3 Reasons Why We Use Design Thinking As A Tool For Innovation

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a human-centered creative approach to innovation, anchored in understanding customer's needs, rapid prototyping, and the generation of creative ideas. For many, design thinking is an invaluable tool that can be used to help solve some of today's most complex problems by transforming the way we develop products, services, processes and organisations.

The cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon first mentioned design thinking in his 1969 book, The Sciences of the Artificial.

Since then, professionals from various fields, including architecture and engineering, have successively developed this highly creative process to meet human needs in today's increasingly complex and interconnected era. Organisations of the 21st century, from a wide range of sectors, consider design thinking a valuable means of solving problems for users of their products and services. Project teams use design thinking to tackle ill-defined and unknown problems (so-called 'wicked problems') because they can reformulate them in a human-centred way and focus on what is most important to users. Of all design processes, design thinking is almost certainly the best for 'thinking outside the box'. With it, teams can better carry out User Experience (UX) research, prototyping and usability testing to discover new ways of meeting user needs.

‍

If you are interested to know more about the framework and the process, find out more at the following link: https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking

‍

3 reasons way Naked Innovations uses Design Thinking

1. Design thinking is a solution-based approach that explores problems in order to find solutions. It focuses on generating ideas with a specific problem in mind, keeping the user at the heart of the process throughout. At Naked Innovations we incorporate the 'build, measure, learn' principles of the Lean Startup methodology at each stage of the Design Thinking process in order to create a feedback loop along the innovation process.

‍

2. Design thinking creates a collaborative culture where ideas flow more naturally between different functional business groups, teams, target audiences and consumers.

When testing ideas, the ability to gather quick, ongoing feedback on what works from cross-team collaborations has proven to be a powerful way to get valuable results. Helping organisations overcome departmental silos and gain a more systemic vision of the challenge at hand.

3. By combining empathy, creativity and user feedback, we encourage stakeholders to put people in the core of their analysis. This fosters the possibility to solve real-life problems, but also defining various business challenges and finding new ways to address them. In the agrifood space, sustainability is a growing concern and even though many believe that sustainable issues have to do with conserving and protecting the planet. Although this is true, there is another layer. “Sustainable” problems relate more to sustaining human existence, which is a significant human need and, therefore, a solid example of human-centred design.

‍

The Take Home Message

There’s a lot more that can be said about design thinking, but it’s actually a very straightforward concept.

Whereas the scientific approach scratches the surface of the known, design thinking goes beyond what is known to the needs of the user, the emotions and the like in order to actually uncover different ways of making sure that users have a better experience with the service or the product. This process is iterative or repetitive, which simply means that the knowledge currently at hand is always being questioned so that the problem is redefined from time to time, in order to ensure that further solutions and strategies are constantly being created. This process ensures that there is constant improvement to the product or service being provided. Indeed, design thinking allows us to make decisions based on what customers really want, instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct instead of evidence.

Design thinking it's a very flexible methodology that can adapt to different types of our clients and challenges, services or products.

‍

“Design Thinking is a mindset, not just a tool or process, which combines empathy, creativity and rationality by focusing on human needs, rather than only just what is technically feasible or if it is financially viable. Meaning we can create products, services and systems that are desirable.”  Ryan Edwards, CEO of Naked Innovations

‍

About the author: Ilaria Abbà is the Community Lead at Naked Innovations, she is a passionate and enthusiast of the agri-food sector with a systemic vision ranging from hard sciences to humanities. Underlying her interest in the world of food are people and her constant desire to develop healthy and lasting relationships that grow into strong communities and strategic networks.