DESIGN THINKER PODCAST

EP#25: Design Thinking: What is it? How can it help?

Dr. Dani Chesson and Designer Peter Allan Episode 25

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0:00 | 35:59

What is Design Thinking? In this back-to-basics episode, Dr Dani and Designer Peter define Design Thinking. 

In this episode, you will 
• learn about how Design Thinking is defined 
• understand why Design Thinking is important 
• hear examples of how Design Thinking can help 


Speaker 1

Welcome to the Design Thinker podcast, where we explore the theory and practice of design, hosted by me, donnie, and.

Speaker 2

Be Peaser. Hey, peter Hi.

Speaker 1

Donnie, how are you? Great thanks. How are you?

Speaker 2

Good.

Speaker 1

What are we?

Defining Design Thinking

Speaker 2

chatting about today. Today, Donnie, we are going to talk about what is design thinking.

Speaker 1

Interesting. We're in to episode 25 and we've never actually talked about what design thinking is.

Speaker 2

When you told me that I was a bit surprised that we hadn't actually done that. It's a great call out and I think we discovered in these conversations that we both enjoy and appreciate and place a lot of value on definitions. So it's kind of funny that we haven't actually defined this thing that we're basing all our conversations on. Shall, we try and do that.

Speaker 1

Yes, let's start with what is design thinking?

Speaker 2

Yeah, let's do that. Let's start with what is design thinking. Donnie, you see what I did there. Go on, you start.

Speaker 1

One of the challenges that I ran into when I started research in the design thinking space is actually there wasn't, and maybe there still isn't, an agreed definition on what design thinking is.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

What I had to do as part of my PhD work is define the definition.

Speaker 2

Okay, you've got a well researched and solid definition for us to start with.

Speaker 1

The definition that I has evolved over time, because when I defined what design thinking was for my PhD dissertation, I was in a different space and I was in a different level of understanding what design thinking is. Then over as I kind of took my work into the real world and started using it in organizations. It's transformed and transformed. Then, as my knowledge about it increased and increased, my ability to speak about it in a more simplistic way also got better right.

Speaker 2

Awesome.

Speaker 1

I'm going to start with. This is a definition. This is kind of more of a formal definition and I'll read it to you.

Speaker 1

It's actually from one of my papers. This is a definition that I defined based on the literature review that I did for my research. Design thinking is an iterative and collaborative process that takes an empathetic approach to problem solving that is particularly effective when the issue at hand requires solutions that are innovative yet practical. Design thinking emphasizes balancing creative thinking with analytical thinking, calls for shifting between generating and evaluating ideas, and encourages confronting uncertainty by testing out potential solutions early in the process to learn what may or may not work.

Speaker 2

I think we should have a round of applause there. I don't think I've heard you read that out.

Speaker 2

In fact, I know that I've not heard you read that out before. That was one of those paragraphs or definitions I'm kind of nodding along to. It's definitely ticking a lot of boxes for me around the definition. It's an in-depth and lengthy definition and description, but I think that's by necessity and maybe sums up as you're reading I was like, yeah, maybe this is why, let's say, the mythical elevator pitch conversation, or even like at the start of a workshop, for example, where you're trying to really or even just describing what you do, those barbecue conversations or even lunchtime conversations with people at work, what's your job? Well, hold up. Allow me to explain Well. Your definition, I think, hits so many nails on the head. Well, listening to it almost explains why a less in-depth definition doesn't quite cover it. That's my response to that.

Speaker 1

And for context. I had to read 164 pieces of research papers and books to come up with that definition.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

So it is a very researched.

Speaker 2

Yeah, actually researched by your human brain. This is pre-large language model chat, gpt any of those AIs?

Speaker 1

So that is the very comprehensive. This is what it is. Yeah, but to go back to your point, if I was on an elevator or at a barbecue, that's a lot to say yeah. So what I've done over time is have this minor definition and then a more in-depth definition.

Speaker 2

Yeah, ok.

Speaker 1

Shorter version of that is I describe design thinking as a human-centered and iterative approach that brings people together to design practical yet innovative solutions by marrying analytical and creative thinking. Nice.

