Design thinking. Design thinking is a way of not seeing boundaries and asking yourself the question: “What if I do it differently?”

In classical marketing, data analysis is more often used to identify audience needs. And in design thinking - a creative approach in which sometimes unexpected ideas lead to optimal solution tasks. Many Belarusian businessmen have not heard of this method. But it is effectively used by Apple, Virgin, Toyota when developing their products. This method can be classified as additional tools marketing.

We learned details about how to use design thinking at a master class by Ugnius Saviskas, lecturer and business development consultant, founder of ISM Innobase at the Vilnius University of Management and Economics. We also asked Ugnius tell how this method helps in practice - in business.

What is design thinking

Design thinking is a methodology for creating successful products and innovations that is based on a deep study and understanding of the interests, behavioral factors (thoughts, feelings, actions) and needs of the client. It can be applied in all areas where there are problems and people (for example, even when building relationships with colleagues).

Design thinking in business helps not only to listen, but also to hear your client, understand his needs and satisfy them. This approach helps a business develop, be competitive and, accordingly, earn money. At its core, design thinking is a customer-centric approach. It would seem that there is nothing new, it sounds simple. But what often happens in practice?

Both young startups and serious businessmen often make the same mistakes when bringing a product to market. One of the common ones is that the product is released first, and then the market is studied, and not vice versa. In this case, the factor that is missed is that finding an unfulfilled need means finding 80% of the success of a business.

The process of solving any problem from the point of view of design thinking is interactive and, unlike marketing research, involves working in a team, preferably at least 4 people. At all stages of the method (there are five in total), the general discussion and opinion of the group when making decisions is important.

Let us briefly show the basic principle of these stages and the work of the team:

1. Empathize - understanding what the audience needs. To do this, use the method of surveying (interviewing) representatives of your target audience according to the conditional formula “What? Why? How? When? Where?".

In practice, this can be done like this: each team member personally interviews a certain number of potential users, trying to find out as much information about them as possible - what they want, what they don’t like, what they dream about, what problems they have, why, etc. .

It is important to understand people's feelings, emotions and perceptions, but this step is not limited to just surveying consumers. Sometimes it is necessary, for example, to interview suppliers, couriers, transport companies, and even your employees.

During the survey, you need to briefly write down all key needs, thoughts, actions or emotions, preferably each conclusion from what you heard on a separate sticky note. For example, after interviewing only one person, there may be 5 or 50 stickers with his characteristics: “loves football”, “reads books”, “is often cold”, “prefers to work in silence”, etc. You cannot ask questions that directly relate to the topic on which you are conducting a survey, as this will lose the objectivity of the information received.

After interviewing all the selected people, there may be a huge number of such records. And this is good - the more, the deeper the needs analysis will be.

2. Focus (Define) on a specific problem, which the team members identified at the first stage. All this is passed through brainstorming: the information obtained at the first stage needs to be analyzed, combined according to similar characteristics into common blocks, for example, “Education”, “Material needs”, “Emotions”, etc. This is how the main message (point of view) will begin to emerge, which will help to more clearly identify the audience’s needs.

At this stage, you will have to work with the stickers on which the needs were written down. They can be conditionally combined into several groups according to certain common features. You will see which needs will be greater, which means you will understand what you need to focus on. In this case, it is important not to pay attention to the original task, but to rely only on the results of understanding! With each stage, the image of the end consumer will be less and less personalized; it will become collective, but deeply developed.

3. Ideate development. The main thing here is not to be afraid to come up with the wrong ideas for fulfilling your needs. All the decisions that “come to mind”, even the most unrealistic, stupid or terrible ones, are correct. How more options- all the better.

For example, if the task is to understand what your company should be like in 10 years in order the best specialists wanted to work in it, then the ideas could be: “have a cat in the office” (realization of the need “loves cats”), “internship for employees in an international company” (needs - “likes to learn new things”, “dreams of working in another country”, “thinks about a career”), “open a laboratory in the office in which employees can study using interactive glasses with computer functions” (needs - “wants to constantly learn something new”, “likes working with new technologies”, “no time for training outside of work"), etc.

All ideas need to be written down on a large sheet of paper, and the trick of the method is to come up with them without thinking. As practice shows, at first it is difficult to do this, but when you develop, for example, the fifth project in this way, you will feel how much more creative you have become.

