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Design Thinking + Innovation

Design Thinking + Innovation outlines the four-step model process for developing and delivering innovative solutions through design thinking processes.

The four phases within this process provide an in-depth approach to discovering solutions and building towards a deliverable end-product.

Utilized across a wide-range of projects related to digital design, product design, creative direction, marketing, innovative startups and reconceptualizing business and brand models.

These tools are used where needed for every client and project I work with.

Design Thinking + Innovation outlines the four-step model process for developing and delivering innovative solutions through design thinking processes.

The four phases within this process provide an in-depth approach to discovering solutions and building towards a deliverable end-product.

Utilized across a wide-range of projects related to digital design, product design, creative direction, marketing, innovative startups and reconceptualizing business and brand models.

These tools are used where needed for every client and project I work with.

The Four Phases of Innovation

  1. Make concrete observations about users.
  2. Reframe the problem to gain insight on deeper user needs.
  1. Identify design principles that will guide ideation.
  2. Overcome cognitive fixedness to generate innovative ideas that fulfill the user needs identified in your research.
  1. Combine ideas into concepts by critiquing a range of possible solutions.
  2. Prototype quickly and purposefully to answer critical questions about a concept’s viability.
  1. Apply principles of effective communication when describing your innovation’s value to key stakeholders.
  2. Reflect on innovation management strategies.

Innovation Phase 1: Clarify

Created by Rick Robinson, Julie Bellanca, and other members of the Doblin Group in 1991, the AEIOU framework presents several ways of coding the observations collected during user research: activities, environments, interactions, objects, and users.
A journey map structures observations about users into a timeline. It may take the form of a simple horizontal timeline that uses dots for each event, or it may be a more complex visualization.
An effective way to begin research is by participating in the context of the problem to learn how users interact with the people, objects, and location(s) in question.
Together, the what, structure, how tools create a comprehensive picture of the design context.
  1. You can analyze observations for insights. Insights occur when we recombine knowledge in a new way, breaking through blocks to a desired mental path.
  2. These insights may be overlooked pain points, latent needs, or even new ways to frame the problem.
  • The ARIA model, based on research and concepts developed by David Rock and Jeffrey M. Schwartz, identifies four steps related to the experience of insight:
  • Awareness
    • Quiet the mind and simplify the problem as much as you can.
  • Reflection
    • Seek cognitive control by reflecting on the thinking process itself and how you are approaching the problem.
  • Insight
    • Allow time for thinking until you have the adrenaline rush of realization.
  • Action
    • Take action immediately—writing your idea down, or sketching it out—before you lose the insight.
  1. Framing refers to the scope of the problem you are trying to solve.
  2. Reframing the problem you are trying to solve can lead to innovative solutions.
  1. The operational world is the typical management perspective of improving performance through operations. This means applying rules, routines, controls, and pressure.
  2. In the operational world, curiosity is often more likely to be punished than rewarded.
  3. The most productive organizations will shift teams back and forth between the operational and innovation mindsets when necessary. Short-term goals and pressures of the operational world can stifle creative thinking, but development and implementation require a shift to more aggressive goal setting.

Innovation Phase 2: Ideate: Tools and Frameworks for Generating Ideas

The creative matrix is a table that provides structure for ideation. Design principles form the column headings, while each row designates a tool you can use to generate ideas. You simply apply the tools and plug ideas into the cells beneath the design principles they fulfill.

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind in which we focus on only one interpretation or approach to a situation.

There are several types:

  • Functional fixedness limits us to considering only the traditional use of a product or service.
  • Structural fixedness makes us think of objects and services as whole things that cannot be divided or rearranged.
  • Relational fixedness makes us assume we cannot change the relationship between attributes of a product or service.
  1. One approach developed by SIT is to tell the problem story, which is a chain of undesired phenomena.
  2. When the undesired phenomena (UDPs) are arranged in a chain of cause and effect, you can identify opportunities for intervention. Start with one UDP. You can build the problem story in both directions, so it doesn’t matter where you start.
  3. To move forward in time, ask “So what?” Why is this a problem
  4. To move backward in time, ask “Why?” What is the cause?
  1. Alternate Worlds is a tool (inspired by the LUMA Institute) that applies perspectives from different industries, organizations, and disciplines to generate fresh ideas about a problem.
    1. Think of how someone in an alternate world might address the problems similar to those in your business context. How might their knowledge and strategies be transferred to generate something novel and useful?
      • For example, when designing a treatment to fight cancer, you might draw inspiration from other “worlds” that involve attacking or destroying something, such as a military siege.
      • You could then ask, “Is surrounding the tumor or depriving it of supplies a helpful starting point for thinking of ideas?”

