I am a 2.5 years old employee to InfoSys. Currently I am working as an active member of Center of Excellence (CoE). In daily basis my major responsibility is to organize various Technical and Non-Technical training programs. Recently my manager schedule a meeting with me and ask to get as much as nominations for the upcoming training “Design Thinking”. During the meeting he communicated that the “Design Thinking” training is initiated by Dr. Vishal Sikha and he wants this training as a mandatory training for all our InfoSys employees.
I am sure you must heard the name of “Dr. Vishal Sikka”. Who is the current CEO of IT Leader InfoSys. Here before go-ahead more about him or design thinking let me ask you a question “Why the Business leader Dr. Vishal Sikka wants to trend all his employees to be a designer thinker?”. What are the hidden treasures behind this training? To analyze the same a week back I attained the mandatory Training “Design Thinking”. My good time during the session I learned more than my exceptions. In below to clarify the above queries let me share my knowledge base.
World knows the father of design thinking is Tim Brown. Who is the X-CEO of IDEO. According to him Design Thinking speaks the problem and the resolutions to implement user friendly Solutions. Under the process of design thinking we focus on requirement Analysis, Understanding of end-user difficulties, Creating, Thinking and Doing. Design thinking is a iterative process, once the solution is designed depending upon the testing phase we can learn and improve upon the initial ideas.
The Design Thinking Process consists of 5 Phases:
EMPATHIZE
Empathize is the initial phase of Design Thinking. Here your primary role is to understand the user experience for whom you are designing. Do this phase through Observations, Interaction & Immersing yourself in Customer experience. To bring better vision for this phase let us take a Case Study.
Assume that you are the owner of a Software Company. Your organization is specialized to provide “Finance & Accounting Solutions”. Week back you had a meeting with one of your friend who is the owner of a phenyl manufacturing company. During meeting you got to know that they want to computerized their Finance department with the help you Organization. So what is next? Off-course before jump to design a solution first you required to know What are the problems? Why they want to computerized their Finance department? Unless until you know the problems you can’t design a solution. I can say “Problem is the mother of Solution“. Unless their is a problem no one will go for a solution.
Empathize phase of Design Thinking is similar to the “Requirement Analysis” phase of SDLC (System Development Life Cycle). In this phase clarify all you queries related to the Customer requirements.
DEFINE
Once after the successful Empathize phase you must have many finding about your Customer requirements. Now in this phase you primary role is to Process and synthesize the findings in order to form a user point of view.
IDEATE
This is the phase of Analysis. Analyze the problem and come up with variety of Solutions. While exploring solutions don’t keep any boundary. Think wide and open. Even don’t bother about the Financial limitations. In this phase the only aim is to find out all the possible solutions that can help the customer to resolve their issues. During this phase if you want any additional inputs you can visit or communicate your customer for clarification. Before go-ahead to the next phase of design thinking schedule meeting with your customer and communicate your various solutions and explain them how your solutions going to resolve their problems. Finally, choose the best ideas with the mutual understanding of you and your customer.
PROTOTYPE
Prototype is the phase where you need to transform your ideas into a physical shape where you can experience and interact with them. In this phase, learn and develop more empathy. For an example according to the above case study if you decided to design an accounting Software for the phenyl manufacturing company, then prepare the wire frame and present that to the customer as a demo. So that the customer will know how you are going to shut out their problems. During the demo explain well how the forms going to help them to resolve their problems.
TEST
The last phase of Design Thinking is Testing. In this phase visit your Customer and let you know who are the users going to use your System. Present your prototypes to the customer with complete explanation. During the presentation Test the prototypes well. In-case any where customer wants to add or remove some features consider this as an input for enhancement. Try out high-resolution products and collect user feedback to refine your prototypes. Know more about the users and refine your original point of view.