It is advisable to highlight ideas in categories, so it will be easier for you to understand them: “Best for the user”, “Crazy”, “Rational”, “Expensive to implement”, “Innovative”, etc. - names of your choice. Each team member must select the best, in his opinion, ideas (which are then discussed by the whole team and filtered during the brainstorming process) and options for their implementation.

4. Development of a prototype (Prototype). This is the stage of implementing the idea. It is important to decide what and how you will test at the next stage (product design, operating principles, etc.) - you can test the entire product at once, or you can test only one aspect (this will make it easier for you to evaluate and improve it).

You can also generate new ideas at this stage, refine old ones, and get a clearer idea of ​​the problem and solution. A board with stickers, sketches on paper, software prototypes, role-playing scenarios, construction sets, plasticine, scrap materials, etc. are suitable as a prototype. At first glance, this may seem strange - adults are “playing” with a construction set, but this step should be taken seriously, which you will feel at the next stage of testing.

You need to start making a prototype as early as possible. It may be approximate, but it is advisable not to spend a lot of time on it! You may need it for alteration and modification. It is possible that we will have to return to the idea development stage in order to reconsider the selected consumer needs.

5. Product testing (Test). The prototype needs to be tested on consumers. It is important to clearly plan how you will do this. If you think you'll just show the prototype to the end user and ask if they like it or not, then don't expect their loyalty. In this case, his reaction may not be in favor of your product, and he will not list everything that needs to be improved. First of all, you yourself must have a complete understanding of how the product will work, what needs it covers, why the user should choose it, etc., and, accordingly, communicate all this information to the consumer. And if the consumer doesn’t like something, then ask why, what’s wrong, what he would like, etc.

This stage will show how and to what extent the created product solves the user’s problem, and what needs to be improved. After all, it is very important to solve the real need of a potential consumer, and not just create a product!

And don't be afraid of mistakes. Mistakes are valuable experience. Think for yourself what’s better: make a mistake 10 times during the testing period for $300, or create a mass product that didn’t work for $300 thousand.

The design thinking method only works in a team:

• Develops employee entrepreneurship and creativity
• Helps the team work more efficiently
• Provides tools for applying and implementing innovations in the company
• Teaches out-of-the-box thinking and techniques that will help you create successful products

How design thinking works in practice

Let's consider a conditional situation when a company decides to release New Product.

In the first case The director sets the project manager and his employees the task of launching a new product. In a very simplified way it might look like this: let's run new project where you can make money. Our audience is banks, consulting, law firms.

The manager, according to this specification, comes up with a product, assigning selective tasks to employees for this project. Then everyone gets together, looks at what happened, unanimously decides that the work is ready, and returns to other current tasks. The director approves (or sends for revision), and the project is launched.

But few people think about it - what if the project doesn’t take off? Who is responsible for this? Who will be responsible for losses or loss of reputation of the company?

And now the second situation. The manager assembles a working group of 5-7 people, which will take into account only the interests of consumers when developing the project.

In what case will the product be more successful? Most likely, in the second.

In Belarus, design thinking is difficult to fit into the traditional business scheme; a creative approach to studying the market or target audience is not yet typical.

When creating products, the market is most often studied and analytics are carried out. This scheme worked well 20 years ago in a static world. But in modern world other laws are already in effect.

In design thinking, when developing any product, the focus is on the user and his interests. This is very important point— it is the user, and not the vision, resources and financial capabilities of the company, even if it seems to the businessman that he has decided to offer the market something very valuable and necessary.

Example of using design thinking

The company's managers did not read the legal department's monthly reports and therefore did not follow their detailed instructions. It turned out that these reports were sent on 15 pages in the form of continuous text.

Selected solution— a lawyer’s report in the form of an infographic on one page.

Anyone can develop design thinking

The most a big problem for the implementation and adoption of innovations that many companies face is the trap of experience: we did it - we know. When the brain works according to a template, familiar algorithm, then every time we will get the same (similar) result. An entrepreneur studies management, improves his management competencies, is up to speed in marketing, understands how the market works and what potential risks can await it. Weighing all the pros and cons, he decides whether it is worth the risk or not. It is for this reason that businessmen refuse many interesting projects. In this case, their stereotypes prevent them from looking at business, products and customer needs from a different, unusual angle, and therefore hinder development.

Business still operates with the statistics that the market provides today. But this is not how innovation is born.

Empathy, intuition and creativity are what businesses are missing today. They help to understand the market demand and satisfy it, rather than trying to sell well what they have made.

