Design thinking is not a new concept, in fact, some would claim that its more than 80 years old and in the making.
Design thinking is a method to address human needs and desires in a technologically feasible and strategically viable manner. But how does it connect with the famous three-step business plan of “1 collect underpants, 2 ….mumble mumble… 3 profit”? (Credits to South Park)
Design thinking takes business seriously, but shifts the focus from profits to people. It emphasizes divergent thinking—opening minds to new ideas—and convergent thinking—narrowing down possibilities.
We talk a bit about: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. The Empathize stage compels us to walk in the user’s shoes, truly understanding their needs. The Define stage crystallizes the problem at hand, determining what needs solving. The Ideation stage, generating a bunch of solution suggestions. Prototyping brings the ideas to life, ready for testing on users, so that we can either build or refine.
Lastly, we talk about the “One Two Four Many” method? and the idea of solutions having to be “Viable, Feasible, Desirable.” For a solution to succeed, it must meet these criteria.
Resources
https://thenextweb.com/news/design-thinking-will-fix-design-thinking
Transcript
Martin Whiskin 0:03
You’re listening to hidden by design a podcast about the stuff that you didn’t know about design. My name is Martin. And this is
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:10
Hidden by design.
Martin Whiskin 0:11
Nailed it.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:12
Oh, yeah. And my name is Thorbjørn now, the podcast starts
Martin Whiskin 0:18
and we should start recording now you’re
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:20
not recording. I’m gonna let you start off the episode.
Martin Whiskin 0:27
Well, thank you very much. today. We are talking about design thinking. And it is a human centered philosophy. And we’re all about the humans, the human connection. So let’s go straight in to the quote of the day. Are you excited about the quote? I am? I like this one. People ignore designs that ignore people. Frank Kimera Camaro chimey. Eero?
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 0:58
Yeah, I think
Martin Whiskin 0:59
Lets called him Frank.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:00
Yeah, I actually don’t know how to say some
Martin Whiskin 1:02
people ignore designs that ignore people. And he is the author of the shape of design are
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:08
how do we start this? How do we start this?
Martin Whiskin 1:13
I was trying to sort of summarize this in my mind, people ignore designs that ignore people. So let’s, let’s start by trying to break down that quote.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:23
Yeah.
Martin Whiskin 1:24
So is there a, is there a design that is out there? That that has to be used, but ignores? People
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:34
Ohhh, so many? It’s like, so so many? It’s absolutely, it’s like you would. Tax system, you have to file your taxes at
Martin Whiskin 1:48
the end, end of episode.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 1:51
Exactly. So someone had a heart attack. Here in Denmark, we have like, all of this, the school. So if you have children, you have to have get access to this very specific system called Aula. It’s just, and other kind of this, like, there’s some systems set, you have to also at work, right? You have to, if if company policy is you have to work with Microsoft, and teams and all of that stuff, then you have to do that. And so there’s so many applications that you have to use, right? And that that really, really go into if it’s like, if you go back to the quote, right. So when people are forced to use something that they cannot ignore, but they are still being ignored as people that becomes horrible. Like everyone else is like, you know, you know it when you sit in the situation, and, and you have to use something that was really not made for you, but may for a different a different perspective as
Martin Whiskin 3:04
you would we’ve spoken about stuff like that in, like the dark design patterns.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 3:10
Yes.
