Design Thinking for Innovation & Combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile

When to use Design Thinking?

If the following conditions exist: there are many unknowns (big and little), past data is unlikely to be helpful, and there is very little relevant existing data to study, design thinking methodologies are appropriate.

The process of doing, experiencing, and becoming with the four design thinking questions.

By Jeanne M. Liedtka (University of Virginia)

Implementation of Design Thinking for Innovation involves:

• Visualization
  Make it observable and real. Create a map, tell a tale, take a picture, or draw a picture.
• Storytelling
  Feature people and their experiences prominently. Invite the listener to join you on your adventure.
• Mind Mapping
  Examining your data for trends and themes.
• Launching Launch
  A quick trial that evaluates your novel concept in the actual world.

The Design Thinking Manifesto is a set of principles that outline the core values and beliefs of the design thinking process.

These principles include:

1. Empathize with the user: Understand their needs, wants, and constraints through research and observation.
2. Define the problem: Identify the key issues and opportunities to be addressed.
3. Ideate potential solutions: Generate a wide range of ideas through brainstorming and other ideation techniques.
4. Prototype and test: Create tangible representations of the ideas and test them with users to gather feedback.
5. Iterate: Use the feedback to improve and refine the design.

The design thinking process is human-centered, iterative, and prototype-driven, and it encourages collaboration and experimentation. The goal is to create innovative and effective solutions that meet the needs of users and other stakeholders.

Combine Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile

Design thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile are all approaches that focus on iterative, user-centered development and rapid experimentation. Combining these approaches can lead to a more effective and efficient product development process.

Design thinking provides a framework for understanding user needs and generating ideas. Lean Startup is focused on validating those ideas quickly and with minimal resources, through continuous testing and feedback from customers. Agile is a methodology for managing and executing a project that emphasizes flexibility and rapid iteration.

When combining these approaches, the design thinking process can be used to empathize with users and define the problem. The Lean Startup methodology can then be used to quickly validate and iterate on potential solutions through testing and feedback. And Agile can be used to manage and execute the project in a flexible and adaptive way.

This combination allows for a continuous feedback loop between design thinking, lean startup, and agile, where the team can validate the assumptions and pivot or persevere accordingly while keeping user needs in mind. This can lead to a more efficient and effective product development process that creates products that better meet the needs of users.

A project plan for combining Design Thinking, Lean Startup, and Agile would involve the following steps:

1. Empathize: Use design thinking techniques to conduct user research and understand the needs, wants, and pain points of the target audience.
2. Define the problem: Use the insights from the empathize step to define the problem and identify the key issues and opportunities to be addressed.
3. Ideate: Use design thinking techniques to generate a wide range of potential solutions.
4. Lean Startup validation: Use the Lean Startup methodology to quickly validate the ideas through testing and feedback from a small group of customers.
5. Agile planning: Use Agile techniques to plan and execute the project, focusing on flexibility and rapid iteration.
6. Prototype and test: Use the feedback from the Lean Startup validation step to create a prototype of the most promising solution and test it with a larger group of customers.
7. Iterate: Use the feedback from the prototype testing to improve and refine the design.
8. Implement: Implement the final solution, using Agile techniques to manage and execute the project.
9. Continuous feedback: Continuously gather feedback from users and stakeholders to validate assumptions and identify areas for improvement.
10. Measure and Optimize: Measure the performance of the solution and use the gathered data to optimize the solution

This approach allows for a continuous feedback loop between design thinking, lean startup, and agile, where the team can validate assumptions, pivot, or persevere accordingly while keeping user needs in mind. This can lead to a more efficient and effective product development process that creates products that better meet the needs of users.