Design Thinking

There's so much going on and right now there is like a, I don't know, maybe I'm wrong, but there's like a buzzword that is chasing me. What is it? Design thinking. And that's just chasing you like now? I have never heard of it before, you know. Not like for the last 10 years. So the thing is, it's maybe like the last 10 years, but right now it's pretty present because I'm talking to people, I'm working in companies, I also get sometimes requests from companies and everyone is right now somehow focusing on design thinking. And I think we never talked about it in this podcast and I was just curious to hear what you think design thinking is because I'm struggling a little bit with that wording, with that notion of it, but yeah, maybe you can help me getting some clarity on that. I mean, first of all, I think it's interesting that you feel like it's a buzzword or a topic that comes up more often recently because I think on one end it shows that design is growing on maturity, right? It's getting out of this like whole of making things pretty, right? I mean, you need to look at like different phases of design, but I think like especially in the last 10 years, it was a lot about aesthetics, right? And not so much about the functionality and there have been like other people thinking about the functionality part itself, historically probably different, right? You had industrial designers and so on where functionality has always been a key part of it, right? And how do things work? How do things feel before Alessi came along and made everything beautiful or tried to make everything beautiful? Maybe not always with the biggest impact on the functionality, but yeah, a lot of words just to say that I'm happy that it is becoming known. But I've also seen it, right? I mean, companies like Bain, when I worked for them, I mean, that was what we've been selling, right? Design thinking, agile and so on. I mean, in theory, those companies sell a lot of these buzzwords, right? I mean, you said it. Yeah, and that's exactly the reason why I wanted to talk to you because especially design thinking, to me, I mean, if I look at product discovery, if I look at the double diamond process or the thousands of other things, I think design thinking is included in each one of them. So I think like, to me, design thinking is rather like the category or the headline of it. But yeah, I'm curious to hear what you think. So, but that's what I'm telling people. And I mean, like, you know, if there is a CEO sitting, I want my people to be design driven. Well, sorry, I want my people to be design thinking, I'm like, what do you want to get out of it? What is the reason why? So what do you want to achieve by them being design thinking, right? It's rather like, I would rather say I want my employees to be customer focused, right? Or to be problem oriented. So but yeah, I'm happy to hear what you think. Yeah, and I think pretty much all of these things fall under that category, right? And I mean, for everyone who listened to our last episode, maybe you remember, I was talking about like, the theory behind some words, right? I mean, last time we talked about purpose, vision, the difference, and so on. I mean, I'm never too obsessed like with the theory behind it, and more with the why, if we want to put it like that. I mean, if I would have to define it, people call it processes, and so on, I would say it's mostly kind of a mindset, or it is the way we should build products, right? We know, I mean, in general, and we've talked about this so often, like having, building a successful product means that it is solving a real problem for the users, right? So I mean, design thinking focuses A, on, first of all, like, building empathy with the users, finding, defining the problem, working on finding some of the solutions and testing them, right? I mean, you can see it in the double diamond, I'm not even sure if people would say design thinking and double diamond is kind of the same. I mean, it's always a nonlinear process, right? Because like in theory of everything that is design, and that involves creativity, it also means that you cannot like put a completely straight line onto that process, you need to go back, you learn new things, you need to revise the converging and diverging that you have, like in the double diamond, I mean, all those things are actually how we should build our products. You can put a name tag to it, or you can invent something new. I think, I mean, design thinking, if I'm not mistaken, is coming from IDEO. You're nodding. I'm trusting you, Alex, I'm trusting you. I mean, if everyone knows it better, please, please comment on me or help me find the right Google search. But I think it's just like really something that product teams need to develop, right? And how do we make successful products? How do we inspire people? If you think of Marty Kagan, right? It's always about, okay, who are our users? What are the problems that they're having? How can we solve the problem? Is the solution that we're trying to build, or is the solution that we're thinking of building viable? Let's prototype it. Let's make sure that it's actually working. And then ship