The Round Robin discussion (as defined by the LUMA Institute) is a group-authorship activity that is useful in many collaborative situations. It can be applied to the Alternate Worlds tool as follows:

  1. 2×2 Frameworks
    1. In every innovation context, opposing forces create tensions that affect the types of solutions you will generate. If you bring these tensions to the forefront of design discussions, they can actually be helpful in generating a fresh approach.
    2. 2 by 2 frameworks are a tool created by the Stanford d.school for exploring and negotiating these tensions.
      • By plotting a tension on the x and y axes of a graph, emphasizing “low” and “high,” you create four quadrants. You can then determine where existing solutions fit, where your strengths are, and where your long-term areas for opportunity might be.
    3. The example provided in the following image uses tensions related to innovating on the traditional mop—quick vs. time consuming, and efficient vs. inefficient.
  2. Brainstorming
    1. Brainstorming is the practice of discussing a problem as a group and following spontaneous ideas wherever they lead. It can result in interestingly radical ideas, but may also lead to frustrations.

Innovation Phase 3: Develop: An Experimentation Mindset

The develop phase of design thinking has three complementary parts: concept selection, critique, and prototyping. These parts support and build on one another, but they are not necessarily linear.
Concepts are multiple ideas combined into testable potential solutions.
The impact-difficulty matrix (adapted here from a tool created by the LUMA Institute) compares the potential impact of a concept against how difficult it would be to implement.
  1. The SIT (Systematic Inventive Thinking) principle of Near-Far-Sweet states that some concepts are near the existing situation. They are innovative, but perhaps not innovative enough.
  2. Other concepts are far from the existing situation and may be difficult or impossible to implement.
  3. Finally, a third type of concept (like the high ROI concepts in the lower-right of the matrix) hits the innovation sweet spot. These concepts are just far enough to be truly innovative, but not so far that they are a challenge to create and market.
  1. Attribute-value mapping is an SIT tool for comparing the objective attributes of a product, service, business model, or strategy with their subjective value to customers or end users.
    • An attribute is an objective characteristic of an innovation. The organization determines the attributes of an innovation. For example, an attribute for a certain car might be that it weighs 4,000 pounds.
    • A value is any gain or benefit that the user expects from an innovation. The user determines what they are—if the user changes, the value might change too. For example, a value for a heavy vehicle might be “I feel like I’m very well protected.”
  2. Attribute-value mapping involves building a progressively more abstract chain of values. The following table maps an old feature on the website of online lodging marketplace Airbnb—the “Explore nearby stays” button:
  1. The links between attributes and values are called strategic objectives because they create value for the target user.
  2. A full attribute-value map will have many attributes and values, and you can connect multiple attributes or values to a strategic objective.
  3. The more connections a strategic objective has, the stronger it is.
  1. The concept poster collects the most important information related to a concept and presents it clearly in one place. It provides a simple way to collect constructively critical feedback.
    • The concept poster should include:
      • A brief elevator-pitch description of the innovation
      • Pain points and insights from user research
      • The design principles that guided ideation
      • The key stakeholders who would use and implement the innovation
      • The point-of-view (POV) statements of target users
      • The functional and emotional benefits to the user
      • The key assumptions behind the concept
      • The critical questions related to desirability, feasibility, and viability.
  2. Critical questions are the questions you ask to uncover the assumptions around desirability, feasibility, and viability underlying your concept. You will need to test these assumptions before and during the development of an innovation concept.
  3. A concept poster template is available for download from the module summary page.

The Six Thinking Hats created by Edward de Bono are six color-coded perspectives that people can adopt during a critique to guide conversation and ensure that different viewpoints are represented.

Rose, Thorn, Bud is a LUMA Institute tool that creates a more targeted discussion when evaluating a concept, focusing on what’s working, what might work, and what might need to be dropped.

  1. Rose (Pink): Like Edward de Bono’s yellow hat, rose comments are about positive points and ideas. These are things a team member wants to emphasize or develop further.
  2. Thorn (Blue): Like the black hat, thorn comments are problem areas that a team member wants to address before advancing.
  3. Bud (Green): Green comments indicate that something shows promise—it might become a rose—but it needs further development. This potential differentiates a bud from a thorn.

A prototype is a model for facilitating learning. It answers the critical questions around desirability, feasibility, and viability. The goal of prototyping is to learn more about a concept as quickly as possible, and preferably at a low cost as you begin.

  • Three principles for rapid prototyping:
    1. Find the quickest path to the experience.
    2. Doing is the best kind of thinking.
    3. Use materials that allow you to move at the speed of thought.
  • Prototypes should increase in complexity as you approach validation of a concept.
  • Paper prototyping involves creating a paper replica of an interaction or digital interface.
  • Make sure that you invite feedback from diverse perspectives, especially when you are working on early experiments like paper prototypes. This increases the likelihood that the final design of your innovation will match the needs of multiple stakeholders.
  • An experience prototype is a more advanced experiment (conducted after basic prototyping) that tests critical questions related to the experience of the concept. This method is especially useful when the innovation concept is a new service or strategy.

Innovation Phase 4: Implement: Communicate and Structure for Success

The implement phase of design thinking will differ greatly depending on the nature of your innovation. One challenge all innovators share, however, is communicating the value of a new product, service, business model, or strategy. This module addresses these communication challenges, as well as how to manage the overall innovation process effectively.

