So today, we're going to be talking about a particular way of developing new ideas as well as evaluating your current ideas based upon better understanding your customer. Design thinking is a paradigm, a framework, or a way of looking at developing your product or service by the experiences that through customers have. So the whole objectives is to think in terms of the customer with information from the customer. But focusing on their experiences rather than the detail needs that they make tell you with respect to a particular product or service. If we look at these different inventions, what is common among these inventions like you just think about it like for a second or two. Well, the major commonality between each of these is these are inventions that were developed here at the University of Illinois, and have eventually become products. Now, the time lag between when the products actually hit the market, and the invention was actually made varies by each of these. But in each success of development of this particular product, they've improved in terms of that particular original invention in the marketplace. So it was in 1993, that Internet browsers were actually developed, but if we see the stage of Internet browsers today, it's much better than the browsers that existed at this time. One of the things is where do we get ideas from? Often, we get ideas from using a particular product. Often, we get ideas from noticing how other people use products. Joy Mangano, is an American Inventor and Entrepreneur. And one of the first inventions she came up with is the Miracle Mop. The way she ended up developing this particular product was based upon the fact that as a mom, as a homemaker, she had to mop floors in her house. And she didn't feel that the current mop that she had, the typical mop that has long strings, was not as effective. She would like for it to be, she began to think about what things needed to be improved in the mop that she was using to make it more effective to accomplish her cleaning goals. Now, once she did that, she begin to develop meaning and more products just based upon the fact of her experiences in developing, or using, or noticing, how people use different household items. So since she developed the Miracle Mop, she's developed over 100 plus patents on different household-type products just by noticing how she as a homemaker. Or how other homemakers perform their task on a daily basis. So that's kind of the background for design thinking. It's a method of focusing the development of your new product of service based upon what people need and want. Because they dislike or like certain things about the products that they have. How do you improve it in a way that make it better for what they are doing? So that experience of using the product help to create new ideas as to how other products should be developed, or you can develop the product yourself. It helps you to align with other people or customers based upon what they're doing. By producing the product that's based upon customer value to a market segment of people who have got some of the experiences. So the design thinking process is a three step process. The first is identification of the problem, either your own experiences or observing experiences of others. The next is to think about how you could solve that problem better, that's the ideation stage. And then, the next step is the implementation of it. In terms of building a prototype of building an example, and attempting to solve their problem through an iterative process. And a design thinking approach, what we first do then is to better understand the problem that the customer has. When something isn't perfect, that's an opportunity for design thinking. Many of you heard of Kaiser Permanente, a medical organization. It had issues with how information was flowing between nurses stations when they begin to change shift. The problem was patient care wasn't perfect, because the information flow was not consistent and was not perfect as nurses changed their shifts. So nurses had incorrect information for understanding what would be the next step. And part of the problem was that they were not cataloging the patient information in the correct way that made it easy to transfer from one person to the next. So given that problem, could you think of a way, how do you solve it? Is it a technical issue? Is it a communication issue? Or is it that you haven't trained the staff properly on how they get the information that should be exchanged between the shifts. The next step would be to think about the process. And this doesn't have to be some complex prototype, but how can you better improve the existing system that's in place? Josh McDonald, talked about how can I get a better mop? Do I change the materials of the mop? Rather than the thin strips? Maybe wider strips would do a better job. Something that would be easier for a housewife to use in the household. So you're attempting to identify both the strengths and the weaknesses of solutions to that particular problem that you've identified. And then, you begin to think in terms of the prototypes, can I develop an example. Merely sketching out the idea, or if you can building the idea, to see if it helps you to better solve the problem that you've identified in the identification stage. The finally, the next step is the implementation. If you test a number of product concept ideas, how do you begin to compare that against competition and evaluate whether or not there is market for it. So we would identify the approach in earlier modules of techniques that you can use to evaluate the product concept that you've developed through a design thinking process. Through things such as the voice of the customer, or things such as lead user analysis. But once you have that idea, this should be kind of a check and balance system. You can either start with the design of the product that leads you to the evaluation, or you can start with the actual idea of identifying the needs first, develop the prototype, but you still need to evaluate. So design thinking fits in the early stages of the process. When you're trying to develop ways of solving customer's problems by better understanding the customer experience that the consumer may have. Now, one firm who has been very successful with this is a firm call IDEO. They were founded in 1991, the result of a merger between three other firms. They're West Coast firm here in the United States. And they were responsible for a number of different designs of products. But they were responsible for Apple's first mouse, Palm PDA, and things such as aerodynamic desk chairs. So since their development, or since their creation, they've designed a number of new product ideas by approaching it from the standpoint of putting themselves in the minds