For everyone who considers themselves hopelessly uncreative and thinks that Design thinking is the thinking of the elite, statistics give a reason to think and reconsider their stereotypes.

Ugnius Saviskas says that only 2% of adults have creative abilities. But are they born this way? Among five-year-old children, 98% have well-developed creative abilities. But if they are not developed, then the ability to create decreases every year - for ten-year-olds this figure is already 36%.

At one time, when he first learned about design thinking, it was difficult for him to accept this method. Traditional thinking did not give way to non-standard thoughts and ideas.

Today Ugnius conducts trainings and master classes on design thinking for everyone who is open to new knowledge, wants to get ahead of competitors or take their business to the next level. new level. These include students, startups, businessmen, banks, and law firms. According to the businessman, so far in Lithuania, design research is most often ordered by IT companies, especially in cases where they do not have a clearly defined product (an example could be projects related to cloud computing).

— Lithuanian businessmen, after joining the EU, clearly understood that it was important to learn to think about how to get ahead of their competitors. But how to do this if everyone has the same starting conditions and by and large— the same equipment, the same company development tools, the same thinking and view of the consumer. Why should they choose you? How are you different?

Today in business, the advantages are motivation, competence and involvement in the work of the entire team. What are competencies today? This includes the ability to use innovation. You need to be an innovator, then you will be ahead of your competitors.

Now everything is moving towards the fact that companies will increasingly begin to offer individual products and services. Future-oriented technologies in business should be available today.

When creating a product, you need to “create”, and not just think rationally. But often an entrepreneur does not have time to “turn on creativity” because he needs to “do business.” Practice shows that at the product creation stage you can “run not faster, but smarter”.

It is forbidden? Why? Because I or someone else doesn't like it? Is your company ready for change? Do you care what others think? Are you afraid of making the wrong decision? Creativity always involves mistakes, but there is no need to be afraid of them. How many companies are there that reward employees for mistakes? Fear of mistakes does not promote innovation.

Your employees will never develop a business mindset if they work strictly according to instructions. Is the team ready to get creative? Formulate goals for the team and give them freedom. Let him work, deciding independently how to implement them. But freedom does not exclude responsibility; everyone should remember this.

An entrepreneur, having acquired certain knowledge, for example, in marketing or management, thinks that he knows everything about potential risks and falls into the knowledge trap. Engage children's curiosity and naivety when developing ideas. You can turn on the experience later.

I advise you to turn off your brain more often and think with your hands. Like this? Yes, very simple. Take a piece of paper and make something out of it. Surely you were trying to remember something that you had already done. And, most likely, your creation will not be the most successful. Try to forget everything you know. Turn off your consciousness. Let only your hands work. After a few dozen crafts, you will be surprised not only by your results, but also by how differently you begin to think. You will feel how ideas will begin to emerge that will help you solve any problems.

Tim Brown's book Design Thinking in Business. From developing new products to designing business models.” Originally Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation

The first couple of chapters seemed mortally boring to me. Around the 4th chapter it got interesting. I noticed that the author in the book uses the word “innovation” too often. It's like a book about Skolkovo. Every time I came across this word, I remembered Fry from Futurama when he was drinking coffee.

The book is a collection of stories about how design thinking has helped the IDEO company (Tim Brown is its director) for decades. How to “turn on” design thinking, however, did not become clear. Is not practical guide, rather a narrative reasoning. Like Victor Papanek's book Design for the Real World. If you've read Papanek and liked his work, you'll like Brown's book. It's about something similar. The author tells how they applied design thinking in a particular project. In the end, it seems like a magic pill: “— Is the problem in business, family, life? Design thinking will help you." But in fact, you can say that your brain will simply help you. Think, observe, turn on empathy, and design. At the same time, it’s unlikely that after reading the book it will click in your head: “Aha! I understand. I’ll do this, then that, and everything will be great.”

Here is one of the stories. The designers were faced with the task of the Shimano company, which produces various equipment for bicycles, to do something with falling demand. It seemed that release a new innovative body kit and get an explosion of sales. It turned out that what customers need is neither more speed nor nanoalloy parts. Almost every second person has a mountain bike in their garage. They just don’t ride it: it’s inconvenient to maintain, it’s too complicated, and the city is not designed for cycling. Some people don’t want to be considered a layman in a store when buying a fancy bike. People wanted a simple touring bike. To drive it around the park and enjoy it like in childhood.