Martin Whiskin 3:10
Like when we were talking about the Amazon homepage? Yes. I feel that that ignores me, because I don’t want to see anything that’s on that, when it’s when it loads up. I just want what I want sort of thing is, yeah,
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 3:21
that’s slightly different. But it just like I would say that it comes from it comes from this way of thinking, right? You think business first you think money first you think all of that before you think about the person that you’re designing for. And so it’s closely related to that, but it doesn’t have to be right, you can have the best of intention. But having this, you know, fundamental misunderstanding of what it is. So if we go back to the idea that it’s like so as I said, at the very beginning, is like this is a different episode, except for the design system episode. This is more about how, how we it’s like everything that we learned everything that we talked about in every episode so far, is how do we actually apply it? Design thinking is how do we actually get practical? And and make something of all of this knowledge? How do we use that knowledge to actually do something? And and this way of thinking just like the human first, the, the, I think it was called designerly thinking in the 50s. There was so many different names for it, but the idea or the understanding that said that this is a good way of actually thinking about things. And then, you know, schools and universities and all sorts of different had different goals at it. And what we thinking about today as design thinking isn’t the same thing as was started in the 50s. But it’s an evolution of that, right. So so it kind of, it kind of kind of evolved from that. What I’m trying to say is when I was I was, I was maybe a little bit later in my design career before I just like before I actually stumbled upon design thinking as a thing. And every time, it’s like before that every time someone was talking about it, it didn’t make sense to me, from the perspective of every strategy, every thought, everything that was people were talking about, in my mind, which is common sense. This is because that’s how, you know, at the design school, we were taught, that’s how we solve problems. That’s how you think about things. That’s how you kind of approach the world. And so I actually I don’t understand, it’s like, I can’t remember us talking about it in the School of Design. And it surprises me a little bit. And maybe I just didn’t, you know, catch on to it, because it felt like such in it as like a natural thing. And so, so but it is super, super important, specifically, or especially if you work in teams with other people. And I forgot your question again, Martin, who knows?
Martin Whiskin 6:26
Do you have another question over? Shall we move on to chapter one?
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 6:31
Yes.
Okay, I’m in chapter one. So design thinking, and just to to kill something that a lot of people think about design thinking they think, Alright, it’s workshops, and post it notes. That’s all it is. And although these can be things, so tools that you can, if the situation is like, invite you to that dance. But that’s not design thinking, you could do design thinking, without any workshop as like, is a human centered philosophy, like it’s a philosophy about humans, and how you create something like this guy, the CEO of a company, who won prizes for being innovative and all like, very, very Tim Brown is his name, he, he, he said this, that design thinking is a method of meeting human needs and desires in a technological feasible, and strategical, viable way. And so he’s, he’s kind of, you know, talking everything into a small sentence that I really liked this sentence, because it kind of sums it up. He talks about cog, cognition, he talks about strategy. And he talks about the whole, you know, method, which is like practical procedures used to design stuff. So design thinking is more method of implementing practical method of implementing or making designs with all of the different things that we talked about so far
Martin Whiskin 8:28
with with the end user in mind, at all. Stages, I’m guessing.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 8:33
Yeah, you can just like so. And I’ll get to that in a in a, you know, in a minute. Because it’s like, the old way of thinking of the business way of thinking about this is, you know, you have a business, you create a tech solution to a problem, and then profit. And as like, when you look at that it kind of, you know, you, you think about South Park, there’s this episode with the gnomes, right. I don’t know if you ever saw that.
Martin Whiskin 9:05
I have an admission. I have never watched South Park. Never.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 9:10
Wow.
Martin Whiskin 9:11
And the reason is, the reason is, because I saw I probably saw a clip of it, you know, years ago, and I just thought those graphics are terrible.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 9:21
Yes.
