The 3 basic principles of Design Thinking:
1. Focus on customers:
Be more user-centric and less business-centric. This means that users are involved throughout the design process by way of various approaches. The effort invested and resources established will enable the creation of usable, accessible solutions. You will therefore ensure you satisfy your customers’ needs, reduce the risk of error, avoid certain financial losses and, naturally, increase your sales.
One of the first stages of design is empathy. It’s imperative for arriving at a better understanding their needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations.
Start by asking yourself the following questions:
- Who are our customers?
- How is the consumer journey currently laid out?
- How can we improve this journey by offering an improved customer experience?
The answers to these questions can be found initially within collected data, market studies and trends you have access to. It could also be discovered through research, particularly through surveys, interviews, focus groups, observations, etc. The results will enable you to identify opportunities and prioritize your ideas and future actions (empathy mapping, current and future scenarios, etc.).
At the end, you will be able to develop tools, such as persona worksheets and customer journeys, which enable you to consolidate what you’ve learnt about your users within each team.
Innovation doesn’t happen by creating a website, but by creating the shopping experience that happens on that site.
3. Constantly iterate:
“The last best experience that anyone has anywhere becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere,” stated Bridget van Kralingen, Senior VP, IBM Global Market.
Design Thinking is a method of working that promotes iteration. IBM visualizes its way of working through the Loop model, which enables constant listening to and understanding of the needs of customers and their environment, thereby facilitating an understanding of their needs and evolution.
Every time you observe something, you better understand the world around you. Every time you think about something, you better understand your team and your customers. Every time you act, you better understand the current and potential solutions before you.
“Fail early to succeed sooner,” said Tim Brown (IDEO). Risk-taking is important to Design Thinking. So give your team the space to fail. No one is supposed to understand the problem right away.
This is even more true today, during the pandemic, when we need to be able to adapt quickly.
In summary, here are the benefits of Design Thinking:
- Strong company culture: greater sense of belonging thanks to the collaboration between teams and a stronger sense of security resulting from the permission to fail.
- Greater efficacy and efficiency: create better customer experiences (efficacy) and reduce the risk of error and financial losses by always involving the customer and your various teams (efficiency).
- Increased cost effectiveness: relevant products and services that respond to real customer needs = greater profitability for the company.
A certified Adviso team:
In order to be up to date on the industry’s best practices, all customer experience experts at Adviso are certified in IBM’s Design Thinking at the co-creator level.
We guide our clients towards the resolution of complex, innovative problems by using a co-creative approach as well as, in the right circumstances, the Design Thinking methodology.
To learn more about Design Thinking and its application, please accept our invitation to participate in two workshops we will be holding in association with Les Affaires on September 10 and 17 at the Gestion de l’Innovation conference and the Expérience Client conference.