Speaker 2

It's definitely shorter and Tim is still ticking most of the boxes. I was going to ask you actually how your original definition had evolved, but when you start to answer that question and that's a nice short definition I'm going to ask you to read it again.

Speaker 1

The first one.

Speaker 2

Now the second one. You're shorter, You're short. And what did you call it? You used them there.

Speaker 1

Like my one liner.

Speaker 2

Your one liner yeah.

Speaker 1

Design thinking is a human-centered and iterative approach that brings people together to design practical yet innovative solutions by marrying analytical and creative thinking.

Speaker 2

Probably you're miscribbling me taking notes, yet it's, like, I think, one of the ones that I've used. What I really like about that is and this might sound a little bit strange, but it doesn't actually mention design in there.

Speaker 2

One of my kind of workshop definitions is design thinking is a way for non-designers to use the mindsets skills toolkit of designers in order to do what you've just described. But I like the fact that that kind of depends on people listening, having an understanding of what designers actually do, not their perception of what designers do. So I like the fact that your definition doesn't mention that.

Speaker 1

And that was also interesting. You bring that up because, as I was trying to define what design thinking is, I really wanted to be able to define it. How do you talk about design thinking without talking about designing?

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, yeah, nice, I think you've succeeded. Or for me, I think you've succeeded in that.

Speaker 1

Is it useful to you.

Speaker 2

Yes, it is. I think certainly it's like I said, were the initial definition. It's ticking a lot of boxes, important boxes that we need to bring to life. When we're talking about the design thinking, you could almost call them, I guess, maybe core principles. So these are the things that, because I think maybe we'll going off on a tangent.

Speaker 2

And one of the pitfalls we can fall into, like a pit, one of the traps we can fall into is trying to define design thinking by a particular process or a particular set of tools, maybe even a mindset, versus what your description avoids.

Speaker 2

Any of that it doesn't say you need to empathize with people Then you define the problem from their point of view, et cetera, et cetera, is actually describing that. Maybe the word is principle from principles or first principles point of view. So you know, but at hand, and then from my, I understand human centered. Human centered means, or have a perception of it, my definition Likewise iterative. I like the fact that you talk about bringing people together and don't use the word collaboration. I also think that highlighting the fact that the solutions that emerge from a design thinking approach are practical and innovative yeah, I think it's kind of anchored in some of the core principles and maybe a good test of what something is is also like exploring what it's not.

Speaker 2

That makes sense, but I've never been asked to come up with a definition of what design thinking is not have you?

Speaker 1

Yeah, I actually wrote a blog article some time ago about what design thinking is not.

Speaker 2

Cool.

Design Thinking is not

Speaker 1

So the first thing I talk about is design thinking is not about artistic skills. When I first started trying to burn design thinking into organizations, I would always get, oh, but you know, we're not really the creative type, so we don't, we're not very artistic, we don't draw well, that is something that. So one of the reasons I started to talk about design thinking is not it's not about art was simply because that was just something that kept coming up a lot. The second thing that I used to hear in the second misception design thinking is not about abandoning analytical thinking or structured decision making.

Speaker 1

I think sometimes people think about design as this fluffy thing that happens over there with those people, those creative, artistic people. But if you kind of think back to the episodes that we did on the three lenses of design, design thinking really calls for both types of thinking. We've got to have that generative thinking, that creative thinking that generates the ideas, but then we also have to whittle down those ideas and come up with a practical solution. And then the third one is design thinking is not just a nice to have and talking about it in terms of, because I think for a long time design thinking was thought as like, oh, it'll be just this fun thing we do and then we'll go do the real work. But design thinking is the real work and by engaging in design thinking you deliver very valuable solutions that release all the problems.

Speaker 2

Yeah, nice. Another thing I think it's not again. This is kind of in a relating to misperceptions I've encountered. Is it's not, I'll say, just a workshop or a sprint, and you know that's why.

