New to Entrepreneurship? Try the Design Thinking Process
Applying Design Thinking to Entrepreneurship
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Not sure where to start on your journey with entrepreneurship? You’re not alone. In fact, the simple, five step design thinking process was created to provide a streamlined framework for solving problems, with an added emphasis on empathy. A relatively new concept, Design Thinking rose in popularity in the 1990’s, largely due to the help of IDEO Labs, a design firm inviting experts in “disparate fields like anthropology, business strategy, education or healthcare to guide and augment their design teams and processes”. In the early 2000’s, Design Thinking made its way into the university classroom. “A notable leader in this field was the Stanford School of Design (or the d.school) which began teaching Design Thinking in 2005.”
“You’re a creator, a problem solver, a generous leader who is making things better by producing a new way forward.”
-Seth Godin in Principles
Design Thinking is a way for great companies to make great products. It’s a user-centered method to solve real-world problems, encouraging organizations to focus on the people they’re creating, which leads to better products, services, and internal processes. It’s an approach that uses creative thinking, teamwork, empathy, concept creation, prototyping and testing, where the user follows five crucial steps before launching their product.
To become a champion of the Design Thinking Process, you just need to follow five simple steps before product launch: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
1. Empathize
This is all about talking to users and working to understand real problems that they have. The number one reason why startups fail is because they didn’t talk to customers, and didn’t end up solving any customer’s problem. This is a core part of entrepreneurship — identifying a real unmet need. You need to understand the person, what it’s like to look at the world in their shoes. What frustrates them? What do they need a solution for? What is making them miserable every day, even if they don’t realize it yet?
“One of the things I’ve always found is that you’ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology. You can’t start with the technology and figure out how you’re going to sell it…It started with what incredible benefits can we give to the customer? Where can we take the customer? Not starting with let’s sit down with the engineers [and] figure out what awesome technology we have and how we’re going to market that.”
-Steve Jobs, former CEO of Apple
2. Define
Identify the problem that your community is facing. Chances are you’ve only looked at their struggles on the surface level. Continue asking yourself why they are struggling to help you get to the root of the problem.
For example, why was your neighbor so upset that his delivery didn’t come on time? Was it because he was told over the phone that the delivery should have arrived two hours ago? Well, why is that? Maybe it’s because there isn’t a piece of infrastructure designed to handle a certain type of package in the most efficient way, and the system in place currently is prone to error and delays.
Make sure you’re looking into customer frustrations in enough detail. Because if you come up with a simple solution to the problem, chances are that it’s already been thought of before. If you decide to move forward with it, how will you create a product that stands out from the previous similar products that weren’t successful? All in all, not going into enough detail and not understanding the core frustrations and core problems will result in a product that isn’t beneficial to the user; it doesn’t do enough to solve the specific problem that they have, so they have no reason to switch from their current process to your product, especially if you’re planning to create a product that isn’t free.
Tony Xu, Co-Founder and CEO of DoorDash, learned this as he and his colleagues spent time working for FedEx and Domino’s to learn how delivery works: “if you’re at the surface level, you’re never going to actually realize what [those] problems are, they’re always hidden somewhere”. Today, “getting to the lowest level of detail” is a core principle of DoorDash.
3. Ideate
Generate ideas on how to solve the problem you have now identified.
In the design thinking world, the idea of divergent/convergent thinking is popular: create choices at first, and then make choices. At first, it’s important to be open to all ideas, because you never know which one will work out.
“[Design Thinkers] adopt a “beginner’s mind,” with the intent to remain open and curious, to assume nothing, and to see ambiguity as an opportunity”.
Then, think about how to move forward. Which idea stands out as a solution to the problem you’re solving? Which solution is something you’re passionate about building, and most importantly, will best meet the unmet need of your users?
4. Prototype
Create prototypes of your idea! Once you’ve decided on an idea, it’s time to get to work to turn it into a real product. It doesn’t have to be perfect; the important part is getting it launched quickly so you can get the product into customers hands.
“You’re never going to get a better sense for your product than actually listening to real users, and especially in the early days, the product you launch with and the feature set you launch with is almost certainly not going to be the feature set that you scaled with. The quicker you talk to users and learn what they actually need, the faster you can get to that point” -Walker Williams, Co-Founder of TeeSpring
Which brings us to the final step before launch — user testing!
5. Test — Test out your solution!
Go back to your customer. What do they think of the product? See how the user interacts with the product, what emotions they show as they interact with the physical product or interface, and what comments that they make. As you’re user testing, it’s important not to let your ego step in, and act in front of the user as if you know all the answers, you’re absolutely sure solved their problem, and you’re excited that you are able to present your solution! Because that will impact the feedback you get; you want to know how the user really feels. A key point here is: ask non-leading questions. “Yes” and “no” answers don’t tell you much about how the user feels, while only giving you little feedback on the “impressive parts of your product” that you’ve decided, as the product developer but not the user.
After you’ve tested the products with users and have gotten valuable feedback (feedback from users), you might find ways to improve your offering. Now it’s time to keep iterating — continue to prototype and test so you are able to truly solve the problem that a member of the community has.
Congratulations, you’ve just completed the Design Thinking Process!
Important Considerations
Design Thinking originated in the design world, although it has now made its way into the business world and the university classroom as designers work to highlight the importance of their work to people in other fields. Now, it’s considered a new & easy-to-understand approach to designing solutions, quickly becoming “common parlance in many industries and disciplines”. Although this is emphasized in step 4: prototype, even though design (& branding) can be important for a company and its offering, it’s important to keep in mind that your first product does not have to look perfect. First, create something simple to see how well you’re handling the problem. “In business planning, form follows function”.
Overall, design thinking is an amazing framework that can get you started with your entrepreneurship journey. Just remember to put the user first (take a human-centered approach), and Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
