Last week I judged senior engineering university students’ computer
science projects. I found myself wondering
how Design Thinking might have been used in their projects because some were
written assuming all users would be like them, university students. The thought kept crossing my mind that my
shopping behaviors have changed dramatically since my university days. Thus, what “wows” me now probably differs
from what “wows” many university students.
Design Thinking is a powerful method for creating impactful solutions
that connect with varied human experiences.
The method evolved within software engineering because user experiences
drive usage which in turn drive revenue.
This subtlety is important.
Understand the human experience and how it can be improved. Let that guide what goes into the development
plan.
To use Design Thinking, you first must master a cycle used extensively:
diverge, cluster, re-mix, converge and playback (DCRCP). Warning: it requires a lot of sticky notes.
Here’s a quick overview of that cycle.
Diverge: Typically when a
group brainstorms, after 15 minutes or more of debate, the group may have
agreed upon a single idea. In contrast, when team members diverge, after 15
minutes, you will likely have several dozen ideas. Diverging simply involves all team members, without
chattering or collaborating, writing ideas on sticky notes and putting them on
a common collection point such as a flipchart.
Cluster: At this point your
flipchart might look a bit chaotic.
However, as you look at the sticky notes scattered across the page, you will
start to notice similarities. Physically
move the sticky notes into clusters of similar ideas.
Re-mix: Some clusters might
seem so strongly connected that they should be joined. Or, some clusters might seem too broad and
need to be sub-divided. During the
re-mix activity, make those adjustments as appropriate. Again, physically move the sticky notes.
Converge: Now that your
team’s ideas have been clustered and re-mixed, make a sticky note that
accurately conveys the ideas upon which the team converged.
Side note: cluster, re-mix and converge activities should take about 15
minutes. Thus, in about 30 minutes your
team expresses and organizes many ideas.
Meanwhile, using traditional group brainstorming methods, you might have
a few agreed upon ideas, or you might still be debating.
Playback: The final step in
this cycle is to playback what the team did.
Playbacks occur within the team as well as with other teams, sponsor
users and even sometimes people independent of the project. The objective of playbacks is to confirm understanding,
secure buy-in and gain feedback.
So, how can this DCRCP cycle help build strong solutions? Here are some Design Thinking exercises that
help quickly express and funnel ideas until a few high impact items are
identified.
Define stakeholders. Use the DCRCP cycle to define stakeholders. Note:
Stakeholders aren’t just users.
Define personas. Rather than talk about “users” in generic
terms, Design Thinking defines “personas” by sub-dividing stakeholder groups
based upon various common human experiences within that sub-group. As I mentioned at the onset, something like a
grocery shopping app should take into consideration the differences between my
shopping habits as a professional versus those of a university student.
Again using a sticky note, draw a picture of someone that represents a
certain stakeholder sub-group, give the person a name and put the note on the
board. After diverging to define
numerous personas, take a moment for each team member to describe a bit about
the persona before clustering them, etc...
Using the Agile principle of reducing works in progress, choose a few
stakeholders to proceed with.
Empathy mapping. For each persona, using the DCRCP cycle, identify
what this persona might be thinking, feeling, saying and doing. This helps the team connect with the human
experience of this sub-group.
Using the Agile principle of reducing works in progress, choose a few
key personas to proceed with.
Map scenarios. For each persona, identify a common scenario
that persona encounters. Then, identify
the key phases in the scenario. For
example, if you are trying to improve the grocery shopping experience, a common
scenario is weekly grocery shopping. The scenario map for someone like my mom
who stayed home and spent a lot of time cooking meals differs from the scenario
map for someone like my daughter who lived in a large city and didn’t own a car. Key phases for someone like my mom might be
planning menus, figuring out needed ingredients, assembling the shopping list, reviewing
coupons and sales, filling the cart, checkout, putting groceries in the car,
going home and putting groceries away.
However, for someone like my daughter, they might be assemble a shopping
list, walk to store, fill the cart, checkout, walk home, put groceries away.
Using the DCRCP cycle, for each persona’s scenario, identify at each
phase what the persona is thinking, feeling, saying and doing. This will start to identify high impact
solutions you could create as you see points of confusions, frustration, or inefficiency
in the scenario map.
Ideation: Now that the team
has insight into a few key personas, use the DCRCP cycle to define big ideas. These should be broad and conceptual versus
writing detailed product specifications.
Prioritize Ideas and Choose
Hills: To adhere to the Agile concept of
limiting works in progress, you can use various methods to prioritize the
ideas. One prioritization method gives
everyone an allotment of two different colors of dots. One color represents the importance of
implementing the big idea and the other represents the feasibility of
implementing it. Every team member votes
using their dots. Votes are tallied and
the ideas are then placed on a two-dimensional matrix with one axis going from
least to most feasible and the other going from least to most important.
Things that are high impact and highly feasible are no-brainers and go
into the project plan. Just go get them
done as it seems it is an easy thing to do.
Things that are low impact and difficult, discard. It’s too much work for too little
payback. The other two sets of ideas
require discussion and consideration.
Often they fall into two categories: very feasible but not highly
impacting and highly impacting but also difficult to do. The first group can provide a utility
function that perhaps is mass consumed.
The second group is a risk but can provide huge competitive
differentiation.
From these ideas, the team defines 3 hills that they want to
conquer. The hill definition is simply
what are we going to do for whom and what is the “wow” aspect.
Storyboarding: In some cases it is appropriate to create a
storyboard that defines the persona’s new experience. This provides an outlet for your cartoon
drawing capabilities because you will draw pictures of the persona’s
anticipated new experience.
The result of using Design Thinking is a prioritized approach to rapid
delivery of incremental high impact solutions that connect with users’ human
reality.
Earlier this year, I served as a Peace Corps and IBM Corporate Service
Corps Volunteer, part of a team that helped a Ghanaian social enterprise,
TECHAiDE, architect, design and prototype an educational device for use in
developing economies. Using Design
Thinking, in one month we were able to not only architect, design and prototype
the device; we wrote the curriculum and helped define or refine several core
business processes. Now, a few months
later, the product is launched in its pilot.
If you’re interested in learning more about that project, click here to read my blog
about it.
Despite its coding origins, I use Design Thinking on all sorts of
projects, not just coding ones. For
example, I’ve used it to design classes and create consulting offerings.
This is a very quick overview of Design Thinking. If you’re interested in someone leading you
through a Design Thinking workshop, let me know. I am happy to help you.