[…] Designers could have ended the design on the bike itself, but design thinkers taking a holistic approach went further. They developed sales strategies for small shops, in particular to reduce the discomfort that newbies experienced in an environment designed to serve people who knew about bicycles. The team came up with a brand that defines recreational riding as a way to enjoy life. In collaboration with local authorities and cycling clubs, the team developed a PR campaign, even creating a website indicating safe places to ride.

I also liked the example about finance:

Bank of America launched a new service in October 2005 called No Change Needed. This service automatically rounds up debit card purchases to the nearest whole dollar and deposits the difference into the customer's savings account. Now, when I buy a coffee for $3.50 at Pete's with my debit card, the 50 cents I would have received in change if I had handed the cashier $4 goes into my savings account. Considering how much coffee I drink, the savings in my account add up quickly. And I'm not the only one who thinks this way in a successful way savings. In its first year, the service attracted 2.5 million customers who opened more than 700,000 new checking accounts and 1 million new savings accounts. It is unlikely that such results could be achieved by asking people to change their behavior, by teaching boring lessons about compound interest, or by lecturing on the true value of money. By fitting a new service into existing behavior, IDEO provided customers with something that was both familiar and excitingly new. Without even realizing it, Bank of America customers began to achieve results they had never achieved before and that they hardly thought possible.

I want people to grow up not only to open savings accounts using banking services, but also to begin to understand finances and become more conscious in managing their money. That's why we started a blog on Tradernet. In the meantime, on payday you can find queues at ATMs, when people withdraw all their money in cash because they don’t trust cards: “It’s safer at home!”

The book is full of stories. Sometimes less convincing examples come across. For example, when the author talks about how Nokia decided to leave simple production phones, to create a highly interactive business with an emphasis on services. It was 2006, the book came out in 2009, and the iPhone in 2007. Something is wrong here.

About prototyping

An agile team of design thinkers starts developing prototypes from the very beginning, and fixes bugs along the way. As we say at IDEO, “Make mistakes early so you can succeed in the long run.”

The faster you make an idea tangible, the faster you can evaluate it, refine it, and come to a final solution.

And one more word in support of rapid prototyping:

The more you invest in an idea, the more supporter you become. Over-investing in a sophisticated prototype has two undesirable consequences: first, a mediocre idea may be too far along the path to implementation and, in the worst case, may not be implemented; secondly, the prototyping process itself opens up the possibility of exploring new and better ideas at minimal cost.

The more complex and expensive the prototype, the more “finished” it looks and the less likely its creators are to obtain valuable design information—and the less likely they are to take it into account. The purpose of prototyping is not to create a working model.

About restrictions

Joyful, enthusiastic acceptance of limitations is the foundation of design thinking. The first stage of design is to find important constraints and determine a system for evaluating them. Constraints are best visualized as three competing criteria successful ideas: feasibility (what is functionally possible in the foreseeable future), cost-effectiveness (what is most likely to be part of a sustainable business model) and desirability (what people need and for people).

While this may seem obvious, the reality is that this is not how most companies approach new ideas. Quite reasonably, they start with the limitations of what is included in the structure of the existing business model. Because business systems are designed for maximum efficiency, new ideas tend to be incremental in nature, predictable, and easily copied by competitors. This explains the depressing monotony of products on modern markets; Haven't you ever walked into the appliance department looking for a printer, or almost gotten into someone else's car in a parking lot?

About the role of designers

The next generation of designers should be just as comfortable in boardrooms as they are in studios or workshops. And these people will need to look at every issue, from adult literacy to... global warming- as a design problem.

The job of a designer, as Peter Drucker so aptly put it, is “transforming need into demand.” At first glance, everything is simple: you need to understand what people want and give it to them. But if it's so easy, why are there so few success stories like the iPod, Prius, MTV or eBay? The answer, I believe, is to bring the individual back to center stage. You need to learn to consider people first.

Why is it so difficult to identify a need and design a response to it? The main problem is that people are so good at adapting to uncomfortable situations that they often don't even notice it: they sit in seat belts, write PIN codes on the palms of their hands, hang jackets on door handles, and lock their bicycles to park benches.

Three interrelated and mutually reinforcing elements of any successful design program:

1. Insight - learning from the lives of others.
2. Observation - we look at what people don’t do, we listen to what they don’t say
3. Empathy - putting ourselves in the shoes (or lying on the gurney) of other people.

