Design Thinking

Process

September 4, 9, 10, 2024

 Quick Recap
• 7-Step Design Process Stages
• 8-Step Design Process
• Design Thinking Objectives
• Stage-wise Design Thinking Process – Define,
Researcy, Ideate, & Prototype
• Remaining 3 stages – Select, Implement, Learn

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 Design Process
Define Research Ideate
(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
• While the design process is often linear, it frequently involves
revisiting earlier segments for reworking as it evolves 3
 Design Process – Define

• Define: First, the design problem and the target

audience needs to be defined

• A precise understanding of the problem and its

constraints allows more exact solutions to be
developed

• This stage determines what is necessary for the project

to be successful

4
 Design Process – Research

• Research: The research stage reviews information

such as the history of the design problem, end-user
research and opinion-led interviews, and identifies
potential obstacles

5
 Design Process – Ideate

• Ideate: Here end-user motivations and needs are

identified, and ideas are generated to meet these,
perhaps through brainstorming

6
 Design Process – Prototype

• Prototyping: Giving shape to the ideas generated

above

• Presented to user-groups and stakeholders for review,

prior to being presented to the client(s)

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 Design Process – Selection

• Selection: Make attempts to review the proposed

solutions against the design briefs/objectives

• Some solutions might be practical but may not be the

best ones

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 Design Process – Implementation

• Implementation: Take care of the design development

and its final delivery to the client

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 Design Process – Learn

• Learning helps designers improve their performance

and, for this reason, designers should seek client and
target audience feedback and determine if the solution
met the goals of the brief

• This may identify improvements that can be made in

the future

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 Eight Step Design Process
Define Gather Concept
Generation Evaluation
Problem Information of Concepts
Problem Statement Brainstorming
Benchmarking Internet Functional Pugh Concept
QFD Patents Decomposition Selection
EDS/PDS Trade Morphological Decision Matrices
Project Planning Literature Chart
Conceptual Generation

Product Configuration Parametric Detail

Architecture Design Design Design
Preliminary
Arrangements of selection of Robust design Detailed
physical elements materials and mfg. Tolerances drawings
to carry out Modeling/sizing Final dimensions and
functions of parts DFM specifications
Embodiment Design 11
 Design Thinking – Objectives
• Better understanding of characteristics and processes
• Differentiate between novice and expert design
thinkers
• To understand what people really think and do when
they are engaged in creative design innovation

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 Design Thinking – Objectives

• How do frameworks, tools, systems, and methods

augment, capture, and reuse successful practices?
• What is the impact on technology, business, & human
performance when design thinking is practised?
• How do the tools, systems, and methods work to get
the innovation?
• Why do these tools, systems, methods, etc. fail?

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Stage-wise Design Process

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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Stage 1 – Define

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 1 – Define

Establishing what the problem is!

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 Stage 1 – Define

Starts with generating or receiving

Design Brief

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 Design Brief
• Design brief is the client’s requirements for a job
• This may be verbal or written,
❖ Simple or Complex
• Brief contains a specific goal that is to be met by the
design
• But
• It may also be implied in terms that have varying
interpretations

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 Design Brief
• As a working relationship develops between a
designer and a client over several jobs, a greater
understanding of key terms is obtained
• A designer needs to interpret the brief and define
what words such as ‘stylish’ and ‘cool’ mean
• Both parties must have shared expectations
• This may involve questioning the validity of the brief’s
elements

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 Design Brief
Writing and re-writing a brief
• Clients have varying experiences with design services
• A brief needs to include anything that will allow the
design team to initiate the design process
• It must be robust
• If it is not robust enough, it may need to be rewritten
and reworked with the client

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 Design Brief
Check Boxes:
• Do you understand what the client is asking for?
• Does the client understand what they are asking for?
• Do you agree on the definition of terms?
• Does the brief have any flaws?
• Can you manage client expectations?

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 Design Brief
Questions?

Must answer:
» Who?
» Why?
» What?
» Where?

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 Design Brief
Along with

• Descriptors or keys:
• Nouns, verbs and attributes that can be used to create
the Unique Selling Proposition the design presents

• Resulting identity:
• The words, colour, etc. that highlight the USP of the
business

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 Design Brief - Example
• For example, the creation of a new Visual Identity

• Aim:
• To produce a new corporate identity that reflects the
exciting potential of the company
• To create an identity that resonates with the
stakeholders (or maybe, the potential investors if the
company is going to raise an IPO and wants to
improve the profile)
• To differentiate the company from other companies
(or maybe other companies on the stock market in
general) 26
 Design Brief - Example
• Usage:
• The identity will be used on all external corporate
communications including website, printed materials,
business cards and presentations
• Geographical locations: The target audience mainly
reside in entire India (or may have global presence)
• Target audience: Shareholders, bank analysts, media
and other interested parties

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 Design Brief - Example
• Guess!

