1) Design thinking is a method for investigating problems, acquiring information, analyzing knowledge, and generating solutions that is centered around empathy, creativity, and rationality. (2) It involves empathizing with users, defining problems from their perspective, ideating diverse solutions, prototyping ideas, and testing prototypes with users. (3) The document provides an overview of these stages and techniques like empathy mapping, composite character profiles, and powers of ten to help teams apply design thinking.

1. Design Thinking 101

2. Setting the Stage
Brainstorming is an…
$13,500 monthly process
…not an innovative strategy
Innovation is key to being competitive

3. The Innovation Issue
Let’s get social
800 million Facebook users 300 million Twitter users
80% of all Americans use Social Media
3.5 billion pieces of content shared daily on Facebook
1.4 million new blog posts 35 hours of new video every minute
Over $3 billion spent on advertising on social platforms
Engagement and innovation are key

4. What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking (/dəˈzīn /ˈ
/ THiNGkiNG/)
Design Thinking refers to the methods and processes for
investigating ill-defined problems, acquiring information, analyzing
knowledge, and positing solutions in the design and planning
fields. As a style of thinking, it is generally considered the ability to
combine empathy for the context of a problem, creativity in the
generation of insights and solutions, and rationality to analyze and
fit solutions to the context.
Human Centered Design Method
Visually Focused

5. d.Mindsets

6. d.Mindsets

7. The Process

8. Empathize
Empathy is the foundation of a human-centered design process.
• Observe
• Engage
• Immerse
Understand the audience - the problems we are trying to solve
aren’t our own.
Find (or create if necessary) experiences to immerse yourself to
better understand the situation that your users are in, and for which
you are designing.
How can we empathize with our clients since we don’t directly
interact with the audience?

9. Define
Define Goals
• Develop a deeper understanding of your audience and design
space
• Come up with an actionable problem statement (your POV)
Scope a specific/meaningful challenge by unpacking and
synthesizing empathy findings.
Your POV needs to be a guiding statement that focuses on specific
users, needs and insights.
The problem statement should inspire the team, provide a reference
for completion, fuel “how might we” statements, and not be all
things to all people.
This should be the question posed to the team by the strategist.

10. Ideate
Take the problem statement defined by the strategy team and start
exploring solutions.
Goal:
Explore a wide solution space – develop many diverse ideas.
“Flare” don’t focus.
Create fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety) in your innovation
options.
Drive the team beyond obvious solutions in the initial small team
brainstorms – don’t feel like you have to develop the final
product/solution/strategy.

11. Prototype
Prototyping is getting ideas and explorations out of your head and
into the physical world. The process allows you to quickly
investigate many possibilities. Prototypes are most successful when
you can interact with or experience them.
It could be a wall of post-it notes, a roll-playing activity, an object
or even a storyboard.
Bring prototypes to the big team meetings – something visual will
help develop ideas into solutions.
After an idea is presented – the team takes a few minutes to focus
it.

12. Test
Refine solutions and make them better. Place the ideas generated
in the context of the user’s life.
Prototype as if you know your right, but test as if you know you’re
wrong.
The strategist should take ideas generated from the team and find
ways to test them with the client. What are some ways we can test
since we don’t always have direct access to our end users?

13. Brainstorming
1. Pick a Facilitator – one person from the strategy team
• Energy – keep the ideas flowing, tweak the scope
• Constraints – add constraints to spark new ideas
2. Flare - Focus 15-30 minutes of high engagement idea flaring
• Quantity over quality
• Headline!
• Build on the ideas of others
• Encourage wild ideas
• Be visual
• Stay on topic
• Defer judgment – NO blocking
3. Scribe – Write ALL ideas (use post-it-notes or a white board)
4. Selection
• Group ideas – some ideas might fit well with others to make
a more complete thought.
• Vote on the group’s favorite

14. Techniques
Empathy Map
• Helps synthesize your observations and draw out unexpected
insights.
• Unpack what your audience says, does, thinks and feels.
• Identify Needs – the physical and emotional necessities.
• Identifying Insights – something you could leverage to respond to
challenges.

15. Techniques
Composite Character Profile
• Can be used to bucket interesting observations into one
specific recognizable character.
• Group “typical” characteristics, trends and other patterns
identified in the user group.
• Give them a name!

16. Techniques
Powers of Ten
• “What if we had more than a million dollar budget?”
• “What if the budget was $0.25?”
• Nationwide? Local? International?

17. Lets Try It!
Problem Statement
• Portland Perks
• Develop ways to promote Perks in 2012.
• Primary target audience: women 35-64 living in Washington
(except SW region) (think Seattle) and BC, Canada (think
Vancouver)
Directions
• 10 minutes: Write down as many ideas as possible (just headlines)
• 20 minutes: Select your favorite, develop a pitch and a
prototype
• 5 minutes: Pitch it to the team

18. Resources
Bootcamp Bootleg
http://dschool.stanford.edu/use-our-methods/
Dan Roam @ Google
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuA_yz7aTo0
ABC Nightline – IDEO
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M66ZU2PCIcM