Design thinking is a user-centric, solutions-based methodology that marries strategy and creativity to provide the structure and methods for solving complex problems. Using five unique phases, design thinking methodology can be applied to all industries and organizations to reinforce innovation, solve problems, strengthen leadership and boost creativity, while helping users better understand their end-clients’ needs, and provide the best possible services and solutions for their end-clients.
Below we have outlined 8 reasons why design thinking should be embedded into your strategy and organizational culture.
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Design thinking reinforces innovation
Successful leaders and organizations recognize the need to continually innovate to create a sustainable business, deliver value, and drive growth. Throughout each of the Five Phases of the Design Thinking Process, individual employees and teams can generate new and innovative solutions that help your organization differentiate itself from competitors.Innovation must be embedded into the organizational culture and there needs to be a structure and process to allow true innovation to take place. Design thinking provides exactly that.
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Design thinking is applicable to any industry or organization
Design thinking is a methodology that can be applied to any industry, in both the public and private sector, regardless of size, stage of development, industry, or geographical location.Design thinking tools and methodologies will apply to your work, whether that’s policy design/redesign, product or service design, increasing revenue, strategic planning, etc. – giving you the tools to succeed.
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Design thinking improves decision making
Design thinking is great for gathering information and ideating solutions to make better decisions that best fit your end-clients; however, the more information that is received the harder the decision-making process becomes. The key to dealing with the large amounts of information is as simple as identifying the ways to filter various inputs.Design teaching provides several methods and filters for decision-making; balancing data and information with gut instinct and voting methods, design thinking provides techniques that uproot the best user-centered solutions and help select the best output.
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Design thinking provides a roadmap to solve complex problems
Design thinking teaches how to ideate on multiple solutions to a problem and select the best ones to prototype and test, ensuring the problem is solved, regardless of its complexity. This ensures that once implemented the proposed solution is feasible and will solve the challenge at hand, saving on resources and increasing value in the long run.By utilizing several methodologies, such as journey mapping and mind mapping, to create a roadmap towards your solution – an approach rooted in design thinking will identify any levers or constraints that may affect the end-solution.
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Design Thinking strengthens leadership
Leadership plays an important role in an organization’s capacity to understand and solve its end-clients’ problems, relying on leaders to have the tools to make the right decisions, but also the humility to start over when things don’t work.Teaching users to quickly iterate, design thinking can help leaders better understand client-generated data and transform problems into solutions and failure into success.
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Design thinking improves knowledge sharing & collaboration
With a focus on empathy, design thinking improves buy-in for knowledge sharing initiatives by placing priority on employee and client concerns. Design thinking also places emphasis on collaboration by creating multidisciplinary teams with expertise at each of the Five Phases.Similarly, the iterative approach to problem-solving means design thinking can help organizations improve knowledge sharing around successes and best practices, as well as failures as a source of learning.
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Design thinking boosts creativity
Rooted in brainstorming and ideation, design thinking asks users to put their most creative foot forward when problem-solving. Innovative brainstorming techniques, such as role-playing can be applied to better understand end-users needs.Similarly, various activities such as journey mapping and mind mapping take users out of their traditional work elements and practices to better understand the barriers and levers they have for creative problem-solving.
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Design thinking will increase revenue
Placing emphasis on the end-user, design thinking is vital to improving customer experience. A report by The Economist Intelligence Unit found that companies that invest in customer experience have better revenue growth (59 percent vs. 4 percent) and are more profitable (64 percent vs. 47 percent) than companies where customer experience isn’t a priority.