• Identify keys that relate to the nature of the company

❖Nouns: Education, Technology, Computer, …
❖Adjectives: Unique, new, potential, impressive,
experienced, …

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 Design Brief
• Resulting identity
❖ Nouns: Education, Technology, Computer, …
❖ Adjectives: Unique, new, potential, impressive, experienced, …

• The figures are picked out to highlight the characters

• The colours and contrasts …

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 Design Brief - Example
• To produce a new corporate identity that reflects the
exciting potential of the company Who?
• To create an identity that resonates with the stake
holders Why?
• To differentiate the company from other companies
• The identity will be used on all external corporate
communications including … What?
• Geographical locations Where?
• Identity keys that relate to the nature of the company
Who? 30
Define - Objectives

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 Define - Objectives
• Objectives: Simply what the client hopes to achieve
through carrying out a design job, and these must be
fully understood and ‘mapped’ to your design
thinking
• Objectives need to be very precisely specified so that
the design team knows what it must achieve
• Asking the client simple questions gets to the heart of
the matter and focuses on what the client expects,
what the project boundaries are and what deliverables
are required

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 Define – Five Ws
• Purpose: To elicit factual answers that are necessary to
adequately define a design job
• They are:
➢ Who?
➢ What?
➢ Where?
➢ Why?
➢ When?
• How is often added at the end
• These questions provide details that the design team
can use throughout the design process and identify key
restraints that they have to work to 33
 Define – Five Ws
• Who is the client and target audience?
(size, nature, characteristics)
• What design solution is the client thinking of?
(product, print, web, video)
• When will the design be needed and for how long?
(project timescales)
• Where will the design be used?
(media, location, country)
• Why does the client think a design solution is
required?
• How will the solution be implemented?
(budget, distribution, campaign)
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 Define – Proposition
• Proposition is used to describe the general ideas and
values that a design intends to present to the target
audience and be internalised

• Definition of the design brief and its objectives should

enable the design team to establish the general
proposition of a design

• Once the proposition has been determined, it can be

more precisely defined and articulated to the audience

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 Proposition – Example
• e-Commerce Companies:

• Amazon, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Groffer, Big Basket,

Swiggy, Zomato, Myntra, Ajio, …

• All these companies deals with sale / purchase of

products / services, but so do many other companies

• The particular company’s (take any example) values

include being reliable and giving quality service

• Again, this is not unique

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 Proposition – Example
• The proposition needs to go beyond simply ‘what’
someone does

• By spending time thinking about the proposition of a

design, subsequent design thinking time will be
focused and meaningful

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Stage 1 – Define

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Stage 1 – Define

Values
Product
Proposition 39
 Proposition - USP
• USP, or point of difference

• Having a clear understanding of the product, values

and the proposition will inform your thinking at each
stage of the thinking process, and aligning these three
facets will ensure a targeted delivery of an idea

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Stage 2 – Research

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 2 – Research

Collect background information

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 Stage 2 – Research

❖ Primary Research

❖ Secondary Research

❖ Tertiary Research

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 Stage 2 – Research
• Start Point: The brief has been defined and agreed

• Designer starts to search for information that can be

fed into the creative process at the ideate stage

• Research can be
❖ Quantitative, with hard statistical numbers about
the size and composition of target user groups, or
❖ Qualitative, with information about what that user
group buys or consumes and what their lifestyle is
like

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 Stage 2 – Research

• Build a Mental Model of a typical user in order to

enable the design team to obtain a good feel for what
would appeal to them

• Mental model would include factors such as

education, career, holiday destinations, musical tastes,
aspirations and so on

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 Example
• ATM Machine
• Scientist: John Adrian Shepherd-Barron OBE (23 June
1925 – 15 May 2010) was an India-born British
inventor
• Native: Scotland
• Invented ATM Machine in 1969
• Original Pin – 6 digits
• Inspiration: Chocolate Vending Machine
• Mental model – Pin – Wife used to forget last 2 digits –
so changed to 4 digit pin 47
 Primary Research
• Research – Primary Research

• Primary research includes feedback generated during

the learning phase of projects previously undertaken
with the same or similar clients

• These feedbacks provide a starting point with regard

to what worked and what did not work with a specific
target group

• A primary source is an original document/image, the

results of an experiment, statistical data, first-hand
account, or creative work 48
 Secondary Research
• Research – Secondary Research

