Design Thinking Demystified

I have spent the last three months at Deloitte observing and participating in the firm’s design thinking practice as part of my PhD research. I’ve had the privilege of working with accountants, consultants, auditors and tax services professionals who are applying design thinking with enthusiasm for, and excitement about, the opportunity to be creative and do things differently – a sure sign something special is going on!

Over the past five years design thinking has gained the attention of, and won favour with, the business world and beyond. Businesses are embracing design thinking for its potential to deliver competitive advantage through becoming more innovative, customer centric, and differentiating their brand. As consumers continue to expect more personalisation and customisation from their service providers, the use of design thinking for innovation within organisations is a logical progression. It is crucially important for organisations to create a ‘humanly satisfying’ as well as sustainable business.

At its broadest, design thinking is understood as taking a designer’s approach to problem solving. More specifically it is a human-centred and collaborative approach to problem solving that uses a design mindset to solve organisational, business and social problems. It places understanding and empathising with people at the centre of the problem solving process, and engages users to co-design a desired solution.
The potential of design thinking lies in its ability to strip away the status of the expert. Design thinking recognises the value of authentic engagement with users and of collaborating with them to develop solutions to their problems.

There are several definitions of, and much opinion about, design thinking. However there is some overlap and, from that, we can piece together the design thinking puzzle. Generally agreed upon characteristics are:

Empathy: development of a deep understanding of the needs of people for whom the solution is being designed; seeing and ‘feeling’ the world through their lens in order to develop a rich understanding of the problem context.

Human centredness: design thinking considers the needs of all people affected by the problem – customers, employees, business partners, suppliers – and solutions are designed accordingly

Holistic view: it locates the problem within its wider context and understands its interrelationships and interdependencies with other systems.

Collaboration: collaborating with people from multidisciplinary backgrounds enables radical innovation through the bringing together of diverse skills, knowledge and experiences.

Design doing: despite its cognitive connotations, design thinking is action oriented, valuing doing and making things over thinking and meeting.

Visualisation: visualisation may take many forms – sketches, prototypes, mind maps or stories – all of which allow for interaction with ideas and solutions, and act as conversation starters to develop shared understanding and iterative design.

Future orientation: design thinking is focused on creating better results for the future, not just on resolving problems for short term gain.

I have witnessed at Deloitte a definite curiosity in exploring new ways of working, a willingness to push through the messiness of understanding complex problems at their human core, a commitment to actioning new ways of working, and a passion to do real work that makes a real difference. There is no doubt Deloitte is experiencing a design thinking movement – to redesign the experience of professional services with people at the centre.

 For further reading on Design thinking see Harvard Business Review’s Design Thinking article by Tim Brown

Zaana Howard is a PhD candidate at Swinburne University of Technology, researching Design Thinking practice in complex organisations.