Speaker 2

I like your, your definition doesn't, like you said, doesn't mention any process or particular you know way of working or environment or anything like you can bring it, bring it brings people together, but then we don't prescribe how people are brought together. And another thing is not and this is a bit of a little bit of a jump but it's not a guarantee that you'll solve a problem or find a solution. It's like because again, I've encountered a, I guess, a misperception, that that's some sort of magic wand or silver bullet that you know you'll bring people together. Great, yeah, we'll take a human centered approach. Awesome, we'll have, we'll iterate and we will combine creative analytical thinking and we'll also generate possibilities and narrow down to kind of realities. But it's still maybe the pitfall that I've seen, the pattern I've seen emerges, that people see or maybe I'm thinking in particular like a workshop or a design sprint people see as there's a guarantee that the problem will be solved and the solution will be delivered in a particular time frame.

Speaker 2

I don't know what you think of that. I mean, I believe in design thinking that we can. You know, using the definition you've described, if we adopt that approach, then we will. We can solve many different problems or identify them and solve them. Maybe it's the time factor. I'm thinking of that, but it's not a guarantee. I suppose it's not a dead sir.

Speaker 1

I don't think any approach you take to problem solving guarantees a lot to deliver a solution. I think that our mental model of how we define solution is no longer appropriate for the context that we exist in today, and the reason I say that is the types of problems that we're trying to solve today don't have a one for one right, so that meaning that we have this problem and here is one solution that fits this one problem.

Speaker 1

Problems that we are experiencing today are multifactorial, like there's lots of things coming together to create that problem, and those types of problems are not going to be solved by one solution.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Often times we have to do three or four or five or six or seven or eight or nine or 10 things to fix that problem. But what we fail to do is we fail to think about solutions, as is it making the problem, or, yeah, are we making the situation better? Meaning the problem is minimizing it may not completely go away, but we've done three things with pain point used to be a 10, but the three things we've done have now bought it down to a seven.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1

So I think, I think that there's that problem. The second problem is that there's such a focus on delivering something that we and I see this playing out in organizations all the time where the focus becomes so much on okay, we've got to get, we've got to deliver, we've got to deliver, we've got to deliver. You often end up delivering a solution very quickly, but solution doesn't actually fix the problem. It just it just fixes the problem of we've delivered something, tick the box, yay.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it fixes somebody's problem somewhere. The problem they they had was I promised to deliver something.

Speaker 2

Yeah it solves that problem for that person. Yeah, and actually, as you're talking there, you know that's why you are. You know, in your definition, your iterative, the reference iterative, is really important and you know again, it's maybe flipping that into a not so design thinking. Taking design thinking approaches not maybe I'll say once and done and effort. You know we don't just do a two week design thinking sprint and implement something and kind of walk away from it. I think it requires a continuous yeah, continuous design thinking approach to maybe it's just to overcome that delivery kind of bias.

Speaker 1

So, but I think, as long as we, as long as the thing we're measuring is that things are being delivered, I don't think problems are ever going to get solved, because the metric needs to be. Are we minimizing the impact of the problem? Is the thing we're delivering having impact on the problem? Yeah, that's, something's been delivered.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, totally agree. It's a little bit scary that the metric of delivering something Still quite prevalent and seen as important. Okay, well, you've got a great definition. We've talked about the counter to the definition of just exploring what it's not.

Speaker 1

I think there's another part of this understanding what design thinking is that we need to talk about.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

Which is I always tell people that design thinking is very commonly talked about as a process. Mm-hmm Right these are the five steps? Three steps, everybody's got a process for time thinking, mm-hmm. And yes, design thinking is a process, but it's not just a process.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

Design thinking is also a set of tools and design thinking is also a set of capabilities. Learning the process of design thinking is like the starting point, it's like the one on one Mm-hmm. Right, but as you want to master this, then you've got to build some proficiency with design thinking tools Mm-hmm. And really understanding, because there's heaps and heaps of tools that we use in design thinking, but you need to understand what tool to use and what situations with which people, because the tool that you use may yield a different result Mm-hmm. And then the third one is design thinking is also a set of capabilities Mm-hmm. And to really build mastery in design thinking, you've got to be focusing on understanding the capabilities and developing the capabilities Mm-hmm. Because the more that you build the capability, the better you become at using the process and the tools.