About observation

Simply asking people to talk about how they spend their time at work and who they interact with regularly can yield skewed information. Even if a person has the best intentions, his memory may fail him, and his answers will likely reflect his views of the hard facts. Tools like video ethnography (where a group's behavior is recorded on camera over time) and computer interaction analysis help provide more accurate data about the dynamic interactions between individuals and groups.

Good design thinkers observe. Great design thinkers observe the ordinary. Introduce a rule for yourself: stop and think about the most ordinary situation at least once a day.

About the knowledge base

The author quotes Linus Pauling, Nobel laureate: “To find a good idea, you first need a lot of ideas.” Therefore, IDEO designers collect a large knowledge base and look at the solution different tasks, generate a lot of ideas to find the one. It is prepared on the basis of others.

About ideas

A good idea is no longer enough. Innovation is called “a good idea, executed well.” Not a bad start. Unfortunately, too great attention pay attention to the first part of this phrase.

New products and services may be doomed to fail according to the most various reasons: Poor quality, uninteresting marketing, unreliable distribution, unrealistic price. Even if all the success factors are present, a poorly executed idea will most likely lead to failure. The problem may lie in the physical embodiment of the product - it is too big, too heavy, too complex. Likewise, the touchpoints with a new service - be it the retail space or the interface software— may not be associated with clients. These are design errors and can usually be corrected. However, more and more often, ideas fail because people demand more from them than simple work. The components of the product must collectively create a positive perception. And this is much more difficult.
There are many explanations for this new level of elevated expectations. Among the most compelling is Daniel Pink's analysis of the psychodynamics of abundance. In A Whole New Mind11, Pink argues that once a person's basic needs are met—which is the case for most people in affluent Western societies—people seek experiences that are meaningful and emotionally satisfying.

About choice

About the benefits for the client

An organization that practices human-centric design thinking is actually practicing enlightened selfishness. If a company understands customers better, it can better meet their needs. It is the most reliable source of long-term profitability and sustainable growth. In the world of business, every idea - no matter how noble it may be - must be tested by financial results.

When (airplane) passengers understand what is wanted from them and why, they are more tolerant of procedures that otherwise seem meaningless and arbitrary.

Customer Journey

A simple means of creating a scenario during the development of new services is the “customer journey”. This structure indicates the stages through which a fictitious client goes through from the beginning of receiving the service to the end. The beginning may be fictitious or may come directly from observing people buying an airline ticket or deciding whether to install solar panels on their roof. In each case, the value of describing the customer journey is that it provides insight into where the customer and the service or brand interact. Each of these touchpoints is an opportunity to deliver value. potential clients company - or the opportunity to derail customer relationships.

Kostya Soroka told me about this instrument. I want to study it in more detail and try it in practice on Tradernet. I have already made sketches, but so far they seem rough and incorrect to me. As I understand it, it is important to describe not just “points of contact” or the company’s existing business processes, but to see them from the other side.

How to Apply Design Thinking

1. Start from the beginning - you need to intentionally increase the number of options. At the end of the project, this is meaningless, so design thinking needs to be involved first, at the stage of research work. Design thinkers must connect all parts of the manufacturing and distribution process.
2. Adopt a human-centric approach. Design thinking is not just anthropocentric - it is human at its core. Design thinking is based on a person’s ability to intuitively feel, to recognize patterns, to create ideas that have not only a functional, but also an emotional component, to express oneself not only in words or symbols.
3. Fail early, fail often. Make prototypes.
4. Share your inspiration. Share knowledge, maintain a knowledge base.
5. Carry out design throughout the entire cycle.

You can increasingly hear the wording “design thinking,” but most people still don’t know its exact definition.

What is design thinking

The idea of ​​design thinking was first formulated by Herbert Simon in 1969 in his book Science of the Artificial. (The Sciences of the Artificial). Later, the idea was developed by scientists at Stanford University and founded, or d.school, which promotes the idea of ​​design thinking.

The concept of design thinking is explained in different ways. But this phenomenon was described most succinctly in Interaction Design Foundation. They define it as an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and reframe the problem to find non-obvious alternative solutions.

Design thinking design thinking) - a technique that helps to find non-standard solutions tasks focused on user interests.

Design thinking is based on the principle of anthropocentrism. Anyone who uses this principle subordinates their research and work to the interests of the individual rather than to the interests of the company, boss, project manager or bureaucracy. the main objective design thinking - to go beyond existing stereotypes and usual ways solving the problem. In the original it is called thinking outside the box- literally “think outside the box.”

