To illustrate, instead of defining the problem as your own wish or a need of the company such as, “We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by 5%,” a much better way to define the problem would be, “Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow.” You should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner. This is where you will analyse your observations and synthesise them in order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. Define (the Problem)ĭuring the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during the Empathise stage. Empathy is crucial to a human-centered design process such as Design Thinking, and empathy allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world in order to gain insight into users and their needs.ĭepending on time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at this stage to use during the next stage and to develop the best possible understanding of the users, their needs, and the problems that underlie the development of that particular product. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment so you can gain a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved. The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. EmpathiseĪuthor/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Let’s take a closer look at the five different stages of Design Thinking. The five stages of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows: Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. d.school is the leading university when it comes to teaching Design Thinking. We will focus on the five-stage Design Thinking model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). Understanding these five stages of Design Thinking will empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems that occur around us - in our companies, in our countries, and even on the scale of our planet. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown, by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing.
![the problem with human design the problem with human design](https://d9gq23s0pivsu.cloudfront.net/Stories/What-Does-Human-Design-Do-For-You-Site.jpg)
![the problem with human design the problem with human design](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/6GDt2s1YXeY/mqdefault.jpg)
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems.