Design Thinking Material
Design Thinking Material
SCHOOL OF COMPUTING
COURSE MATERIAL
22AI105001 – DESIGN THINKING
By
Dr.G.Sunitha, Professor,CSE
SCHOOL CORE
Course Code Course Title L T P S C
Pre-Requisite -
Anti-Requisite -
Co-Requisite -
COURSE DESCRIPTION: This course provides a detailed discussion and hands-on experience
on design thinking process, evaluation of requirement specification and reflections on design
experience. This course also focuses on demonstration of five phases of design thinking
such as empathize, define, ideate, prototyping, testing and validation with design thinking
tools and frameworks.
COURSE OUTCOMES: After successful completion of the course, students will be able to:
CO2. Create meaningful and actionable problem statements for creative problem solving.
CO3. Construct blueprints to visualize user attitudes and behavior for gaining insights of
customers.
CO5. Develop relevant products or services by choosing good design and applying empathy
tools for experiencing user requirements.
CO6. Work independently and communicate effectively in oral and written forms.
CO1 - 3 - 2 - - - - - - - - - - -
CO2 1 - 1 3 - - - - - - - - - - -
CO3 - 2 3 - - - - - - - 1 - - -
CO4 - 2 3 2 - - - - - - - - - - -
CO5 - 3 - 1 1 - 1 2 - - - - - - -
CO6 - - - - - - - - 3 3 2 - - - -
Course
Correlation 1 3 2 3 1 - 1 2 3 3 2 1 - - -
Mapping
LIST OF EXERCISES:
Ideation - Importance of visualizing and empathizing before ideating, Applying the method,
Ideation Tools - Story board, Brainstorming, Mind Map, SCAMPER.
5. Story boarding design ideas: Consider a mock scenario and create user stories and
storyboards to transform information about user needs into design concepts using
any story board tool.
7. Perform Brain Storming Session with your team and record using the SCAMPER
framework and finalize the best three innovative ideas.
Prototyping and Testing – Definition, Prototype examples, Need for Prototyping, Fidelity for
prototypes, Process of prototyping, Introduction to Marvel POP Software, Testing prototypes
with users.
8. Create an application prototype for product recommendation using Marvel POP
Software.
9. Create a low-fidelity paper prototype by sketching out the product design and
adding relevant functionality.
What could be
What worked?
improved?
Questions Ideas
RESOURCES
REFERENCES:
1. Michael G. Luchs, Scott Swan , Abbie Griffin, ”Design Thinking – New Product Essentials from
PDMA”,Wiley,2015.
2. Vijay Kumar, “101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your
Organization”, 2012.
3. Kathryn McElroy,”Prototyping for Designers: Developing the best Digital and Physical
Products”,O’Reilly,2017.
4. S.Salivahanan, S.Suresh Kumar, D.Praveen Sam, ”Introduction to Design Thinking”,Tata Mc
Graw Hill, First Edition,2019.
SOFTWARE/TOOLS:
1. Canva (https://www.canva.com/)
2. Coggle (https://coggle.it/)
3. Marvel POP
VIDEO LECTURES:
1. https://nptel.ac.in/courses/109/104/109104109/
2. https://nptel.ac.in/courses/110106124/
3. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q654-kmF3Pc&t=0s
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNAdanuvwtc
5. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-hzefHdAMk
6. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zbLxs6te5to
WEB RESOURCES:
1. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-
process
2. https://www.ibm.com/design/thinking/page/toolkit
3. https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/define-and-frame-your-design-
challenge-by-creating-your-point-of-view-and-ask-how-might-we
4. https://www.culturepartnership.eu/en/article/ten-tools-for-design-thinking
5. https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newCT_02.htm
Design thinking started out as a process for creating sleek new technology and
products. But this methodology is now widely used across both the private and public
sectors, for business and personal projects, all around the world.
1.1 DEFINITION
➢ Design Thinking is a human-centered and collaborative approach to problem-
solving using a designed mindset to solve complex problems. (Tim Brown, British
Industrial Designer & President, IDEO).