Design thinking can be applied in any area, for example: planning a tour of Europe, thinking about renovating an apartment, launching a new media or business, developing a logo and identity.

How Design Thinking Works

The problem solving process consists of five stages: empathy, focus, idea generation, prototype, test. Let's look at each stage in more detail using two contrasting examples where design thinking helped me.

In the winter of this year, the owner of the Tyumen service center and asked to develop a landing page. Before, I made landing pages only for my projects and it was easy for me: after all, I knew what I wanted to tell and convey to users. But I didn’t know anything about repairing smartphones, since I had never broken my phones or drowned them in water.

Stage 1. Empathy

Empathy- the ability to engage in the experiences and experiences of other people, to understand what really worries them, their needs and desires. This is the main quality of design thinking, since it is empathy that allows you to step back from your assumptions and beliefs about the world and look at the problem through the eyes of the user.

A true designer is always an empath. He is looking for a solution that will be most comfortable for a person in everyday use. It's easy to do projects that you understand. If you are into rap, creating a landing page for a rapper will be easy. But if the customer trades on a financial exchange, you will have to delve into his business, understand the processes and understand how he feels when he communicates with people. Let's see how empathy works in practice.

To understand what is important to customers of a phone repair service, I had to immerse myself in the atmosphere of the customer. I interviewed the business owner and spent one working day with the service team. I observed what questions clients ask, what worries them when they send their smartphones for repair.

Stage 2. Focusing

At this stage, you need to systematize the information you received through empathy, analyze your observations and highlight the key user problems. The purpose of focusing is to formulate the question to which you will seek the answer in the next step.

During communication with the customer team, I realized that most The service spent working hours answering the same questions: how long is the warranty; which cases are covered by warranty; Is it necessary to make an advance payment? As a result, I formulated the following question: how to save time for the service and the client?

Stage 3. Generation of ideas

Once you've identified the user's core problem, come up with and develop solutions. This is the moment when you need to “think outside the box.”

For everything to go well, refuse critical thinking, to which we are all so accustomed. Criticism can ruin a good idea. Write down everything, even the most crazy thoughts. Only after the creativity is over, select viable ideas and move on to the next stage.

I have proposed several solutions to the problem:

• create a section on the landing page with answers to questions;
• make a video where the service director answers questions;
• write a series of posts on social networks.

Stage 4. Prototyping

The task of this stage is to test the performance of your ideas in practice. To do this, you don’t need to launch a concrete plant or develop a pixel-perfect layout. It is enough to make a budget version of the product with functions that will help solve the designated problem.

The prototype will help:

• if successful, find the right solution, notice the shortcomings, refine it and create a product;
• in case of failure, disprove your hypothesis, saving time and money.

If the prototype is successful, move on to the next stage. If not, go back to step two and try to identify the problem again.

The section on the site is a clear and universal option that works on all platforms. The user only needs to select relevant question, and the answer will appear on the screen.

Stage 5. Testing

At the end you test the finished product and best solutions, which you developed during prototyping. And although this final stage,design thinking is an iterative process: you can use the results of testing to identify and solve other problems. This can be done through customer feedback on the prototype or production version.

I made a prototype of the section and showed how it would look.

Together with the customer, we tested the section from different devices and made sure that everything worked. After that, I laid out the final version of the section, added a background image and animation.

How to Apply Design Thinking to Design

Let's imagine that a product designer needs to develop a prototype for a new microwave oven. He can act in standard, well-known ways: survey people who have microwaves, collect feedback, find out the pros and cons of individual models - and, based on the information received, propose a solution.

A designer can also take an unconventional route: talk to people and learn about their habits and patterns of behavior in certain situations. This way, the designer can find out that all microwaves heat differently: one barely heats the food in three minutes, while the second overheats so much that you have to wait until the food cools down. This means that people do not need a more powerful microwave, but a clear interface that would clearly indicate how hot the food will heat up.

The moment of insight when you understand the true problem of the client and user is called insight. This is the key to breakthrough products.

Design thinking helps to find innovative solutions that do not lie on the surface, saving time and money. I will give an example from my experience.

I was approached by an outdoor advertising studio that wanted to increase sales. For this purpose, the studio management decided to create a corporate website. But a discussion of the task and an hour-long interview with the client led me to the decision that it would be better for this company to create a landing page or develop accounts on social networks.