Speaker 2

Yeah, it's like each of those things feeds into the other, mm-hmm and reinforces the other. Yeah, yeah and reinforcing.

Speaker 1

Okay, so we've done what it is, what it's not.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

We usually talk about why. So why is design thinking important?

Speaker 2

Well, why is design thinking important, or why is being clear on the definition of it important?

Speaker 1

Mm-hmm, I love two minds on this.

Speaker 2

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 1

On the one hand, I feel like design thinking has been around for so long. People should just know why it's important Mm-hmm At the same time. I know that's not true and maybe it's that I've been talking about it for so long. Yeah, I feel like everyone should know Mm-hmm. But I also like your take on why is defining what design thinking is important? So maybe we start with that one.

Speaker 2

Yes, let's.

Speaker 1

So Teter why?

Speaker 2

Oh, okay. Well, how do we talk about this? Well, maybe it will just be seemingly obvious, but not once we get into. Why is it important? I think maybe it's because it's either not understood or at all, or misunderstood, and I think there's a difference between the two Mm-hmm, and you know especially where we are now with design thinking and you know, I guess, the evolution of design thinking itself and how it's been used in organizations over the last 10, 15 years. Yeah, the misunderstanding is almost just as important to redirect as the absence of understanding. Yeah, maybe that's why defining it is important. And maybe, like people who, yeah, maybe the final part of that is I've got lack of understanding, misunderstanding and then finally understanding, so people who do understand something, thinking, creating a definition will help everybody kind of combat or overcome those first two of misunderstanding or absence of understanding.

Speaker 1

That feels like a double loop kind of thing there to me.

Speaker 2

Really For me, you know really.

Speaker 1

So I think what you're saying is if we address the misunderstandings about design thinking, then we help people understand what design thinking is.

Speaker 2

Yeah, maybe we'll just keep it simple and go. Design thinking is either misunderstood or just not even understood at all, okay. Yeah, that's it Done, full stop. Okay, over to you.

How Design Thinking Can Help

Speaker 1

So why is it important to understand what design thinking is? It's important to understand what design thinking is so that you can be clear about what the types of problems that design thinking can help and how it can help.

Speaker 2

Yeah.

Speaker 1

I also think that it's actually. I think that's it.

Speaker 2

That's it, yeah.

Speaker 1

Like how can it help? Because if you're not clear about what it is, then because I think the problem today is that even where people understand what design thinking is, there's a lack of ability to understand. Okay, I get what it is, but how do I apply it to my work? I'm facing this massive problem with whatever it is Attrition, digital transformation, call out a few other things that companies are struggling with. I think it's that translation about I understand what design thinking is, but how can it help me? I think being clear about what design thinking is part of that is helping people work out how it can help them.

Speaker 2

Yeah, nice Making what I was describing as concrete.

Speaker 1

Should we talk a little bit about. Why is it design thinking important?

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, so not the definition, but design thinking is how it's important. I think it's important. Yeah, let's do that. It's important because it's not that other approaches might not, or other approaches don't consider some of the things you've described in your definition, like innovation or having an iterative approach, or being human-centered or bringing people together. But I think design thinking is important in that it's an approach that brings all of that together and almost kind of delving into those parts of the definition, but, for example, bringing creative and analytical thinking together and making the most of both of those.

Speaker 2

Well, fundamentally, that seems to be it's really important. Like you were saying, the problems we're facing in organizations a micro-scale or a nano-scale, such as how to help our team members have good experiences so that they can provide good experiences to our customers, so that we can continue to thrive as an organization, whatever your organization, wherever it is, all the way up to existential problems like how are we going to fix the environment that we're currently destroying I think it's important to bring types of human thinking together and all human brains together. Yeah, I've not encountered an approach, a different approach, another approach that makes the most of that creative and analytical thing that humans are capable of doing both.

Speaker 1

We're capable of doing both and we need both.