Martin Whiskin 9:21
And that’s the reason. But I suppose that’s part of that’s part of it, isn’t it part of the charm
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 9:26
that is that there’s really part of it, and it’s like, we can talk about that and creativity and how the story is more important than aesthetic. But the aesthetics of that Southpark really plays a different role, but that’s a different episode. But there’s just one episode where they meet with these garden gnomes, or I don’t know if they’ve just like gnomes in a slight underground cave, and the gnomes have this business plan. And it’s a three step business plan and step one is collect underpants. Step two is and And step three is profit. And it sounds like so many, you know, business plan, step one, collect underpants, step two, step three profit. And, and that’s kind of the normal way of thinking, right? You have you, you think about like how, you know, let’s, let’s find a problem. And then we create a tech solution. And, and when I say tech solution, I really means like, if we go back to the episode about emotional design, thinking, functional design kind of thing, right? It’s like your microwave is like, if you have a microwave or a oven, or a washing this, like anything, is probably created this way where you’re just like someone see, well, you can’t live without it. So we, we find out what are the problems you need to solve, then we have a simple, simple panel that have all of the buttons on it. And then we make it beautiful. And then we ship it, right. And so then as an end user, you stand there. And it’s obvious that all of the problems that you have, is based on that none of the buttons make sense. And in order for you to set the clock, I don’t know if you ever tried to set a clock on an oven, or microwave, it’s like we have, I can’t set the clock in our microwave oven. It’s never been done. And the manual is gone. So I don’t know how to do it. And it’s simply because you solve the problem, you make the design in the manual, the documentation kind of solves the problem, not the product itself. And so you get that kind of it’s not deceptive design, it’s just poor design. Well, it’s no design, right. And design is added as an afterthought of make it look beautiful, which is, you know, as we talked about previously, not design. So then we move on to design thinking. And, and and I wrote in my notes, like in parenthesis ask why. And and that’s because in many ways, right? You, instead of finding a problem, you find a need, right? The human. So the business way is business, create tech solution to a problem, and then profit for business. That’s a way of thinking. And although it’s not completely wrong, it just misses a lot of points, if you want a great create a great experience of good design. Because Design Thinking starts with the human who needs a product, it’s like, I need something that works. And it generates value for me as a human being. And that can generate revenue for the business. Right? So So design thinking is mostly it’s like it’s it doesn’t ignore the business. It actually takes the business very, very serious. But it moves the focus from the business and to the human. If that makes sense, right? So if we go back to the microwave oven, the microwave oven is made so that the business can make money. And we already have all of the factors everything set up. So now we just spit up a new microwave oven without redesigning or rethinking or doing anything, we just make a new model that looks different and have more functionality, higher power, how about like it can do new things? Technically, the solution is better. But from a design perspective, we completely ignored it. Does this make sense? Like
Martin Whiskin 13:38
yeah, I’m thinking that this is something that I can talk to, sort of my business peers about. Because people are always talking about agitate the problem, when you’re trying to sell something, I focus on the problem, but I really liked the idea of changing it to focus on the need. Because it takes it to that closer to the person that you want to buy them and their mindset. And I’ve, you know, over the years, I’ve thought of lots of different in inverted commas, product ideas, or, you know, service ideas without ever really thinking about do people actually need that or just think oh, wow, that’s a cool idea. I’m gonna do it without without thinking about the need of the human but coming into what I’m know what I’m doing now I’m involved with a lot of people who make videos and things like that they’re always talking about, you know, what do you intend for voiceover especially what do you want the human to feel in this situation? And that comes down to a need I guess as well, doesn’t it? What do you need need them to feel it?
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 14:45
Absolutely. Right. And to actually so that ties into the my parentheses, my notes and my notes, right? It’s like asking why. So it doesn’t mean that the problem is bad, was like you you always have i I typically split it into three, right? There’s problems, there’s needs, and there’s desires, right? So, so that’s, that’s kind of things that we can solve for. And typically, if you talk to your client, they will express their problem. They will express the feature that they want, they will express the solution to their own problem. And so in order to get into that need, you ask why, why do you have that problem? Right, so I’m going to cook microwave popcorn. And so just like I have my bag of popcorn. So now I have a problem is that they’re not cooked. So I have a need is like, Why do I have Why do I need to pop these popcorn? Well, I’m gonna watch a movie. And, and I want that snack, right? It’s a desire I have. So but the problem is, how do I get them popped. And the solution to that problem is a microwave oven. Right? So but we’re talking about that need. And if you have to read a manual before, you can actually just pop your popcorn, you’re going to give up on the way it because it’s not the oven was not made for you. It’s like, and so the same thing with your clients, or anyone who have a good idea is you start typically someone will say something about a problem. And what you have to do is find the need. It’s like, why do they why do they have the problem? Why is it important to solve that problem? I don’t know if I’m repeating myself, but why does a problem exist in the first place? And is it really a problem? Sometimes people think that it’s a problem, but it really isn’t. And, and, and sometimes you can just remove stuff instead of adding new things. And, and then that solves a problem because they didn’t really have a problem. The problem was that they had an option that they didn’t need. And now we’re going off track, I guess,
Martin Whiskin 16:56
bring it back, bring it back.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 16:58
Yeah, bring it back. So design thinking is really about as you just brilliantly, you know, framed here is, is about finding the needs and the desires of, of, of your humans or the people that you design for. And think about revenue as part of that. But understanding that if you don’t bring value to the customer, the moment you bring that value to the user, or the person you’re designing for, that’s when you can really generate a lot of revenue. But you have to think about that in a different way than just saying I want to make revenue, find a problem, do a solution, profit.