• Secondary research: Information is obtained from

general secondary sources such as consumer market
research reports

• Secondary sources are books, periodicals, web sites,

etc. that people write using the information from
primary sources

• They are not written by eyewitnesses to events, but

use eyewitness accounts, photographs, diaries and
other primary sources to reconstruct events 49
 Secondary Research
• Research – Secondary Research

• These provide the demographic breakdown and

historic performance of given markets and market
segments

• They provide a clear view of how a market is structured

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 Tertiary Research
• Research – Tertiary Research

• Tertiary sources are publications that summarize and

digest the information in primary and secondary
sources to provide background on a topic, idea, or
event

• Encyclopaedias and biographical dictionaries are good

examples of tertiary sources

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 Research – Checklist
Some examples (Non-exhaustive list)
• Do you have feedback from previous projects?
• Do you have a statistical composition of the user
group?
• Do you understand the target market?
• What is the education level of the user group?
• What is the typical lifestyle of the user group?
• What are the aspirations of the user group?

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 Research – Example
Idea Boards
• To collate information accumulated out of research

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Stage 3 – Ideate

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 3 – Ideate

Create Potential Solutions

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 Stage 3 – Ideate

• Here, the design team draws on the research gathered

and the constraints established during the Define
stage

• This information is used to create ideas with which to

tackle the design brief

• Designers use different methods to ideate

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 Stage 3 – Ideate
• Ideation methods include
Some of them

❖ Brainstorming
❖ Sketching
❖ Adaption of an existing tried-and-tested design
❖ Taking a Top-down Analytical approach that
focuses on the product, service or company or
❖ Employing a Bottom-up approach that focuses on
the customer or user
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 Stage 3 – Ideate
• Each method involves a varying degree of creativity
• Choosing which method to use will depend on factors
such as how much money is available and how
original the design needs to be
• At this stage, a design team might also choose to
harness one of the multitude of art and design
movements or paradigms
• A design brief can be given a modernist, abstract,
constructivist or a deconstructivist interpretation

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 Stage 3 – Ideate
• As the ideate stage progresses, it will become clear
whether there are any misunderstanding or
shortcoming in the definition stage and whether
sufficient levels of research were carried out

• Feedback can be sought throughout the design process

to clarify points of doubt with the client and to
address aspects that were ill-defined during the
definition stage

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 Ideate – Checklist
For example:
• Do you understand the brief?
• Do you have sufficient research information?
• Which methods will be used for idea generation?

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 Ideate – Example
• Ideation involves
experimenting or
visually brainstorming Puneet Tandon
• Experimentation allows
your mind to wander, PUNEET TANDON
and your hand to
‘doodle’
P u n e e t Ta n d o n
• Without considering
what is ‘right’ or
‘wrong’, Puneet Tandon
• Rejecting preconceptions
for free-thinking
 Ideate

SCAMPER

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Stage 4 – Prototype

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
65
 Stage 4 – Prototype

Resolve Solutions

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 Stage 4 – Prototype
• The ideate stage generates a variety of potential
solutions to the design brief
• Prior to selection, it may be necessary to further work
up the most promising of these solutions

Concept Selection

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 Stage 4 – Prototype

• Prototyping allows particular aspects to be

tested and will provide a better basis for
comparison at the selection stage

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 Stage 4 – Prototype
• A prototype can be used to test the technical feasibility
of a design idea to see if it works as a physical object
• Novel packaging or presentation ideas normally
require the development of a prototype
• A prototype can also test the visual aspects of the
design by presenting them as they would be produced
• Also, 3D Printing - to test the design in three
dimensions
• + Visual Model
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 Stage 4 – Prototype
• A prototype gives the design team and client the
ability to visualise and handle a design concept,
• to get an idea of its physical presence and tactile
qualities
• As a prototype aims to test particular aspects of a
design solution, it must be made so that those aspects
are present and can be effectively evaluated
• Need not be made of the final materials
• However, if a particular print finish is stipulated, it
may be pertinent to present this via a prototype
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 Prototype – Checklist
For Example

• Do all potential solutions require prototyping?

• What elements will the prototype test?

• What functionality will the prototype have?

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Stage 5 – Select

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 5 – Select

To Make Choices

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 Stage 5 – Select

• One of the proposed design solutions is chosen

for development

• The key decision criterion is fitness for the

purpose

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 Stage 5 – Select

Does the design meet the needs and goals

of the brief?