Almost all clients contacted the studio because it was recommended as a place where they could quickly develop and produce a sign or advertising banner design. That is, what was important for companies was the speed of the studio’s work, and not the presence of a corporate website with the ability to calculate the cost of work, a gigantic portfolio and payment methods. Social networks, instant messengers, or a simple landing page are much better suited for such purposes.

Empathy and the ability to think outside the norms, the desire to feel the situation and offer non-standard solutions form the designer’s intuition.

If I had not communicated with the customer, but only studied competitors’ sites, I would have spent several months and hundreds of thousands of rubles on a useless site. It was design thinking and empathy that allowed us to look at the problem from the inside and find a more effective solution.

Create effective and useful solutions using a new and unique design approach. During the course, you will learn how to make not just visually attractive projects, but also to radically change the thinking of a business in digital, digitize any product and make it as competitive as possible.

• Live Feedback with teachers
• Unlimited access to course materials
• Internship in partner companies
• Thesis project from a real customer
• Guaranteed employment in partner companies for graduates who have defended their theses

Design Thinking ( DesignThinking) is a complex of ideological and methodological attitudes that took shape at the turn of the millennium as a reaction to the emergence of a new economic system with the inevitable revaluation of the values ​​of the old economy.

One of the key ideological principles of design thinking is empathy - the ability to look at the world through the eyes of other people, to understand their needs, desires, and challenges facing them. This is exactly what the radical transformation of consumer culture that has occurred in the last decade requires from modern business.

From a methodological point of view, design thinking approaches refer to heuristic methods for solving problems in conditions of uncertainty - the so-called non-standard problems, which are usually opposed to tasks not related to creative search. Thus, design thinking is not fundamentally new in terms of optimizing procedures for finding answers to complex multi-level problems. Already ancient Greek philosophy formulated the main question that design thinking is trying to answer today: “How can we look for what we don’t know, and if we know what we are looking for, then why should we look for it?” However, the value of design thinking approaches for modern business lies in the fact that it is design techniques that are tailored to work with the so-called “tacit knowledge” of the consumer, which he himself is not able to comprehend and verbalize. For this purpose, design research is carried out to identify, interpret and visualize information in a form accessible for further communication to all interested parties. Thus, from a procedural point of view, it is design research that underlies the practice of design thinking, and therefore it is incorrect to consider one in isolation from the other.

Initially, the methodological tools of design thinking were honed in solving complex problems of creating and developing a new product. However, design thinking approaches became especially relevant when the need for mass production of innovations arose. At the same time, as the concept of “innovation” changed, the design thinking apparatus also increased its potential. Already in 2006, as part of the World Economic Forum in Davos, IDEO designers conducted a series of master classes on how to create an innovative business culture in organizations. Today, the philosophy and approaches of design thinking are actively used in innovative entrepreneurship - to create new businesses, as well as to generate business models. The tendency to use the apparatus of design thinking to formulate desirable scenarios for the development of the future is becoming clear, because the activities of any organization will increasingly be determined by a holistic vision of the society it serves to build. Futurodesign—the conscious design of the future—is seen as the development of the design thinking paradigm at a new level that the world and human society require.

Design thinking is often called a type of out-of-the-boxthinking– non-standard thinking, forcing the mind to go beyond the limits of the known. According to the dean of one of the leading Western business schools, Rotman School of Management in Canada, Roger Martin, “the style of thinking adopted in a traditional organization is, for the most part, inductive-deductive. In a design company, this pair is added with an abductive vision, which suggests that something can be and this something can be explored. Designers do not always assume that something is or should be, but that something May be is the starting point for their reasoning.” Thus, from a philosophical point of view, the value of design thinking, and its increasingly significant impact on business, lies in the probabilistic model of the world that it contributes to shaping. “Innovation is about seeing the world not as it is, but as it could be.”"(Roger Martin).

The apologists of design thinking are the IDEO company, which, in order to demonstrate the capabilities of this approach, initiated the creation of the so-called d.school (similar to businessschool) at Stanford University. The ideas and tools developed at Stanford were continued in Potsdam, at HPISchoolofDesignThinking. The Stanford design thinking process is based on five stages: Understanding, Focus, Ideation, Prototype, Test.