➢ Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand
users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions
to prototype and test. Involving five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate,
Prototype and Test—it is most useful to tackle problems that are ill-defined or
unknown.
1.2 IMPORTANCE
It brings together the desirability from the customer’s perspective with what is
technologically feasible and economically viable. It also provides various opportunities
for people who aren’t trained as designers to utilize creative tools so that they can
tackle a vast range of problems/challenges.
In recent decades, it has become beyond vital to develop and refine skills to not only
understand but also act upon the constant changes in this dynamic economy.
Design thinking has proven to improve the world around. Considering its ability to
generate ground-breaking solutions in a less disruptive, yet creative way, it is more
than just a process – it is an innovation.
While design thinking has been around for a while now, many businesses are yet to
adopt it. As an increasing number of brands keep looking for ways to weave design
thinking into their business strategies, marketers, product engineers, and business
leaders keep looking for ways to master this methodology.
Objectives
➢ Design thinking isn’t just a session where everyone gets together in a room and
thinks really hard about design solutions.
➢ With each phase comes important tools and apps to help you succeed.
❖ Five phases, are not always sequential they do not have to follow
any specific order and can often occur in parallel and repeat
iteratively.
Empathize: Design thinking begins with empathy – to gain an insight into the
problem that it sets out to resolve. However, more than understanding the problem,
this step is crucial to understanding the requirements of the user, to deliver a more
customized solution. This step involves observing and engaging with the user to
understand their behavior patterns, inclinations, preferences, and likely reactions to
situations. Only when businesses have fully grasped the user environment and
behavioral patterns, will they be able to tailor solutions to fit user needs.
Define: The next step in the process is organizing all the information collected
during the previous phase. This will eventually help you to define the problem
statement from a more human-centric perspective. Define stage not only helps in
breaking down obscure ideas and issues but also helps to form a structured approach
towards solving it.
Ideate: This is probably the most crucial phase of all and interestingly, allows a lot
of room for creativity. This is when you think radically and prepare for
experimentation to champion the user experience. It’s important to bring fresh
perspectives to the table at this stage and think of new ways of resolving the issue.
It’s also equally important to consider probable obstacles both from the user’s end
and environmental while suggesting these solutions.
Prototype: Prototyping involves curating your best ideas and putting them into
shape. This stage allows designers to test the effectiveness of the solution internally
in a small-scale environment before presenting it for implementation. This could also
mean executing all the probable solutions and checking for their effectiveness. An
important part of this phase is eliminating all the failed/ less effective options and
moving forward with the best ones. Prototyping allows designers to understand how
users would typically behave or react to any particular solution, thereby helping
them form a more realistic solution that can be adopted on a larger scale.
AEIOU,
Empathy Map
3 Ideate Brainstorming
Mind map
Coggle Map
Model
Sketches
Role play
Figma
To Empathize you:
• Observe
• Engage
• Watch and listen
Empathy Tools
a. AEIOU Framework
For eg. you have observed that youths tend not to watch TV programs on the TV
at home, some questions which can guide and spark your ideation session could
be:
3. IDEATE Phase
➢ It’s not about coming up with the ‘right’ idea, it’s about generating the
broadest range of possibilities.”
➢ Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building
prototypes and getting innovative solutions
➢ Ideation is about pushing for a widest possible range of ideas from which
you can select, not simply finding a single, best solution.
Story Board
A storyboard tells a sequence of events using images, drawings and collages. These
can be used to illustrate the user experience with a service or a product.
How to do it?
1. Concretize the theme and message that you want to express through the story.
2. Define the actors of your story.
3. Write down the whole story in a script.
4. Divide the story into sections (scenes).
5. Choose a suitable graphic representation (drawing, photos).
6. Create a picture for each scene.
7. Limit yourself to 6 to 12 images.
Resources
4.PROTOTYPE
Canva is an online graphic designing tool with several functions and features that even
beginners can use. It allows anyone to create fascinating designs for personal and
professional use. It is specially made for people who are not graphic designers and who
cannot invest in hefty amounts to get professional designs. Canva can be used for
designing anything you need. You can create a custom design from scratch or choose
from the different content types it offers.
