6 Powerful Benefits of Using Design Thinking
Design Thinking provides unique advantages when compared to other improvement methodologies. Below are some of the benefits we’ve seen when teams apply Design Thinking and what you may see happen within your own organization.
1. Design Thinking helps to awaken the emotional brain. For most of the teams, we have led using Design Thinking, a collective message has been received that their emotions do not belong in the workplace. In most cases, emotions are taboo or unwelcome because they are associated with weakness. The message to leave your feelings at home often comes from multiple sources: a peer, someone of authority, a parent, or even the institution that trained the person. Regardless of where the message came from, it has caused many people to stifle their emotions. Disregarding emotions when designing systems and solutions that will interact with human beings does not make sense. Design Thinking awakens people to their emotions, encouraging teams to bring forward their best selves and solutions using their head, heart, and gut.
2. Design Thinking encourages empathy. Henry David Thoreau believed there was no greater miracle than looking through someone else’s eyes, even for an instant. Empathy and understanding are core to Design Thinking. Once awakened to their emotions, the team (can also be referred to as designers) are challenged to test their assumptions against reality and to be open to the idea that there might be other viewpoints they hadn’t noticed before. Across the Design process, the designers are encouraged to “take their glasses off” and look at the world through someone else’s lenses.
3. Design Thinking can, and often does, serve as the starting point of self-discovery. Once empathy exists, self-discovery and customer-centered solutions tend to happen naturally. We see the designers go through an internal battle during the Design session, especially on day one. Their world – their experiences, the opinions they have formed, and the realities they have created for themselves- are turned upside down. This is both eye-opening and exhausting, leaving the team tumultuous. This journey from apprehension to curiosity to confidence often serves as each designer’s starting point of self-discovery.
4. Design Thinking puts the customer at the center of the solution. For a team to achieve a breakthrough, they must first accept that they don’t have the answer, or what they thought was the answer might be wrong. Only through vulnerability can a team create a customer-centered solution, accepting that maybe, just maybe, the customer knows what is best for themselves. A customer is someone who is going to experience the end product or process. This can be internal, such as another employee in the company, or external, such as someone paying for the services or product. On some of the projects we have been a part of, we have seen customers clearly articulate their needs. While on other projects, we have seen customers struggle to put their needs into words. Whether an explicit need or inexplicit need has been shared, the designers are well positioned to design on someone else’s behalf, keeping the customer at the center of every innovative idea.
5. Design Thinking creates psychological safety. When we work with teams using other improvement approaches, we often see teams playing it safe due to fear of failure. This limits the team’s ability to innovate and make strong personal connections. By comparison, when we use Design Thinking, we often see more willingness from the team to take risks. Failing during the Design process isn’t just acceptable; it is expected. In the context of Design, failing is learning. This creates an environment for the designers to share their ideas openly and creatively.
6. Design Thinking can cause a ripple effect of new thinking across an organization. At the end of the Design session, we always have the Design team prepare a report out. This usually consists of frontline employees presenting to senior leaders, with the format being “walk the walls”. No PowerPoint slides, rather a gallery walk of the deep dive interviews, empathy maps, personas, customer motivators, “How Might We…” statements and prototypes. To date, the turning point of every report out we have seen has been the team’s summary of what was learned because of empathy and what solutions are believed to be the most “sticky” (likely to make an actual difference). When this information is shared, we often see a 180-degree turn happen in the room. Often the leaders are being gently let in on the secret that even their ideas for solutions are misinformed. This is where we see new doors in organizations open. Even if it is a tiny sliver of an opening, there is no longer any denying that organizational risk exists when teams and organizations fail to employ empathy and humility. This reckoning can serve as a ripple effect of new thinking.