and they still missed to pass on details that patients regarded as most important ones. This way, patients felt that with every nurse change there was a lack in their care. Realizing the actual problem, the design thinking team went over to the ideation phase and started searching for possible solutions using brainstorming and rapid prototyping. In case of a service that must be improved the prototyping means e.g. recording a performance of the designed service to evaluate it later on. By gathering valuable feedback iteratively from every prototype, the idea could be improved. The working prototype included that nurses passed the information on in the presence of the patient and that they made use of a new simple software so they could add new notes to the ones from the last changes of shifts. This resulted in a better quality of the transfer of knowledge as well as in reducing time. Measuring the impact of this change, Kaiser Permanente found out that the time of a nurse arriving and first interacting with the patient halved and added time for other work. As a result, patients were significantly more satisfied and welcomed side effects were that also the nurses reported a better work experience being more productive and satisfied with their work.

This practical example shows that many of the important aspects discussed before were included in the procedure. In the beginning, by setting up a team of design thinking professionals from IDEO and project team members from Kaiser Permanente a diverse structure was included which is important to look at a problem from different perspectives. Then, in the first inspiration phase, a human-centered approach was applied by interviewing nurses and patients, who are the actual users, thoroughly. As they also iteratively evaluated their prototypes with nurses and patients they made sure to involve the actual users in every stage. This can also be seen as a good example for proper collaboration as well as for iteration. Further, this example also shows that the role of the designers was not a major but rather a functional one because the emphasis was on the humans or users behind it. Overall, the project made the team learn new insights so that they were able to improve the situation in the end.

Generally, this practical example illustrates that the design thinking approach can be used for very diverse targets, e.g. improving a service in the health care domain. In doing so, the use of design thinking methods in every stage has to be thought through thoroughly being customized to every project and step. That also might be one reason for scholars having a variety of different definitions originating from the same point. They all have different kinds of projects in mind when explaining and defining design thinking.

Conclusion

Due to the possibly universal nature of problems that can be solved with the use of design thinking, these problems are also described as wicked (Buchanan, 1992). Nonetheless or especially for that reason, design thinking seems to be one of the most favored approaches to innovate for managers. With the adaptation of design thinking to other domains than that of design the development of new directions is logical. Hence, diverse scholars set different highlights on aspects of design thinking that have a special importance to their domain, so that the whole approach does not seem to have a unified definition although all definitions have aspects in common. One key aspect is to involve humans, whether designers, experts of other fields or actual users. As a result of bringing all parties, which are affected by a specific problem, together to work on a solution with the use of different methods, innovative solutions can derive. Here, diverse teams have to be set up to be able to look at a problem from different perspectives and learn from each other. By listening to users in the first phase and also integrate them and collaborate with them further, good solution prototypes can be the outcome. Again, collaboration and iteration are important points through the whole process. Overall, design thinking can be described as a human-centered approach (Lookwood, 2009).

References

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