Design Thinking Process:

∙ Design thinking is a cognitive, non-linear, and iterative process. It is used by big companies and
entrepreneurs to tackle problems and deliver solutions that aim to fulfil human-centered needs.
∙ The design thinking process requires the designer/entrepreneur/innovator to empathize with the
user i.e. the human who will use the product or service.

The design thinking process is composed of 5 stages:

Empathize, Define the problem, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. These stages are very iterative
instead of sequential. The design thinking methodology works really nicely with the lean startup
method and is recommended to be used at the beginning of every entrepreneurial project.

The five primary steps that an entrepreneur must remember are:

1. Empathizing – with the customers.

2. Defining – the challenges, needs, and wants.

3. Forming Ideas – different approaches are taken to come up with solutions for the

problem. 4. Prototyping – products are made based on the different approaches

5. Testing – here the prototypes are tested and the faults plus benefits of the products are
carefully studied

Step 1: Empathize

∙ The first step in the design thinking process is to understand the users’ pain points and to
empathize with them.
∙ Immersing yourself in the environment of the users and interviewing them is a must for
entrepreneurs seeking to empathize. Using tools like the empathy map will allow a clear
 understanding of the user’s needs and what influences their thoughts and behavior. “I do not
ask the wounded person how he feels, I myself become the wounded person.” ― Walt
Whitman.
∙ Why do people behave as they do? Why are things the way that they are? What is working
well, what is not working well and why? Asking these questions with an open and inquisitive
perspective will help you to better understand the world around you and how you can
successfully contribute to it. You will then have the ability to see the finite details and
opportunities that exist within them to creatively solve problems.

The highest form of knowledge is empathy.

∙ The Customer Empathy Map is an idealized portrayal of your fictionalized target customer, the
most promising candidate from your customer segments.
∙ Give him or her a name and demographic characteristics, such as income, marital status, and so
forth, before delving into the pains, gains, thoughts, feelings, and surroundings of this
individual you bring to fruition.
∙ This is an approach that has long been used in media and communication fields such as
advertising and strategic communication. Advertisers and marketers often create customer
personas–fictional, generalized representations of ideal or existing customers–as part of
campaign plans, pitches, strategy, and creative concept delivery. When you peel away the
language used to describe business models, the early startup planning stages come down to
asking a series of questions.

For example, Philips used empathy mapping to detect a high level of fear in young patients
immediately before an MRI medical procedure, so it invented a miniature version of the CAT
scan
equipment used in the procedure called the “kitten scanner” along with toy animal characters that
were used to dispel the fear of MRIs among children.

Proctor & Gamble created a new advertisement that was released for the 2012 Olympics
visualizing the trials and tribulations of mothers raising young athletes, demonstrating Proctor
and Gamble’s awareness that some of its customers wanted or needed empathy for the sacrifices
they had made to help their children succeed. Likewise, Microsoft has attempted to demonstrate
empathy with customers’ privacy concerns by developing an interactive website that explains not
only how data is stolen but also how we can better protect our own data.

Step 2: Define the problem

∙ You can only define the problem that you want to solve through your startup after you have a
very good understanding of the users’ pains and gains.
∙ The collected data from interviews and other empathy techniques can help pinpoint and define
the specific problem at hand.
∙ You may identify several problems at this stage, but you have to select just one that is human
centered. Defining a specific problem helps the team come up with a meaningful solution at
the next step.

Step 3: Ideate

∙ Ideation is the third phase of the design thinking process where the entrepreneur(s) exhaust all
ideas in a brainstorming exercise.
∙ Creativity and innovation are essential for this phase. Generating an immense quantity of ideas
through brainstorming plays a vital role in arriving at the best solution.
∙ Remember that quantity leads to quality and that there’s no such thing as crazy ideas! Even the
worst ideas possible might spur some really good ideas.
∙ Now that you better understand the target audience and the ins and outs of the problem, it’s
time to generate ideas to solve it. Think broadly to create different solutions. Brainstorm! Get
creative.
∙ There are no wrong ideas; the more possible answers to the identified problem, the better. This
is usually a very creative and freeing phase because you have permission to think of out-of
the-box ideas before deciding which ones to prototype later. This is the phase that everyone
typically loves because it has bottomless potential.

Step 4: Prototype

∙ This is the stage where the product/solution will take on its first tangible form. Regardless of
the type of the solution, a prototype at this phase will be a low-resolution one without any
functionality.
∙ Prototyping will help bring the solution one step closer to reality and will help the audience
better understand the solution in a visual tangible way.
∙ Create a physical or digital prototype of some aspect of your product, service, or experience
that you can show to users in your target market.
∙ Through trial-and-error, you will identify which of the possible solutions is best suited to solve
the problem.

Thus, prototypes should be easy to implement but simultaneously give a good idea of the
actual product.

The prototyping phase is also an iterative one, starting from a low-fidelity prototype (composed
of sketches and pictures) and evolving to a high-fidelity prototype (realistic mock-up).

If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings.

Step 5: Test

∙ The final stage of the process is testing the developed prototype.

∙ Testing will help uncover the hidden potential of the product, its effectiveness, and its
limitations.
∙ Complications that you reveal in the testing phase can be resolved by revisiting earlier phases
of the design thinking process.
∙ Similar to the design thinking process itself, this step is very iterative where you have to repeat
it every time new features are rolled out.
∙ This stage serves as an opportunity to reconsider alternative solutions and gain a better
understanding of the product and the users.
∙ Testing a product often leads to tweaking and redefining problems and solutions as you gain a
better understanding of the consumer. It is an essential opportunity to make sure that
everything about your idea is centered around the people who will be using it.
∙ You want to know what they think, both positive and negative thoughts. Use the information to
flush out all details of your design and refine it. That is how you build the best product
possible and prepare it to launch.

If you don’t like testing your product, most likely your customers won’t like to test it either.

Examples:

Netflix and Airbnb are a few examples of entrepreneurial design thinking. The business persons
understood the problems and brought people-centered solutions to ease their life, making the
company grow successfully. Netflix helped save time by streaming movies online, eliminating the
need to go out. Airbnb brought forward the idea of giving customers what they need. They
focused
on their content and the problem of why their services were not being utilized. They expressed
the data that customers specifically looked for.
∙ Applying design thinking to entrepreneurship can help you reap several advantages, such as
creating more innovative and differentiated products or services that meet customer needs and
desires.
∙ It can also reduce the risk of failure and waste by testing assumptions and hypotheses before
investing too much time and money.
∙ Design thinking can also enhance creativity and collaboration skills, using diverse tools and
techniques like brainstorming, storytelling, sketching, and feedback.
∙ Additionally, it can help build a customer-centric culture and mindset that values empathy,
experimentation, and learning.
∙ you can adopt a growth mindset that embraces failure as an opportunity to learn and improve. ∙
Additionally, seek feedback and input from diverse sources and stakeholders such as customers,
mentors, peers, and experts.
∙ Utilize tools and frameworks like the design thinking canvas, the lean canvas, or the business
model canvas to structure and organize your process.
∙ Lastly, experiment and test your ideas and prototypes with real users in real contexts through
interviews, surveys, observations.