Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that combines transformative ideas, viability, and a designer’s desire to understand the consumer or user on a deep level. Design thinking isn’t just an imperative practice that we integrate into each phase of development, but it’s also a huge competitive advantage that sets your business apart from your competitors, directly impacting your businesses growth and bottom line.
As a Business Owner, What is the Value of Design Thinking?
Design thinking makes it possible for you to hone in on exactly what your problems are so you can set obtainable goals that set your business up for success. Not only are you able to hone in on your weaknesses, but you will also be able to discover insights that are critical to developing solutions.
There are massive costs associated with integrating a new product into your business and design thinking can help you save a ton of money because you’re able to address the problems upfront which makes it possible for you to create specific solutions. Fixing a problem after the development process has been finalized can be up to 100 times more expensive than it would have been before development.
Why Should I Invest in Design Thinking?
Improving your UX saves you money and focusing on UX increases your revenue. User experience or UX is the interactions and experiences that users have with your company’s products and services. Improving your UX can save you hundreds of dollars and hours of work and it can also decrease your customer support expenses because your users will be having a much more positive experience with your product or service.
After you’ve improved your UX, it’s time to focus on it and continuously make it a priority. Making sure your consumers or users have a positive experience will aid in increasing conversion rates while improving customer retention and loyalty. Brands like Dyson, Uber, and Apple have all leveraged design thinking to provide their customer base with an impressive, and seamless user experience which has provided each one of them with a huge competitive advantage.
How Does the Design Thinking Process Work?
Design thinking is a process that our team uses to understand users, challenge assumptions and redefine solutions so we can create innovative solutions that launch your business on a solid foot.
Empathize:
The first phase of the design thinking process is called the empathize phase. This phase entails researching your user’s needs in order to gain an empathetic understanding of the problems you’re trying to solve. Empathy is a crucial element for teams that are embarking on a design thinking journey because it allows people to set aside their personal feelings and biases so they can gain in-depth insights on what users really need.
Define:
Next is the define phase. During this phase you will use the information you gathered in phase one to clearly define the core problems that you and your team have identified. Our team loves to create user personas during this phase because it helps us gain a deeper understanding of the end user.
Prototype:
The third phase is the prototype phase, and this is when the design thinking process really starts to get exciting! This is the experimental phase where you start to create and build solutions to each problem that has been identified in the previous phases. Our team takes the time to develop a solid interactive prototype during this phase that can then be used to test out our theories and put our research into action. This phase is all about brainstorming and collaboration!
Test:
Next is the test phase which is where you get to put all of your hard work into practice. During this phase, you will rigorously test out the prototypes that you have created in the previous stage. Despite this being the final stage, our team takes it one step further by making meticulous improvements, and refining our prototypes based on user tests and feedback.
Design Thinking is an Integral Part of our Process
Design thinking is a common thread that you will find meticulously woven into each one of our software development projects. We use design thinking as our methodology to grow and expand upon your ideas by empathizing with your intended user. Leveraging design thinking makes it possible for us to create an innovative prototype that we can then use to test and validate your big idea.
Are you Interested in Learning More?
Are you interested in learning more about how our team leverages design thinking? Click here to book a complimentary 30-minute consultation today.