it. Yeah. And that's also the reason why I wanted to talk about it, because, you know, I mean, there are many product people, designers, and also leaders listening to this podcast. And I think it's important to emphasize also to every one of you who's listening in to not only get stuck on the buzzwords, right, and also dig deeper into it. As you said, right, start with the problem statement and focus on the best experience and try to solve a real problem instead of just, you know, be going to the management and showing processes and telling that we are design driven. I mean, this is not what product management or product design is about. So yeah. And I think also it's important to just emphasize on that, because, I mean, if there's no awareness on the theory behind that kind of stuff, then people will always request something that is not clear. Right. And if you give unclear commands to people, I mean, obviously you will get unclear results and that's not what we want in our jobs. Yeah. But I think the fact that people talk about it more and that people get familiar and learn about this cool term and hear that design thinking can be helpful, that's like a really good opportunity to focus on. Do you remember last time you wanted to be like design centric, apply design thinking? I'm not sure if you were like doing design thinking or being design thinking, whatever. Last time you mentioned that. Well, the feature that you just asked me to build, let's take a step back. Let's start building the empathy with the user or let's start defining the problem to then come up with the solutions and let's make sure that we test them. So that we can make guarantee that it's like a viable one that we have here. So I think it's, I mean, it is important to have that mindset. It is important that we, that everyone understands what design thinking is, right? And I mean, again, there is, I mean, in the context of design thinking, you've probably heard a lot about also design sprints and stuff like that, right? I mean, you can then start implementing or trying these things. Again, I'm always saying like, don't be religious about like these sort of processes. If you do a design sprint, well, try to find the design sprint that works for you. At SumUp, we did a lot of like two day design sprints, shorted versions that worked really well for us because we just started, okay, we cannot find the time of everyone to be in a proper full week design sprint. And we kind of found what works for us and we excluded stakeholders in certain phases. We made sure that we had like some preparation on some lightning talks and so on. But I think it's, yeah, it's just like important to understand how important it is to A, make sure that you put the user at the center because those are the people that you're trying to solve it for. And then to allow for a creative process to like really go broad on finding the solutions, then narrowing down again until you're able to test and ship the solution. Amen. Any more questions or should we wrap it up here? I think we can definitely wrap it up here. I mean, as I said, I think it's important to highlight that it's not only about the buzzwords. And I mean, as you said, like the healthy process behind it is very important. And healthy means also, as you said, not being religious about it. Because I mean, I just recently saw, I don't know, somewhere on the internet a post that I really liked. It was a picture of a guy holding like a piece of paper and written down was like, cocaine isn't real energy, porn isn't real sex, and business books aren't real business. And I mean, you know, that also accounts for like the design sprint framework, even the frameworks. I love that. Yeah, we just talked about, I mean, in this business books, everything sounds perfect, right? And I'm like, okay, but it doesn't matter in which company you go. I mean, it's the nature of us human beings to have conflicts, problems, challenges we need to face on a regular basis, not only for customers, also internally. So go with the flow and do what's best for your company and do what's best for your customers. I think that's the way to go. So apart from any buzzwords. And okay, so two comments, and then we can really close it. Yes, I agree on everything that you say, but if you have someone using buzzwords, just jump on it and use it to your advantage. A, that's definitely something that I would do. Like if someone talks to me about design thinking, I will remind them for the rest of their life. And B, I think like, yeah, business books, great, but nothing beats real world experience. And also nothing beats seeing a lot of different examples, right? Because like, you can go into different companies, you can try the same format, and you can adjust the same format for each individual company. Nothing works for everyone, and you will always have to adjust. So I think, I mean, it's just like priceless to have that visibility and test different things. Exactly. And let's add finally C, which stands for Christian is hungry. Let's go to get some dinner, Alex. I'm hungry too. Everyone, have a great evening. Bye bye. And don't forget to click the subscribe button. Ciao, ciao. Bye bye.