So there’s some overall, right, so we talked about how in the 50s, you you already had those movements, and me at design school, it’s just an integrated, integrated way of, of, of of thinking about it, there’s it’s just a natural way of thinking when you come from a design background. So there’s different models, there’s something called the double diamond. And then there’s the something called it’s like just other things, but all of them in common have this idea of something called divergent and convergent thinking. And in reality is like divergent just means if ever, you read that, it’s very fancy words. And usually, I don’t use fancy words. I’m a simple person. So I’m using it now to seem smart, but I’m not. Divergent just means that you’re opening your mind. Like you’re, you’re kind of getting new ideas and you’re trying to understand and and expand, right. And convergent means that you’re closing down on things right. So but generally, you have these different phases emphasize define ideate prototype test, which you can use in any order you like, depending on what problem you’re solving. And so it’s more like design thinking is more of a toolbox more of a kind of way. It’s like it’s a philosophy on how do we actually get to understand the right problem. And so the Double Diamond there’s this, you know, where you have two diamonds and and the idea of the diamond if you just imagine this that the first time it kind of opens up is like Google, Double Diamond design thinking and you will just see a lot of these different ways of expressing it. And there’s no simple single way of doing it. So there’s a lot of different ways of thinking about it. But if you just get that emphasize, define, ideate, prototype test, then you will see all of the variations, but they all kind of go towards the same thing, which is, first we can try to discover what’s the real problem, we ask the why someone says, I have this problem, you ask, Why do you have that problem? What’s the real problem? What’s your need? What is your desire? In this situation? Right? And so, so there, you’re expanding, you’re, you’re, you’re doing divergent thinking. And, and, and then once you kind of map out all of these ideas and thoughts and, and problems, and you try to make sense of it, right? So first, you do quantitative collection of information, just to collect as much, and then you try to make sense of it, which is convergent. Right? And that that is explore all of the information you got. And then you define what is the real need? What’s the real problem? What’s the real desire that we’re solving for? And that part of the Double Diamond, which is the first diamond is designed the right thing? Right, we have to make sure that we’re working on the right thing, the right need. And then the next part of it is, again, we start exploring, on what, you know, what solutions could we have for this, right? So you develop something. And then at the end of that development, you show it to some users to kind of find out? Did we actually solve that? Like, did we do that need, right? And if it didn’t, you go back. And for every step of these, for everything, every method, you can jump to anything other in that, like, if all of a sudden you just like, you’re kinda zoming in on the problem, and you realize, well, we didn’t understand the problem, you just go back, right? So emphasize, the emphasize stage is all about emphasizing with the user, like that is trying to put yourself in, in that person’s shoe, trying to really understand what their need is. And then define is kind of the stage where you, you try to define what is what are we solving? What are we solving, what’s the what’s, what’s the job, we need to what’s the job the person needs to do, right. And then we ideate on different solutions, and ideas on how we could solve that. And then we prototype it, meaning we would test it off on some users, or we create something that can’t be tested, and then we test it on users. And then that feedback is used to then emphasize again, and define and so you kind of have this eternal circle that just goes forever. And the double diamond is one way of doing it. And those these other kind of different things. And you should just look up different methods and and, and ideas on how to do that,
Martin Whiskin 23:19
