DESIGN THINKING is a process to evolve your business model based on research and logic.
DESIGN FEELING expands on your thinking, to add empathy – so you deeply understand the people who want what you sell, as well as the society in which you operate.
Together, they build a business model that works right from the start.
- Design Thinking is quantitative, and gives you words and numbers.
- Design Feeling is qualitative, and is based on prototypes and real people.
How we got here
In the old days, if you were a “people-person” you went into marketing. A numbers-person went to finance, a tech person went into computing, a practical person went into engineering. If you had no inherent capabilities you were destined for management.
Now there is a blurring of the lines. The more we learn about these broad education disciplines, the harder it is to get the benefit of both – marketing that delivers financial ROI, engineered products that are quick to manufacture, computer systems that are secure and maintainable.
A business that works, needs it ALL. Right from the start – no 2nd chances.
I ended up with both a BA and a BSc so I could see two opposing perspectives – people AND computers. How people used computers, and how using computers changed people. I did both because I was interested in both, I didn’t know it would become “a thing”. A thing called design thinking or user experience. [user? An unpeople-person definitely came up with THAT combination]
In the 90’s, Apple made Design Thinking famous. At first it wasn’t in a good way – all form, no function. Design thinking got a bad name. But eventually designers got to the heart of it.
What is good Design Thinking
1) Stop thinking of your customers as “users”.
2) Stop stereotyping your customers (i.e. personas and user profiles).
3) Observe actual customers “in the wild” (user focus groups don’t work).
4) Find ways to identify their problems, feelings and thought processes.
5) Create a hypothesis and test your assumptions scientifically.
Design thinking is good for situations that are badly defined or unknown. And frankly most situations are an unknown when you are dealing with people. We are a confused and confusing bunch.
So then what is Design Feeling?
I haven’t seen this term used, and I hope I have coined the phrase. Because in 2023, the world needs to move beyond intellect, and start taking into account how humans (NOT users) feel and experience what organizations show, tell, do and deliver.
The first phase – Design Thinking – results in a strategy document, “The Plan”. Until now, that’s been enough to convince banks and investors to lend money to a start-up.
But does the plan WORK???
You can’t judge how something works with word descriptions. Or projections. You need to see it, feel it, experience it.
What you need is a prototype. Or a pilot project, or a scaled (preferably working) model. Take the plan away from the accountants and the managers, and let the creatives and the engineers do their thing.
And once they have a prototype, your team must return to Design Thinking for the final phase – testing, projections, ROI. Now based on reality, not a document.
7 Steps in the Design Thinking – Design Feeling process
- THINK – your users’ needs, their problem, and your insights
- FEEL – with your users. Pull people into your team who think like customers.
- IDEATE – find genuinely creative people to help you, and go with their flow.
- PLAN – channel ideas into plans. Challenge assumptions, combine, delete, edit, evolve.
- DO – creating working solutions with prototypes.
- TEST – go to your customers and measure scientifically under real-world conditions
- LAUNCH! No surprises, no rework.
