Published on | Prototyping: From UX to Front End — Medium Carlos Yllobre

Design Thinking, those two words together are in the mouth of every product designer out there these days, the first time I heard about it, my first thought was something like this: “here we go again, another ‘sexy’ trend that we, designers, are going to repeat like parrots until the next sophisticated theory appears”. You can blame me if you want, but we know that there are a lot of empty words in the community, concepts and theories repeated like slogans, without even thinking about what is behind, who created them and why.

Me every time I hear “Storytelling”

But, and this is a big ‘but’, I was happy to discover that I was wrong about this one, Design Thinking is not bullshit, at least not in the original idea and basic structure. Many people talk about it and make it look more complex than what it is with creative metaphors and a lot of ‘blah blah blah’, but that doesn’t change the fact that it is a very valid methodology in line with something I personally find very valuable in Product Design and in life in general, a beautiful combination of analysis and creativity. You can call it ‘Design Thinking’ if you want, I prefer to call it “Getting shit properly done”.

What is Design Thinking?

“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

Tim Brown, President and CEO of IDEO

Or in plain words; Design Thinking is a methodology created to solve complex problems and bring the best possible solutions to the users using a combination of different stages that allows design thinkers to come up with innovative solutions, that at the same time, create value for both, users and business needs.

But this is just the definition, to fully understand Design Thinking we need to know the process, the ‘how’. Here you have it explained with rubber ducks, just to make it more interesting 😉

UNDERSTAND

Who are your users? what do they need?

There is nothing to do if you don’t understand first the ‘who’ and the ‘why’. You get this information through research, interviews, etc. This is not just a mere exercise, it is essential to trace and to define what to do in order to solve the issues identified in this step.The more you know your users, the better you understand their needs, and consequently, identify and define the right solutions.

EXPLORE

Ideate

It is time to bring all type of ideas to the table, don’t be judgemental in this stage, you will have time to filter all those ideas later (I like to use the 3 funnels method, image below) and at the end of this exercise, you will end up with 2 or 3 valid ideas ready to prototype and test.

Prototype

When prototyping you are making a representation of a solution, the main goal with this is not making them functional, but that users can interact with them, and provide you with more information about possible issues and relevant points about the product your team is building.

There are 2 types of prototypes, Low and High fidelity ones. Low-fidelity prototypes come into play in the early stages of the product development process to answers questions related to the basics of any product, like navigation flow or content structure. High-fidelity prototypes are used in a more advanced stage of the product lifecycle with the intention to test and improve interaction and specific UI issues.

MATERIALIZE

Test

Test, test, test, no matter how many times we repeat this, testing is what makes your flow being in continuous movement and improvement, it could be as painful as necessary for your product. The results you obtained testing could take you to the next stage, holding you to that final one solution or even making you go back to research and iterate again.

Implement

So here we are, after days, weeks or months of ideation, research, tests, and prototypes, you and your team are ready to implement the best solution/s. If you are here, there should still be a process of Verification and Validation going on. Well, not too much to say here, understand and follow these methodologies and be sure that the product you are implementing is matching the requirements identified during the previous stages of the product development process.

Did I mention that then you start all over again? 😉

Thank you for reading!

Design Thinking explained (with rubber ducks) was originally published in Prototypr on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Design Thinking explained (with rubber ducks)

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