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Understanding the challenge and how to approach it.
This initial phase of the design thinking process focuses on uncovering what our users or customers' needs and pain points truly are, as a foundation for everything we do next. Good research is a mix of quantitative and qualitative, using surveys to complement rich 1-1 interviews, observations and focus groups to get us a robust amount of information.
The research phase is meant to both reduce risk and arm us with inspiration, as uncovering true needs will focus us on building and designing for things that people will actually want - we know ‘that’, simply because they’ve told us so.
Once we have all our customer information, we move to the ‘Define’ phase to start making sense of it…
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Clearly defining the purpose, context and specific things to discover to kick off the research phase well.
Get all your bases covered before, during and after a user testing session.
Use this guide to plan what you'll ask in your interview, and how you'll set up your interviewee for success.
A simple draft email to send to interviewees, to give them context and information about the interview.
Analyzing insights and aligning on initial recommendations, to prioritize what to start innovating against.
The ‘Define’ stage is about synthesizing all the information gathered during the research stage and defining: “What customer problems should we solve?” this summary is what’s called a “problem statement” we then use to guide us.
This stage is critically also about ensuring the team fully understand, and are aligned on the goal or purpose of the upcoming efforts, ensuring everyone is pulling in the same direction.
Being clear on the purpose of the work along with a meaningful, actionable problem statement will steer everyone in the right direction and avoid dead ends, whilst creating value and building on key insights that refine the thinking.
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Using our prioritized insights to create potential ideas and solutions to test.
With the challenge defined, the next phase is all about ideation, a creative process where a team of multidisciplinary people gather to generate a long list of potential solutions.
Several ideation techniques could be used to inspire as many ideas as possible, which will be refined later in the process. Some of these techniques include brainstorming sessions, mindmapping, and associational thinking, amongst others.
The ideation phase is meant to spark off ideas beyond the ‘obvious’ ones, therefore increasing the breadth of the potential solutions we could create.
There’s no judgment at this phase, as no idea is a bad idea!After generating what we like to call the ‘non-obvious’ ideas and refining them, it’s time to prioritize and test them in the next phase…
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Turning ideas into concepts and prototypes to get feedback from real customers.
With lots of ideas about what the solution could be, it’s time to prioritize which to test and how.
As a general rule, it’s best to start with a small number of ideas that can be tested cheaply and easily (think 1-2 ideas, and tests that don’t take any longer than a 2-3 days start to finish) as a means to reduce risk and learn quickly.
You can create low-fidelity prototypes of your product or service, visual mockups, MVPs or anything to elicit feedback from your customers - there are no rules other than creating simple things customers can react to.
Whilst the cheaper and faster you test the better, as customers help you grow more confident in your potential solution, consider increasing the fidelity and robustness of ther tests until you have the data and confidence needed to move to the implement stage.
First however, you should be doing a lot of iterating…
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Get all your bases covered before, during and after a user testing session.
Use this guide to plan what you'll ask in your interview, and how you'll set up your interviewee for success.
A simple draft email to send to interviewees, to give them context and information about the interview.
Making small continuous changes as we test and learn, until we have greater confidence of what to implement and why.
If you’re not iterating, you’re doing it wrong.
One of the hallmarks of design thinking is that iterating (changing / tweaking / re-inventing something to make it better before moving to the next stage) is core to the process, and helps get closer to the desired outcome with each change.
As you test assumptions, prototypes, MVPs and mockups, use that feedback and insight to continuously inform changes.
Whilst it may initially feel like going ‘back’ in the process at times, to “Ideate” or “Define” as needed, it actually helps get to a better outcome in the long run. Every successful product or service out there has been through many, many rounds of iteration. The ones you’ve never heard of, haven’t.
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Taking all our learnings from testing, deciding what to apply and measuring on-going impact.
With the prototype tested with users, the team will have gained the insights needed to iterate the product or service to the point where it’s time to implement it. This phase calls for designing and executing the prototype as a solution ready for market launch (and is a big deal!).
Whilst this stage might appear to be the last step of the design thinking process, it isn’t. There’s still customer feedback to analyze, gauging how its solving pain points now that it’s live, and iterating accordingly to enhance usability, features, or aesthetics.
The process is always iterative. Go forth and implement!
Check out the selection of research activities and supporting templates below - stimulus for your teams.
Get an in depth view of HP's Design system.
More activities coming soon! Have an activity request? Let us know
If you’d like help with planning or facilitation, reach out to one of HP’s design thinking experts and we’ll work to help understand the challenge and get you started.