Speaker 2

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1

Because I think if and this is kind of the arguments and in our next episode about the past, the future of design thinking we talk about, like, fundamentally our educational upbringing has kind of funneled into, you're either a creative person or you're an analytical person, but if you're hyperdeveloped in one area and not the other, you can't, because problem solving requires both of those sides of the brain. And if you're too analytical, then your chances are you're just going to keep looking back at what's been done before and go, okay, these are the existing options, let's figure out how to analyze them and pick something, whereas if you're a creative person, you're probably going to be looking at okay, what can we do, what can we do generating those ideas. But it's not until those two types of thinking come together that you're like yeah, oh, okay, yeah, in my research work I describe why design thinking is important as three things. One is globalization.

Speaker 1

Two is the pace of technology. And three is increasingly the savviness of consumers. Globalization is a wonderful thing. At the same time, globalization makes the problems we face so much more complex. Covid-19, the pandemic, is a great example of that. Right when air travel and global travel wasn't a big thing, it was very easy.

Speaker 1

You look at things like the influenza pandemic back in the I don't remember what century it was, but let's just say it wasn't a time when people were hopping on planes and traveling left to right. It was easier to contain, and it's not just so. I think that's a great example, the problems that we face now or you think about the GFC, the global financial crisis right, our economies are so interconnected that when something happens in one part of the world, it impacts, which requires us to think more holistically, take a more systems perspective, and design thinking naturally enables that, because one of the tenants is bringing people together, bringing silksets together. The pace of technology, technology is advancing at a pace that the human brain does not advance at, which means that adopting technology, creating technology, figuring out how to implement it to solve problems, requires that coming together of different thinking. It requires that experimentation to learn.

Speaker 1

And you know, in terms of savvy consumers, people now don't decide what they buy or what services they'll use based on the advertising that companies put out. If I am looking to travel to London and I want to know where to go eat, I have a whole. I have access to people that live there that I can go. Hey, I'm going to be here on someone. So, dave, where should I eat? Tell me, should I stay in, which means that the experiences that people have directly with your products and services matter, because it's no longer about the glossy ads and that's really not going to be what gets people through the door.

Speaker 2

Yes, it just won't. And even if it does, then they will come back through the door unless the reality matches up with the expectations that have been set. So I like these globalization, pace of technology. And then the savvy consumers. So this is part of your research. I wonder if you know, especially that last one, the savvy consumers. Have you thought about a kind of broader kind of definition or perspective? Because I think that the savvy consumers one could kind of limit our thinking to design thinking as only applicable to problems that you know, when we're being consumers, that we experience, versus I have. I know that we both know from our experience that we can use design thinking to solve problems that people experience in any kind of domain of their life, whether they are a team member in a retail store who's trying to help a customer, or either a user of a health service, you know. And so, yeah, I just wonder what is our? Does that make sense? Like what's our kind of broader kind of, maybe definition of the savvy consumers, savvy consumers perspective?

Speaker 1

Yeah, and then in this context, I don't use the word consumer in the commercial sense. I use it more as consumption right. So, as humans, there are things that we go and buy, which is a form of consuming, but there's also things that we access. So you know, here in New Zealand I am a consumer of the national parks.

Speaker 2

Yeah, yeah, right Okay.

Speaker 1

I am a consumer of healthcare services, I'm a consumer of the transportation service, so I'm using that word in a broader sense.

Speaker 2

Okay.

Speaker 1

Just commercialism.

Speaker 2

Okay, okay, that totally makes sense. Yeah, like your example is there. I can think of a few more, but okay, yeah. So globalization, passive technology, savvy consumers so if I'm somebody in an organization, whether it's commercial or not commercial, and my goal is to help people in whatever way, then the people I'm trying to help, simply by definition, I guess because of globalization and the passive technology, have access to far more information than they previously did. So expectations for one will be completely different to what they might have been 15, 20 years ago.

