With the ever increasing speed of change on the technology front, we continue to expect new and better things to emerge to do things differently, to do things faster, and to do things better. However, we tend to forget all of the latest and greatest would not matter if we fail to recognise the importance of Customer Experience (CX) while we interact and transact.

Many of us are willing to try a new shop, a new service offering, or a new product that was just newly launched only to find out that it falls short of our expectations. Many a time we would think, why didn’t they walk through the customer experience properly, why was there a quality issue on the product or even get the customer’s expectation right?

Most if not all of these bad experiences will turn your customers away and make them a one-time-only customer. Worst still with the wide spread social media and word of mouth, things can spiral out of control into a media nightmare in a very short time.

One of the solutions to Customer Experience is to get the design and walk-through clearly mapped out and validated prior to development and even launching the products and services that you have in mind using Design Thinking.

According to Wikipedia, the definition is as follows,

“Design Thinking refers to the set of cognitive, strategic and practical procedures used by designers in the process of designing, and to the body of knowledge that has been developed about how people reason when engaging with design problems.  Design Thinking is also associated with prescriptions for the innovation of products and services within business and social contexts.”

What we need to understand also is that Design Thinking is not a one-off process and it is an iterative and non-linear process that focuses on the collaboration between designers and users in bringing innovative solutions based on how real users think, feel and behave in bringing value to them as an outcome. If we were to apply a Continuous Improvement thought process around Design Thinking, we could drive improvement in the Customer Experience for our products and services to our stakeholders.  This is one key benefit to ensure your organization stays competitive in today’s landscape.

The 5 core phases of Design Thinking involve:

1. Empathize
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test

When going through the 5 core phases of Design Thinking, it is important that we apply Design Thinking tools to get the most out of the process. So, gather your Design Thinking team to kick-start the process itself.

Step 1 – Empathize phase

In Step 1, the Empathize phase, a clearly refined problem statement on what the challenges encountered would help point to the “right” direction on the why’s. This involves a deeper understanding of who we are designing for. We need to appreciate their needs, pain points, thoughts, emotions, and motivations wholistically. Looking from the persona’s perspective is key to seeing, feeling and experiencing the products and/or services that we provide. It is important to recognize we all have biases and put aside any preconceived ideas about what we assume it is to be.

Once the design team has gained clarity and agreement on clearly documenting the “Empathize” phase, one can move on to the next. However, the team must ensure that they have a full comprehension of what is the problem statement that they are trying to tackle. It is important that we do not jump right into solutions at this point.

Design Thinking tools that can be employed at this phase include:

1. Challenge Tree
2. Observation
3. Questionnaires
4. Interviews
5. Desk / Online Research
6. User Stories
7. Matrix of Needs

Step 2 – Definition phase

Next, we can start with Step 2 on the Definition stage by refinement of the said problem statement using “How might we…” to come up with what the problem statement is. Do note that we may have to go through multiple iterations to refine and get it right. The key structure of the problem statement should include elements of:

1. Who the customers is? We need a clear understanding of the persona, characteristics, etc.
2. What the customer is trying to achieve? What was the outcome vs the intended outcome received? Alternative what are we trying to solve which pain point?
3. When did the incident happen? Time and date? Frequency of incident?
4. Who was involved in the delivery of the services/products to customers? System?
5. How was it delivered? In what format (physical or virtual or a combination of both)?
6. Why would the customers want to choose us to get the said outcome?

Step 3 – Ideate phase

We can break down the Ideate phase into two smaller steps. Firstly, we must creatively come up with as many ideas as possible in addressing the problem statement stated in the previous Step itself.  At this step, we can utilize Design Thinking tools like 6-3-5 Methods (creative idea generation) and Clustering (grouping of similar ideas).

Secondly, use analytical tools in Design Thinking tools like the Now-How-Wow Matrix, Dot Voting and Relative Importance Grid (RIG) Matrix to narrow down the logical choice before proceeding to the next step.

Step 4 – Prototyping phase

To ensure we get the prototyping right, we must use Design Thinking tools like the Build-Break-Repair method to ensure the possible solution that the Design Team have selected is robust enough before commencing building.

A key point to note is to build at least 2 different prototypes at the very least to provide options before moving onto the Test phase. Prototypes can be built via 2D, 3D, Video, Storytelling, and Wire Framing as Design Thinking tools.

Step 5 – Test phase

In this phase the suggested Design Thinking tools employed include.

1. Feedback matrix
2. Feedback structure
3. Questionaries, interviews, and observations.

Once we have completed all 5 phases of the Design Thinking process, we typically have two choices.

Important point to note regardless of which choice we make at this point; it is important that we can always and should come back to re-iterate and re-run the Design Thinking process again. As the saying goes, “We can approach perfection by continuously improving on the things we do.”

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Interested to know more about how Design Thinking can help you and your organization do better? Reach out to Cybiant’s consultants by dropping a quick e-mail at info@cybiant.com to us.

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