The Soul of Design-thinking

Recently, we were invited to speak at a UX conference in Singapore. The topic was ‘Is design thinking a magic wand for product success’. At first, I was a bit wary to accept the invitation for two reasons - one, a packed work schedule, two; design thinking seems such a beaten topic (at least in Singapore circuits, everyone seems to be an expert in design thinking). I was concerned what new could I offer to the audience that would add value to their current knowledge.

However, I accepted the invitation, and thought I will share whatever I know from my practice, with earnestness and honesty. Like everything else I have learnt in life, design-thinking* or human-centered design* is acquired knowledge for me. (*These terms have been inter-changeably used).

My approach has been to go to the basics whenever I have to learn a new concept. I asked myself - ‘What is the soul of design-thinking?’ What is at the crux of it? This made our task easier.

Methods, tools, etc. are important, but the key principles are like soul, the light source that guides the methods and tools. Key principles help us to keep a check on whether we are designing and applying methods in true spirit and form or not. Any method without soul is just body which is there but serves little. To realise true potential of design-thinking, you need to invoke its soul, internalise it first, before you externalise it in its various manifestations in the form of methods, tools and practice.

To us there are two words that can best describe soul of design thinking - empathy and co-design. Let’s talk about them one by one.

empathy | ˈempəTHē |

noun The ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

ORIGIN

Early 20th century: from Greek empatheia

(from em- ‘in’ + pathos ‘feeling’) translating German Einfühlung.

Self-awareness is the starting point of empathy

Empathy starts with self-awareness. Self-awareness makes you more perceptive and sensitive to your inner-self, your motivations and purpose, your behavior and actions. Sharpening your faculty to be self-aware makes you more discerning and acute in your ability to see other people’s needs with more clarity. You don’t only see their point-of-view or perspective, rather you feel their needs, context and situation with more compassion and clarity.You need to understand yourself first before you can start to tread the path of empathy. If you do it with sincerity, rigour and perseverance, magic happens. It’s a bit like spirituality, you need to become one with the soul of the cosmos to find peace and harmony. You need to become one with the user to emotionally and spiritually go through their experiences. Then you don’t even need to discern insights, you feel them.

Who Is It For And Why

Empathy (as a word, concept or practice) is generally not associated with, or embraced by business people, management and boardrooms. Empathy is associated with being soft in nature. It is not considered of much value in the hard world of business. It is not directly associated with making informed business decisions.

In fact, it is the other way around. Empathy is at the core of creating value for the customer. Empathy helps in gaining deeper understanding of customer needs, which in turn enables businesses to create products and service propositions that answer to those needs. As Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says, “…unmet and unarticulated needs of customers is the source of innovation”. He is someone who practices what he says. He spends considerable time visiting customers around the world to understand their lives, pain points and aspirations. By shaping behavior of Microsoft’s top management with such seemingly soft practices like ‘empathy’ and ‘non-violent communication’ he has been able to create unprecedented value of USD250 Billion for Microsoft in the last four years of his tenure as CEO. This demonstrates the power of empathy. It is not something mushy; it delivers real results.  

Co-design

Co-design can be defined as practice of supplementing empathy with action that aims at changing the state of things for the user for better. 

Empathy by itself is not sufficient if you don’t act to change the situation. I can empathise with you and still do nothing. Empathy needs to be supplemented by action to produce results. That’s why co-design becomes critical. Co-design is about co-thinking and co-making solutions with the user, for the user. Co-design is about this constructive action.Normally, whenever we are presented with a problem, we tend to jump into solutions. In co-design, the approach is more reflective, systematic and rigorous. When you are presented with a problem, take a step back and see who is it for (the user). Then try to get into the world of this user, and understand her pains, desires and aspirations. Equipped with these insights, come back to your business intent and see in what ways you can create value for her. 

Where Can It Be Applied

Our experience has shown that these core principles of empathy and co-design are agnostic to the type of business, product or service, function or hierarchy. These can be applied by top management to develop growth roadmaps, to cultivate a culture of innovation in organisation or to design people-centric productive organisations. These principles are equally effective in developing stronger brands that connect with the users or to design digital products that users love.

Design-Thinking Is Like Salt

If you internalise these principles of empathy and co-design, they can be applied in any situation. These principles or mindsets can be applied along with your other ways of working. In that sense it is like salt.

Normally, whenever we are presented with a problem, we tend to jump into solutions. In co-design, the approach is more reflective, systematic and rigorous. When you are presented with a problem, take a step back and see who is it for (the user). Then try to get into the world of this user, and understand her pains, desires and aspirations. Equipped with these insights, come back to your business intent and see in what ways you can create value for her.

Design-thinking better be not treated as some revolutionary thing that has now come and should replace what already exists. It is something that you need to add to what you are already doing - and like salt, by itself, it doesn’t make a good meal.

A bunch of design-thinking experts alone cannot turn business around. Mindset of empathy and co-design has to permeate through the organisation or teams. Design-thinking needs to work together with existing areas of expertise mix with them and to bring empathy and co-design to add value to what is being done. There is no one process of how to “do” design thinking in the organisation, like there is no one recipe to blindly follow on how you should use salt to cook.

This article was originally published on blog, https://whatkillsinnovation.com co-authored by Nav Qirti & Reima Rönnholm

Nav Qirti is Principal and Managing Partner of Ideactio, a Singapore based design consultancy with outposts in Ho Chi Minh City & Berlin. nav@ideactio.com

Reima Rönnholm is one of the nordic pioneers of service design. He represents Palmu, a service design consultancy from Finland, in Asia. reima.ronnholm@palmu.fi