CANVA TOOL
Features of Canva
Here are some of the prominent features of Canva −
Drag and drop feature − The drag and drop feature of Canva makes it user−friendly.
You can use templates and photos in your design in just a few clicks.
Templates − Canva has a library of over 50,000 templates that you can choose, edit,
and customize as per your needs. Also, new templates are regularly added to the
existing library.
Empathy
➢ Simply put, empathy involves putting yourself in someone else’s shoes.
➢ To successfully empathize with users, designers will need to shelve their own
perceptions, beliefs, and biases.
➢ They will need to become listeners and show the user that not only have they
identified their challenge, they understand it.
➢ Designers need to build empathy for their users in order to take the right course
of action.
2.1 ROLE OF EMPATHY IN DESIGN THINKING
➢ Empathy is the cornerstone of any successful design project.
➢ The extent to which you understand and empathise with your users ultimately
determines the outcome of your design.
➢ Main objectives of the empathise stage is to identify user needs and behaviours
that are latent, or unarticulated.
➢ Empathic research and design is not concerned with facts about the user, such
as their age or ___location.
➢ Rather, it focuses on their feelings towards a product and their motivations in
certain situations
How to become Empathetic Designer?
➢ Empathy interviews
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➢ Immersion and observation
➢ What? Refers to the details of what has happened: for example, the
user took the following actions when entering their payment details on
an ecommerce website.
➢ How? Here you will consider how the user has completed these actions.
What were their facial expressions? Were they exerting a lot of effort? Did
they seem at ease, frustrated, or confused?
➢ Why? Now it’s time to make some educated guesses about the user’s
motivations and emotions as they complete these tasks.
➢ Empathy maps
➢ To understand whether the product meets the needs of the target audience;
➢ To find out from which information channels the user can learn about the
service;
➢ Participants placed sticky notes with ideas about the user onto the respective
section of the empathy map.
Things to do after the session
➢ Use the empathy map as a reference
➢ Turn your empathy map into a poster
Touchpoints
✓ A “touchpoint” refers to any time a customer comes into contact with your brand
– before, during, or after they purchase something from you.
✓ This also includes moments that happen offline/online, through marketing, in
person, or over the phone.
✓ Some touchpoints may have more impact than others. For example, a bad check-
in experience at a hotel can trouble the entire stay.
How to identify Touchpoints
collaboration where a group of students could work together on a single diagram. Coggle
diagrams can also be downloaded as an image file or as a PDF.
A mindmap is a diagram that is used to visually outline information, so it helps students study
and professors teach course material. A mindmap can be easily made using Coggle. One of the
most common types of mindmap is a large brainstorming web where a central word or idea
branches out into related subjects. As ideas are fleshed out and connect to one another, you can
see how concepts tie together to get a better understanding of what you are trying to study.
Coggle is simply delightful to experience.
Maps begin with a soft grey central node with white text. Hovering over this node displays two
prominent plus signs. Upon clicking either of these a subtle fruit-colored branch organically flows
in an unexpected, serpentine stream. This initial branch begs for connection with its pointed end
cap – and creating a new connection is as simple as clicking the plus sign that appears when an
end cap is hovered over. Alternately, the pointed end caps also allow users to add nodes with
text, images, or video. An infinite number of nodes and color-family coded branches, sub-
branches, and sub-sub-branches can be created from any point within a Coggle.
➢ This method of thinking helps you solve problems in real time so you can get
your team back on track.
➢ Context:
➢ Issue:
o The issue details what the problem is and why it’s an issue in the first
place.
➢ Relevance:
➢ Objective:
o The objective states the timeline or priority of when the solution needs to
be implemented and the goal of said solution.
o For example, the team needs to solve the problem before the end of the
quarter given it’s a high priority issue.
➢ Ask questions such as, “Where does this problem live within the system?”
and, “What is the root cause of the problem?”