Speaker 1

And we have options. Right, we have way more options. Like it used to be that your only option was whatever store, whatever was available in your geographic area was all you have access to Today. I can buy things from New Zealand, I can buy things from Australia, I can buy things from the UK, I can buy things from China, and it all gets shipped to my front door. So we've talked about what design thinking is, why it's important, and two different facets of why it's important. So we usually talk about the how. So how can design thinking help?

Speaker 2

Okay, if I was a head of design thinking, I was gonna say, well, have a listen to our other episodes, listener.

Speaker 1

Yeah, so this whole podcast is really devoted to how to apply design thinking. So you can listen to any of our episodes and dive into that. But how can?

Speaker 2

it help is your question. Well, I think it's kind of bringing everything together really that we talked about so far. It can help because design thinking yet unifies or these different elements of the definition In an organization. I think how it can help is bringing together I like to describe it as a diagonal slice of an organization, so everyone from the people making decisions about what happens or what doesn't happen, to the people actually interacting with the consumers in our broader definition Sometimes those groups of people might be the same and that's the up and down of the organization and across the way can bring everyone together from operations, customer service, technology, marketing, finance. And it helps because it helps everyone both draw upon their own existing skills and experience, but also gives everyone opportunity to, I think, draw upon some of their innate human skills, capabilities, capacity to make the most of everybody's.

Speaker 1

I think the way I would describe that is it breaks down silos because you're collecting people from different parts of the organization.

Speaker 2

Yeah, nice.

Speaker 1

Which, and then when you do that? It brings together different capabilities and different styles of thinking together. Right, because? If you get people from marketing and finance and sales and we jar together.

Speaker 1

It's very multidisciplinary. I think the practical it makes problem-solving very practical, because it gets you on the ground with the problem Rather than sitting out here in the ivory tower going, oh, I think this is what people really need. You're actually on the ground with the people what do you actually need? And then figuring out who would deliver. That I think it also enables how it helps is it actually reduces the cost of developing, because it encourages experimenting and prototyping and figuring it out as you go, so that you're not You're not wasting money building something based on assumptions about what you think people want and need, so it's based on actual and then you're not Building this big thing and then taking it out. You're. You're building small things, taking it out, learning and then adding bigger thing.

Speaker 2

Yeah, nice, another way, another way to Describe that or similar thing that does is the de-risks things. So it's a great way of de-risking anything and, yeah, something else that it helps. The way it helps is it gets people galvanized I described and energized around a particular problem. Again, again, I've seen there's no substitute for people like you're saying going and understanding the problem in the field, if you like, whether that is in a field or around a desk and then actually observing that and Internalizing it themselves to then go. This is, this is what we're actually doing we are solving in this particular problem for this particular person. It becomes far more concrete and, like I say, it becomes almost internalized versus an abstract. You know, item on a Excel spreadsheet or PowerPoint to a deck is the complete polar opposite. So, yeah, that's another way that it helps.

Speaker 1

So we've done the what, the why, the how. I think that brings us to our takeaways.

Speaker 2

I think it does. Yeah, takeaways gonna take two this week, if that's right. The first one is what we just described like this it's just a nice reminder of why, how can help and those nice succinct points we just made there. And then the other takeaway is, of course, your, your definition, your short, both both your definitions, actually like your long definition and your short definition, so I'll be digging through our podcast transcripts To pull those out and and have them, because they have my sleeve. I'm not a tattoo person, though, so they'll be on paper rather than there on my on my skin. Have you done? What's your takeaways?

Speaker 1

I think that that's that I'm taking away is I've really had fun kind of coming back to the basics. Mm-hmm I think we need to. I think sometimes we get so caught up being in the work that we don't take a step back, which is something that is design thinkers need to be doing. Yeah, and and maybe thinking more about how do we come back to the basics.

Speaker 2

Yeah, nice. Yeah, like what? What we're doing and why we're doing this is a good great questions to pause on, occasionally Big perspective, awesome. Well, thank you, danny, that's been a really great conversation again and, yeah, I like digging into these, into these definitions, getting into the basics, yeah.

Speaker 1

Yeah, it's been great. Thanks everyone for listening. Talk to you next time.

Speaker 2

Hope you next time. Thanks for listening. See you, danny Take care.