Design thinking for a startup

Design firmly and deeply entered our lives. Form attach no less importance than the functions and success of Apple's clear evidence of this. But under the design here should be understood not only the appearance of the product, but also how this product works, how the service is provided, what is the interaction of customers with them.

In our rapidly changing time, everyone is talking about innovation. A startup is almost always associated with something new and advanced. In order to put innovations on stream, make a great design, remain flexible and make the world a better place, you need to change the approaches to creating products and services, change the approaches to managing a company, and become innovators in the field of start-ups. This is where design thinking will help.

At once I will make a reservation that design thinking should be applied not only to product design and not only designers! It should be applied to all areas of business and it gives the most impressive results precisely when it is applied by a mixed team of experts from different areas.
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So, what is it - design thinking?

Very briefly, this is a technique for creating innovations. Its key element is observation and deep understanding of the problem. Most often it is described in the context of creating new products and services. But in fact, the scope of its application is much wider. Design thinking can be applied wherever there are problems, people and a mixture of several areas of knowledge. Of course, you will not solve the problems of nuclear physics, but the creation of a business to apply the achievements of nuclear physics is quite!

When creating a startup, in addition to the task of creating a product or service, the founders face a host of other problems and difficulties. In order for a start-up to be fired, it is necessary not only to make a quality product, but also to pack it in a quality manner, to deliver it, to organize the whole process from the purchase of resources to the after-sales service. Design thinking can help with all this.

The process of solving the problem in terms of design thinking is iterative and consists of the following steps:

• Understanding - Understanding Current Difficulties and Their Context
• Focus - focus on a specific problem
• Ideas - developing ideas
• Prototype - Prototype Creation
• Test - Test Solution

Understanding

At this step, it is necessary to collect information about how people act in the context of the problem, and only then, ask them why they are doing just that. All design thinking is based on this step. If you ask a person about the problem, he will tell you what he thinks about this. But in order to form a positive experience of human interaction with your startup, you need to touch on his feelings. But feelings are reflected in his actions, not in his speeches, since we have been accustomed since childhood to hiding our feelings and to voice only socially correct thoughts.

The main objective of this stage is to understand the reasons why people act in this way and not otherwise. Why do they buy from those competitors, why they search in the search bar using exactly those words, what problems and tasks they face at this moment, what they feel and what they think.
Understanding is the stage of collecting primary information, which then still needs to be properly processed, classified and used to gain understanding. For this there are various techniques that can not be described in a short article.

But it is important to consider that this step is not limited to a survey of consumers. To find innovative solutions for the purchase and delivery of goods for the online store, the context of the problem are suppliers, courier and transport companies, consumers and your employees. In this case, it is necessary to observe the example of other already operating companies in order to solve the problem of a startup before it actually starts working.

Focus

After you have collected information about problems related to the area you are interested in, you need to select a focus. Focus is a problem or several problems on which you focus your efforts.
In order to create innovation, you need to solve what is not decided by others, and copy everything else. That is, to focus on those problems and tasks that are currently considered as not solvable, which no one solves and considers necessary evil. It is in them that the greatest potential for design thinking is hidden.

The task of this stage is to redefine clearly and more narrowly the problem to be solved. It is very important not to pay attention to the original task, but to rely on the results of understanding!

Ideas

The task of this stage is to generate as many different ideas as possible to solve the focused problem from the previous step. You should not focus on the obvious solutions, as they can divert the group's attention from creative solutions and reduce the likelihood of innovation.

It should be remembered that these ideas are not final and better solutions will be invented during testing.
You can use different techniques to generate ideas, brainstorming is suitable for group work. It is worth it in any case, in order to use the power of a mixed team (specialists from different areas).

Prototype

At this stage a prototype is developed for selected ideas. Ideas best to select a few by the number of voters. Each participant in the process can choose 4 ideas:

• Best for user
• Crazy
• Rational
• My lovely

Further 4 selected ideas are embodied in the prototypes.

Prototyping is an iterative process. In the course of it you can generate new ideas, improve old ones, get a clearer picture of the problem and solution. As a prototype, everything that can be interacted with can be:

• Blackboard with stickers
• Sketches on paper
• Software prototypes
• Role scripts
• And so on.

The main thing is that the user can get his experience from the prototype, play with him, feel in action. And the team will be able to use this to change the prototype.

The prototype needs to start doing as early as possible. It can be rough, approximate, it does not need to spend a lot of time!

Test

Testing is the phase of getting feedback on a solution. It needs to be clearly planned, do not expect that you simply put a prototype in front of the user, and he will list to you everything that needs to be improved.
You need to clearly understand what you want to test: which areas of interaction, which problem areas. During testing, you also check the task: whether it was correctly formulated.

It is highly desirable to reproduce testing with real physical objects or in real places. This allows the user to immerse themselves in the experience of using the prototype. Try to show more, not tell, and keep watching! It is here that we return to the first step - understanding.

For each step, there are techniques that can be used as effective tools to achieve the goals of each of the stages of the design thinking process. About them you can read on the Internet or specialized literature. But do not take design thinking as a kind of pipeline process. Design thinking is, first of all, a system of values ​​and attitudes, a way of thinking based on the design of people-centered solutions.

Some believe that design is the look of the product. But, of course, if you dig deeper, it becomes clear that design is how the product works.
In order to provide a really good product design, you need to understand this product. We need to really understand what he is.

Steve Jobs, creator of Apple