Has It happen to you, that you have a brilliant idea, but it may not solve a main problem that people would pay for? “The number one reasons why startups fail, is because there is no market need for the product or service developed”, affirms Neeraj Joshi. That is why Design Thinking is such a useful tool. This systematic approach helps you to find a problematic that is worth solving.
In this article, we will explain you what are the steps of Design Thinking. This will give you a clear understanding on why Design Thinking is so important for your startup.
What are the steps of Design Thinking?
Empathize.
You need to be patient, open minded and use observation tactics. It is important to put assumptions on a side; put yourself in other people’s shoes, this means you are empathizing. You must analyze your “possible customers” in different matters like emotions, motivations, user’s experience, behavior, between others. Moreover, you will get a clear understanding of who the user is and what his/her needs are. In addition, you need to know the context and make a research about it.
Define.
With all the information you received, you can analyze your possible customers and get insights. Do not forget, that you need to construct a point of view. This will be helpful in order to make a list of problems. Then you will have to define and give priority to a bunch of this user’s problems. Afterwards, you need to define the problem you want to solve.
Ideate.
It is time to do a brainstorm and come up with ideas to give solutions to the problem choose. Have in mind that you need to be as open minded as you can. Do not be afraid of giving “unexpected or impossible solutions”, maybe in the process, you find a good way to make it come true. Besides that, you must research about all the kinds of solutions that this “problem” has so far. Perhaps this problem has no solution yet and your idea in not on the market or you can improve the solution you want to present.
Prototype.
After ideate, you must build the prototype. This means a simple demonstration of a proposed solution used to test or validate ideas. Remember you must show this prototype to people in general, not necessarily the target. The purpose of this test is to obtain information and communicate with general users. It will be helpful to have a general panorama.
Test.
At this stage, it is time to look for the target and test the prototype you made in first instance; during this phase you have the chance to see if you have framed the problem correctly. Remember that the people you select in this stage must be the “possible customer”; you will need their feedback to make the necessary improvements, if needed. In addition, you can repeat this process several times until you have the “solution”.
Launch.
Now that you have the solution, you can implement your vision. Introduce it to the market. In this last stage, you can also get even more feedback, experience and look for investors to scale your startup.
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Written by Claudia Flores Jiménez
claudia@innovate.today