Many authors note that the design thinking process is an iterative change of divergent and convergent approaches, analysis and synthesis. The most popular illustration of design thinking is a diagram consisting of three internally contradictory areas that are harmonized through design thinking: “consumer demand”, “viability and success in terms of solving business problems”, “feasibility taking into account available technologies and production" (Fig. 2).
Fig.2

In the European tradition, the concept of “design thinking” is often replaced by the formulation “human-centered design” (Human-Centered Design). Some experts believe that the difference in wording is due to the reluctance of European schools to act as clones of the approach that gained the greatest popularity in the early stages in the United States. For example, in the book by Roberto Verganti, which essentially expresses the basic principles of design thinking in the American interpretation, the term itself is not used even once. Other experts note that the difference is explained not so much different names, how many differences in the approaches of the philosophical and cultural traditions of Europe and the United States, which have long history confrontation.

1. CIAN was faced with the tasks of launching a separate website for new buildings in Moscow and the possibility of posting paid advertisements on social networks for clients. The company conducted a series of in-depth interviews, based on which it turned out that clients do not need a separate website for new buildings, since in the process of searching for housing they want to simultaneously see offers in the primary and secondary markets. The idea of ​​publishing posts about renting/selling real estate on social networks was also not confirmed, since for many users this information is personal and they would not want to share it with friends or colleagues.

CIAN's design thinking process includes the following stages: empathy, focusing, idea generation, idea selection, prototyping, testing. Empathy involves a deep understanding of the client and his needs. Every week, CIAN managers compose letters with recordings of negotiations with clients so that management can develop the most effective solutions and searching for problem areas. The next stage is focusing on customer needs/problems and clarifying their aspects. And only then the idea for implementation is developed. If the experiment is successful, launch a service or product.

2. VTB actively uses design thinking when developing new projects. The company has built a so-called customer journey map(consumer journey map), where she described in detail a typical day for her client. The map looks like this:

Good morning– Road home-work – Morning coffee – Work (Donate money for a colleague’s birthday) – Lunch – Transfer money – Road work-home – Groceries home – Payment of housing and communal services – Restaurant with friends – Road restaurant-home – Sleep

The company identified the client's needs: (1) reduction of daily costs for travel from home to work, daily purchases, transfers and payments (2) peace of mind and convenience of life without unnecessary actions and barriers. Based on this scheme, VTB released the Super Troika debit product with a built-in Troika card, which allows you to accrue up to 5% cashback for transport needs.

3. X5 Retail Group is implementing the “Accessible Environment” project, according to which the company will refurbish existing and new Pyaterochka and Perekrestok stores for people with disabilities disabled.

Using design thinking techniques, the company designs stores in such a way that deaf, blind, and wheelchair customers can easily move around the stores and make purchases. The retailer is equipping retail buildings with elevators and ramps, expanding the aisles between shelves and installing employee call buttons at the entrance. The creation of an accessible environment in supermarkets has increased attendance from other groups of the population - for example, young mothers with strollers have become more frequent guests.

4. Consulting company McKinsey conducted surveys and focus groups on the “customer journey” of the capital’s busiest transport hub in Vykhino. It turned out that the greatest dissatisfaction of passengers is caused by the journey to the metro and traveling on a crowded train, as well as waiting for the train and buying a ticket. Using design thinking, they identified the level of service at which satisfaction changes in a negative direction.

On average, Muscovites spent about an hour traveling from home to work, while buying a ticket took 4-5 minutes. The goal was to reduce the amount of time spent to 2 minutes. Based on the results of the research, decisions were made that affected the entire transport system Moscow metro: development of a universal Troika card, increasing the validity period of the card, increasing the number of vending and replenishment machines, reworking their interface and adjusting the pricing policy by rounding the fare to whole numbers that do not require exchange.

To better meet customer needs, McKinsey consultants recommend taking the widest possible range of customer journey maps, covering the entire customer journey and including all variations of user scenarios.

5. One of the striking projects of the Moscow City Hall and the Government of Moscow, created on the basis of design thinking, is the project of multifunctional centers “My Documents”. The choice of locations for creating the infrastructure of the centers was based on preliminary design, taking into account the routes of city residents. A conceptually new, friendly design was chosen as the company's design.

The mayor's office collects citizens' opinions through the Active Citizen portal, and the results are taken into account when implementing capital projects.

Entrepreneurs often forget that their key asset is their customers and make a product in accordance with their ideas, missing out on the opinions of direct users. Successful business You should always listen carefully to your client.

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