  1. The curse of knowledge, as described by Chip and Dan Heath in a 2006 Harvard Business Review article, is the idea that once we know something, it is extremely difficult to imagine not knowing it.
  2. There is a large gap between the knowledge of developers, who have been living with their innovation for months or years, and the external users and stakeholders who might benefit from it but know nothing about it.
    • The status-quo bias, originally defined by economists William Samuelson and Richard Zeckhauser, states that people are naturally biased against change unless it has a clear benefit.
      • Users and customers overestimate the costs of an innovation and underestimate its benefits.
      • Developers, on the other hand, underestimate costs and overestimate benefits.
  3. As a developer, your first challenge may not be winning people over to your perspective, but actually getting them to a neutral point of view.

In 2006, HBS professor John Gourville described the psychology of new-product adoption as the tension between how much value the innovation creates (according to the user) and how much behavior change is required (again according to the user).

Graphing Gourville’s tensions along the x and y axes, from low to high, creates four quadrants, which are the same as those in the impact-difficulty matrix.

The five factors of innovations, developed by 20th-century communication theorist and sociologist Everett Rogers in his Diffusion of Innovations Theory, are the traits that help users overcome their status-quo bias.

  1. Relative advantage: The innovation has more perceived value than the product, service, business model, or strategy it replaces.
  2. Trialability: Users can try the innovation on a limited basis.
  3. Observability: The innovation’s usage and impact are visible to others.
  4. Simplicity: The innovation is easy to understand and use.
  5. Compatibility: The innovation is consistent with existing values and experiences.

Five principles for communication can help you overcome the status-quo bias and present your innovation’s most appealing factors in a structured way. The following principles are not in any specific order—use them to analyze whether you could appeal to users and stakeholders in empathetic ways:

  1. Curiosity Before Content: Spark interest and gradually build positive expectations. Because people are naturally resistant, you want to draw them in and make them interested.
  2. Options Before Solutions: List other options as a way of calling attention to your desired solution.
  3. Make It Personal: Establish a personal connection with consumers and highlight their latent needs.
  4. Psychologically Comfortable and Easy to Adopt: Emphasize how simple it would be to realize gains from your innovation, as well as how the innovation matches users’ values.
  5. Demonstrate to Communicate: Let users interact with the innovation, or demonstrate it in use.

The Elephant and Rider framework, developed by psychologist Jonathan Haidt, is a creative way to think about the motivation and ability required to promote behavior change and the adoption of an innovation.

  1. The rider represents the rational side of the user. They know the path and provide direction.
  2. The elephant represents the emotional and instinctual side of the user. It provides the power for the journey.
  3. The two must work together to move in the right direction. The rider may know where to go, but if the elephant does not want to move in that direction, the two will remain in place or go elsewhere.
  4. Thus, even if an innovation is superior to what is available in the marketplace, solely rational appeals are not enough to convince users to adopt it. Users must want intuitively or emotionally to adopt it as well.
  5. You can also apply the principles of communication here. For example, if you find that users or stakeholders don’t have the motivation to adopt your innovation, consider elephant-focused strategies in your communications.

Overcoming status-quo bias and applying any of the tools we just reviewed requires targeting your message to specific individuals or stakeholder groups.

  • These groups will all have different understandings of the innovation’s value and require different behavior changes to implement it.
  • Stakeholder analysis is a tool for comparing differences among groups. You can create a stakeholder analysis table by following three steps: Identify stakeholders or stakeholder groups. Assess where they are in support or opposition.

Determine where they need to be for implementation to succeed.

  • The table that follows, which focuses on a healthcare example, uses X’s to indicate where stakeholders currently are and O’s to indicate where the innovator needs them to be.

The FourSight model, designed by the innovation company FourSight, measures employees’ working styles and preferences based on their responses to a series of questions.

  • In the FourSight model, employees are placed along an x-axis based on their preference for divergent vs. convergent thinking. (Do they prefer exploring options or making decisions?)
  • They are then placed along the y-axis based on their preference for assertiveness. (Do they prefer working together and involving others, or do they prefer taking risks at a fast pace and directing the group?)
  • Depending on their responses, each employee falls into one of four quadrants, which map to the four phases of design thinking.

Understanding the traits common to each of these mindsets can help organizations analyze how their employees work, collaborate, and resolve conflict.

Clarifiers:

  • Are inquisitive, methodical, organized
  • Can frustrate others by asking too many questions or pointing out obstacles

Developers:

  • Are careful, pragmatic, patient
  • Can frustrate others by focusing on small details or finding flaws in others’ ideas

Ideators:

  • Are imaginative, adaptable, independent
  • Can frustrate others by being too abstract, or becoming impatient when others don’t get their ideas

Implementers:

  • Are persistent, decisive, action-oriented
  • Can frustrate others by overselling their own ideas, or demonstrating impatience with research and exploration