of the customer. And helping them to understand what the customer needs by experiencing those needs. So this process is based upon three key steps. It starts with understanding the needs of the customer. And trying to figure out what's most desirable. Very similar to the voices of the customers we talked about earlier. The next step is to see if it's technically viable, so we know that this is a customer's problem. But can we solve that problem? And is it viable from a technical stand point. So this would require the technical feasibility. And then finally, is the feasibility from a cost benefit prospective, which is market feasibility or economic feasibility. Now, once you can satisfy each of those requirements. Then you have an innovation that's likely to be successful in the market place. If even develop and use a design approach, we start with understanding and observing customers. Putting ourselves in the shoes of the customer by observing how they may use the product. Or through different types of techniques gathering input, or information from the customer that will help us to understand their experiences both positive and negative experiences. In the next step is to evaluate and refine either a current product that you have, or new solutions based upon the needs that you identified in that first step. By visualizing and realizing the benefits that customers are looking for, you'll be in a better position to go to the next stage, which is the development of the product concept. So those are those are the three elements, but the key starting points is understanding the needs of the buyer. Observing them, in terms of their customer experiences, and then trying to visualize how to solve that problem with your current product or service concept. Let's start out with understanding and observing. So we want to study the current market. What are the key things that we want to look for? First, we can examine current users. What are the things they like? What are the things they dislike about? Again, through the surveys or through observations, we should be able to see how people are using the product. And where they become frustrated with the product. These are called pain points. What point in the process do they become frustrated because their problem is not being resolved? The current techniques that we've talked about earlier would be sufficient to help identify the things that customer likes or dislike. Maybe there is a history of complaints about the product. And you can look at that history of complaints to get a better ideas, what things could be improved? And finally, you want to look at has it been an issue of cost effectiveness, or has it been just having to address those deeds, and previous products that have been developed. You trying to understand things how they work in terms of the current customer, and how they maybe using the product? And you try to create the ability to assess the feasibility of moving forward with a new product and service. The next step is to visualize and realize. So this is a process you begin to think about ideas as to how to solve the problem. You begin with creating prototypes and they can be a rough, just a drawing. It can be something that you actually built or it can be the actual product that you developed. But you want to work with either your eyes, your mind, somehow to illustrate how you will solve that problem. Remember earlier on we did exercise called. That was part of the visualizing and realizing. We say come up with a product that would not be marketable, but did address a customer needs. We made it humorous, but this is part of visualizing and realizing what that product might be. So you want to spend some time thinking about here's the problem, here's the solution to the problem, but what that solution would look like? It's really a way of brainstorming to encourage more thinking. So, you start out with something physical that people can react to, and you build upon that concept. Either asking friends, or asking customers to react to it. But the idea is to be able to show them, this is what I think the product will look like, and here is how it would work. It's typically down with a purpose of generating more ideas. The next step is to evaluate and refine any of those concepts that seem feasible in the long run. So you turn the rough prototype to develop, and to more functional prototype. So you shift from the understanding of the human factor needs to the technical. Or more importantly, your capabilities to resolve those customers' problems with your abilities. So this is a concurrent process where you're designing and reacting, or getting reaction to the product as you try to address the customer need. And finally, we developed a product. So here's two examples of products that were developed. It's called the PalmPilot. And you can see the slight variations but their basically the same. But part of the difference was, what information was relayed and how that information was relayed? You are able now to evaluate does the product actually work? And if there's a need to meet standards within the industry, whether or not it meets those standards. And any particular things the customers are looking for, you can evaluate it against that physical product. So now you have an actual product that you can go evaluate the market feasibility of. So before you actually go into implementing and developing the full scale production of it. You want to be able to understand that market is feasible, and you've tested it out in terms of acceptance in the market before you actually move to the shop floor to develop the entire product. This process of developing products based upon a customer experiences is called design thinking. And what its attempting to do is to help create choices for you that will lead to a more valuable product. So one way of thinking about this is that what design thinking does, it helps to create choices because it gives you what's called divergent thinking. Your objective is to create multiple ideas that you can evaluate. Now, once you begin to evaluate those ideas, that's more called convergent thinking. You want to converge on what's the best choice to meet customer needs. IDL has been doing this for a number of years, and they have been successful with it. And the way they start out on all of their attempts to both create choices as well as make choices is to do what's called divergent and convergent thinking. And they start out with one question, how might we? So for now, we're going to cut away from the lecture and look at a presentation that someone from IDL that will talk about their approach of how they answer the question or how might we. After you've reviewed this video, come back to this lecture. And we will complete the discussion of the design thinking process. [MUSIC]