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 Stage 5 – Select

Will it effectively communicate to the

target audience to achieve those aims?

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 Stage 5 – Select

• The winning design is typically that which most

closely meets the design brief, or a significant
part of it

• It may not be possible or desirable to meet all

the requirements of a brief within a single
design

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 Stage 5 – Select
• For example, garment (fashion) industry
proposes design solutions / fashion styles for
different segments (age, sex, profession,
geographic, demographic, …)

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 Ideate

May employ

SCAMPER
again

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 Stage 5 – Select
• Other factors, such as cost and time, are relevant in the
selection process, but these may change as the process
develops
• The budget available may not provide for the
preferred solution so a more humble option may be
selected
• However, budget and time constraints should be
identified during the definition stage and must be
considered throughout the design process

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 Stage 5 – Select
• A studio may propose what it thinks are the best
design solutions to the client, and while its opinion
and advice are important, the client knows its
business, market and clients best and will make the
final choice

This could well be different to the designer’s preferred choice

• At the end of the selection process, the client will sign

off the choice, thus initiating the next stage in the
design process 82
 Select – Checklist
For Example:

• Does the design meet the defined needs of the brief?

• Does the design resonate with the target audience?

• Can the design be produced on time and on budget?

• Are there other factors to take into account?

• Has the client signed off the design?

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Stage 6 – Implement

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 6 – Implement

Deliver the solution to the design brief

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 Stage 6 – Implement

• During this stage, the designer passes the design

drawings, artwork and format specifications to those
who will be supplying the final product

• Includes - Detail design, drawings, notes, annotations,

models (3D visual / prototypes, …)
• To the manufacturer, fabricator, printer, software
development team, web developer, etc.

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 Stage 6 – Implement

• To confirm the production specifications such as print

quantity and what is expected to receive

• For example, a manufacturer is usually given some

leeway to account for set-up in the different steps of
the process

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 Stage 6 – Implement

• By double-checking, everyone is clear about the level

of expectation, and what the client expectations are

Role of Designer during Implement Phase

• The design team typically provides project

management during this stage, in order to ensure that
the end results meet design expectations, and to keep
the project on budget and on time
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 Stage 6 – Implement

• Proofing may be necessary during implementation

• This will ensure that what is fabricated / printed is an
accurate reflection of the detailed drawings / artwork
• For websites / other electronic media, proofing means
testing functionality as well as the visual appearance

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 Stage 6 – Implement

Implementation stage ends with the final

delivery of the finished job to the client

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 Implement – Checklist
For example:

• Has the client signed off the designs?

• Have fabricator, assembler, printer or other

production professionals been booked?

• Has the drawings / artwork been delivered to

production professionals?

• Has the job been proofed against the design?

• Has the finished job been delivered? 92

 Stage 6 – Implement

The implement stage of the design

process sees the design put into
production

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Stage 7 – Learn

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 Design Process

Define Research Ideate

(Brief) (Background) (Solutions)

Prototype Select Implement

(Resolve) (Rationale) (Delivery)

Learn
(Feedback)
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 Stage 7 – Learn

To obtain Feedback

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 Stage 7 – Learn

• The final stage in the process involves learning from

what has happened throughout the design process

• This is a feedback stage during which the client and

design agency might seek to identify what worked
well and what not, …,
where there is room for improvement, etc.

97
 Stage 7 – Learn

• Following the implementation, the client may begin to

look for or receive feedback on how the product has
been received by the target audience and how
beneficial its effects on the target audience have been

• Thus, a design firm can find out the audience response

to the design

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 Stage 7 – Learn

• The feedback generated at the end of the process

becomes a learning opportunity for future projects

• It also forms one of the sources of information for the

define and research stages

• Any problems with the design may have been because

of inadequacies in the brief or lack of understanding of
key points – is identified

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 Stage 7 – Learn

• Through the feedback process, designers and clients

build up a shared understanding over time

• This serves to facilitate the production of increasingly

optimal solutions in the future

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 Stage 7 – Learn

• Although the learn stage appears to be the last of the

seven, it actually occurs throughout the design process
• At each stage you should take stock of where you are,
where you are heading, what’s working and what’s
not

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 Stage 7 – Learn

The ability to learn from each stage will

enhance the development of design thinking,
and will help to generate radical and
successful designs

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 Learn – Checklist

• Has dialogue with the client about the success of

implementation taken place?

• How successful was the implementation?

• What feedback has the client received or

commissioned?

• What aspects can be improved?

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 Stage 7 – Learn

The learn stage is a valuable chance to

refine and learn from the design
thinking process

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