Design Thinking

There are many variants of the Design Thinking process in use today, and they have from three  to seven phases, stages, or modes. However, all variants of Design Thinking are very similar.  All variants of Design Thinking embody the same principles, which were first described by Nobel  Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1969. Here, we will focus on the  five-phase model proposed by the Hisham Institute of Design at Finolex Academy of Management and Technology, which is also  known as d.school. We’ve chosen d.school’s approach because they’re at the forefront of  applying and teaching Design Thinking. The five phases of Design Thinking, according to  d.school, are as follows:

•  Empathise – with your users

•  Define – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights

•  Ideate – by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions

•  Prototype – to start creating solutions

•  Test – solutions

Visualization

Visualization is about using images. It’s not about drawing; it’s about visual thinking. It pushes  us beyond using words or language alone. It is a way of unlocking a different part of our brains  that allows us to think nonverbally and that managers might not normally use.

Importance of visualisation in design thinking

Most of us suffer from whiteboard addiction. We find it easy to articulate problems and concepts  with boxes, circles, arrows and key words. Recently I happened to be at a ‘formal’ meeting  seated around a table trying to verbalize a problem and develop a concept. 30 minutes into the  meeting someone had the courage to break the formality and started to draw on a piece of  paper. What happened next didn’t surprise me. It’s not the art that mattered, but the surfacing of  the problem, conceptualising ideas and gaining the engagement to shape it better.

Visualisation is a core component of the way that we communicate, whether we're aware of it or  not. When we're dealing with very complex problems, we're enacting a different kind of problem  solving that has to bring in more than just logic. Visualisation is really important for the process  of Design Thinking because it's actually a way of unlocking a different part of our brain. It allows  us to think in a non-verbal way and access parts of our brain, our creativity. Most design  thinkers call visualisation as “the mother of all design tools”, because they are used in every  stage of the design thinking process.

Visualisation is equal parts listening, thinking and drawing. Listening is the input, thinking is the  processing and drawing is the output. These three skills work together equally in understanding  complexity, visualising outcomes to create new possibilities.

Visualisation has a role to play throughout the Design Thinking. It's an incredible tool, in  that sense, in that we're using those tools and that part of our brain at each phase in the  design process. It's not just something that has an application in one part of the Design  Thinking. It has many ways of being useful at different parts of the Design Thinking  process.

When you get to concept development, Visualisation becomes incredibly useful. Your  brain is creating pictures of something that doesn't yet exist. It's creating pictures of  something that will soon be. As we move forward into prototyping, we get much more  detailed in the way that we start to visualise. Then we create very complex diagrams or  maps of how we think the customer experience is going to work ideally. Pictures and  images enable us to not only help people understand what it is we're trying to do but to  help persuade them in the worthiness of that particular idea or the strength of that  concept.