➢ Defining contextual questions helps place the problem within your existing
processes and pinpoint what could be causing the issue.
➢ Questions such as, “Does this problem prevent objectives from being met?”
and, “Will this problem deplete necessary resources?” are good ones to get you
started.
➢ These questions help rank your problems by importance so you can visualize
the potential outcome of solving the problem vs. waiting until a later time.
➢ Ask questions and gather details from as many different team members as
possible to help diversify your perspective on the problem.
➢ This will lead you to more innovative solutions that serve the majority of
team members.
➢ Get your solution approved. Quality assure your solution by testing in one or
more internal scenarios.
➢ This way you can be sure it works before introducing it to external customers.
➢ You may also need to get it approved by leadership before it goes live, though
this will depend on your unique situation.
➢ Once approved, analyze the success of your solution and continue testing new
ideas until you reach your desired outcome.
o The user and their needs should be front and center of your problem
statement. Avoid statements that start with “we need to…” or “the product
should”, instead concentrating on the user’s perspective
➢ Keep it broad
o At the same time, your problem statement should guide you and provide
direction.
o Don’t try to address too many user needs in one problem statement;
o A problem statement may differ from situation to situation, but each one
should follow the basic components outlined below.
o All of which help stakeholders understand how the problem relates back
to the project at hand.
➢ Contrary to the conventional wisdom that too many ideas leave you confused,
directionless, or unable to make a decision, your goal here should be quantity
not quality.
➢ And here is the best part: no idea is a bad idea. Go after weird, unusual ideas
instead of common sense solutions.
➢ A diversity of ideas will bring about the best, most creative and appropriate solution.
➢ During Ideation you release your mind from the mentality of “finding a right
solution”, get the obvious solution out of the way, and embrace the broadest
possibilities available to you through this process.
➢ Ideation is about exploring all varieties of ideas by multiple voices in the team. You get
to ask the right questions and discover unexpected areas of innovation.
➢ Coming up with new product ideas and innovations is not an easy task.
➢ when deciding to enter a new category, the team faces different obstacles in
ideation.
➢ Ideation can also be challenging simply because it can be hard to come up with
a new ideas.
➢ A deep understanding of the user and his or her experience can help us
develop more meaningful solutions.
➢ it is at times hard for people tasked with designing a new product or system
to understand the user.
With a partner, determine what it is you want to prototype. You don’t have to
Storyboard the entire offering. Use it to test even one component of your idea, like an
interaction, or how a customer finds your product. Spend no more than 30-45 minutes
drawing how your ideas work. Use a series of comic book-style frames for your drawing.
This will help you spotlight key moments and build a short narrative. Don’t get hung up
on your drawing abilities. It’s more important that it helps you fully think through your
concept than create something that looks beautiful. Once you’re done, act out the
Storyboard to your team for feedback.
A Mind Map is a diagram for representing tasks, words, concepts, or items linked to and
arranged around a central concept or subject using a non-linear graphical layout that
Computer Science and Engineering 48
allows the user to build an intuitive framework around a central concept. A Mind Map
can turn a long list of monotonous information into a colorful, memorable and highly
organized diagram that works in line with your brain's natural way of doing things.
➢ Writing essays
3. The branches comprise a key image or key word drawn or printed on its
associated line
Scamper plays a critical role in the solving of simple as well as complex creative
problems. The motive of using Scamper is to make the processes more comfortable
and more fruitful. Scamper helps in brainstorming in the right manner for getting the
most optimal solutions. It encourages you to improve the existing methods to reduce
the wastage of any available resources and make the best use of them. Scamper has
gained so much popularity since it is straightforward to use and implement.
If the traditional ways of critical thinking are not that fruitful, one can turn to the
modern and novel ways like that of Scamper. Scamper does not restrict you to only
one single format of innovative thinking. It instead lets you move freely among the
various forms of problem-solving. It is indeed a creativity-boosting resource. It asks
you questions and then deciphers your answers to find the permanent solution.