Design Thinking

According to Tim Brown (2010), design thinking benefits from a capacity that every human being has but that conventional problem-solving practices ignore. So design thinking proposes not just a people-centered view, since it is already naturally human, but an approach based on the capacities for intuition, pattern recognition, developing ideas that carry emotional meaning beyond the functional, and expression in media instead of words, that is, an integrated approach that proposes a “third way”.

The term Design Thinking came out of a conversation between Brown and David Kelley, a Stanford professor and founder of IDEO, because Kelley noticed that when someone asked him about design, he found himself adding the word “thinking” to explain designers' skills. That is how the term Design Thinking came about (BROWN, 2010).

Tim Brown's book Design Thinking

According to Viana et al. (2012), Design Thinking is associated with the designer's way of thinking, which seeks solutions to many kinds of problems through unconventional thinking. This thinking shows up as questions raised from research and observation of the problem's context.

Design Thinking can be understood as an approach focused on the human being, on multidisciplinarity, on collaboration, and on developing processes and thinking in order to generate innovation.

For Phillips (2008), design is a problem-solving discipline, and if the problem's context sits in a business environment, then design must solve those problems. For the author, the designer is responsible for proposing solutions and understanding the role of design in business, asking what problems a given company may be facing, what keeps the company's managers awake at night, what the main obstacles are, and from there reflecting on how design can help solve these issues.

Design Thinking emerged as an agile means to innovate and generate better performance in organizations, enabling designers to propose solutions for people's needs and improvements to their experiences when using a product or service (SERRAT, 2010).

According to Viana et al. (2012), Design Thinking is a relevant approach to innovation, because design added a complement to the market's perspective, in which the focus of innovation is on new technologies or other markets. This approach innovates by introducing new meanings to products or services.

Viana et al. (2012) propose certain stages that, even though presented linearly, are flexible, making it possible to shape plans according to the nature of the project.

Diagram of the stages of the Design Thinking process.

Source: Viana et al. (2012, p. 18).

“The first phase of the Design Thinking process is called Immersion. At this moment the project team gets close to the problem's context, both from the company's point of view (the client) and from the end user's (the client's client)” (VIANA et al. 2012, p. 21).

For Viana et al. (2012, p. 22) “Immersion can be divided into two stages: Preliminary and In-Depth. The Preliminary stage covers Reframing, Exploratory Research and Desk Research.

The reframing process concerns the strategic alignment between the project team and the contracting company. Next, Exploratory Research can be carried out in parallel with Reframing; this research consists of understanding the context of the topic being worked on. Desk Research, in turn, exposes trends of the topic locally and abroad, in order to help understand the subject. “Preliminary Immersion, therefore, aims to define the scope of the project and its boundaries, as well as to identify the user profiles and other key actors who should be approached” (VIANA et al. 2012, p. 22).

In-depth immersion is the stage of getting at the universe of the actors and of the topic being worked on. The focus is usually on the human being, in order to gather four types of information: what do people say? How do they act? What do they think? How do they feel? The goal is to map extreme behaviors, patterns and latent needs (VIANA et al. 2012).

The Ideation phase “aims to generate innovative ideas for the project's topic and, for that, uses the synthesis tools created in the analysis phase to stimulate creativity and generate solutions that fit the context of the subject being worked on” (VIANA et al. 2012, p. 100).

The prototyping stage “has the function of helping validate the ideas generated and, although it is presented as one of the last phases of the Design Thinking process, it can occur throughout the project in parallel with Immersion and Ideation (VIANA et al. 2012, p. 122).

With this approach, the expectation is to use research tools and acquire knowledge about developing innovative products and services, in order to arrive at disruptive solutions.

References

BROWN, Tim. Design thinking: uma metodologia poderosa para decretar o fim das velhas idéias. Rio de Janeiro: Elsevier, 2010.

PHILLIPS, Peter L. Briefing: a gestão do projeto de design / Peter L. Phillips. São Paulo: Blucher, 2008.

SERRAT, Oliver. Design Thinking: Knowledge Solutions, March, no. 3, 2010. Available at: https://www.adb.org/sites/default/files/publication/27579/design-thinking.pdf. Accessed on: Oct. 13, 2021.

VIANA, Maurício et al. Design Thinking: inovação em negócios. 1st ed. Rio de Janeiro: MJV Press, 2012. Available at: http://livrodesignthinking.com.br/ Accessed on: Oct. 15, 2013.