that for the for the first like the empathize, define ideate prototype and test as as you were breaking that down just a second ago. I was thinking that’s how that’s what I was always seeing a process of people creating something like a TV commercial. And you could, I could almost feel how those would slot into that process. So they think about how they’re, you know, who this TV commercial is going to get. And before that, then they you know, break it down and define it, then come up with different ideas of how to how to frame or how to, you know, what sort of scenarios to use in that TV commercial, what way will best get the message across or engage the people then the prototype stage might be storyboarding, storyboarding it. And then the testing is actually getting it out there to a small audience first, before they expand the regions that they’re going to show it in.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 24:12
Yes, exactly. And you can even take it further right now. I’m going to come with a horrible example. But you could actually just start with a prototype, you don’t need to technically emphasize to find an idea at first, you can just go straight into as you say, sometimes someone says I have a great idea and you just do it. But then the difference between old business thinking and design thinking is that you have once you have the prototype, you test it off on someone, and you see what generates and then you go back to emphasize. So I think what I’m trying to say is you can start from any of these points, as long as you kind of use all of them as tools in really understanding what it is because you can have something that just pops up in a dream or somewhere, just make it you don’t even know if anyone needs it. And that’s, that’s good enough reason to try to make it but the prototype means you make it fast, you don’t spend a lot of time on making the perfect solution you make just enough so that you can reach back and say, Alright, emphasize you based on this. Does that make sense?
Martin Whiskin 25:29
Oh, absolutely. Because I was going to come back with an example of what you’ve told us in video games before we’d like outside of the podcast? Am I allowed to say Polyspice on this podcast? Or is that classed as advertising? Or you can absolutely save? Yeah, whilst working together for Polspice games. Of course, there was a stage where you was saying. And I know that. For the most part video games don’t solve a problem. But there is a need that people to be entertained. So there’s a need there for video games, I think but the double the double diamond
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 26:08
And a desire.
Martin Whiskin 26:09
Yeah, the double diamond thing is designed the right thing designed the thing, right. So the two stages there. You said to us design the right thing, make crappy versions first, before spending too much time on things, you know, to make sure that it’s the right thing that we’re doing before then making it look nice. So that’s how I pulled those two segments. There was that example of, of how we sort of build the build the games? It’s
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 26:35
exactly and that’s that’s exactly like, that’s exactly why we do it. Right. So and many times we you know, because we have so little time and all of us working and stuff. So so so we have to kind of cut corners and just do things and then try it out. But we do a lot of of testing work.
Martin Whiskin 26:56
But it works. Because you can get rid of stuff quicker that way.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 27:01
Yeah,
Martin Whiskin 27:02
you just get it, get it down, get the idea out there. And you can quickly see whether it’s going to work on it. Whereas if you spend days and days and days working on, I don’t know the drawing and air, for example, to get the perfect looking here, then you just you still won’t know whether it’s going to work or because it’s just ear.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 27:23
And I think that’s exactly that, Oh, that’s beautiful, Martin, because that’s exactly it, right? You can have all of these ideas, like anyone who made games or design something, will know that stuff that works in your head doesn’t necessarily work in reality. It’s like you will build something. And if you spent half a year building that, then that’s just a waste of time. And I think the whole agile movement in software and also production. And we can we can have an episode about agile development, which ties very well into design thinking, in many ways, right, is an iterative, reflective kind of approach to developing stuff. So so it’s absolutely, absolutely right. I think we’re running out of time Martin.
Martin Whiskin 28:13
Let’s just finish now.
Chapter Two details about design thinking.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 28:27
So I thought, can we come up with something that that’s applicable that you can take home and use? Right now, after listening to this episode, if you’re doing something if you didn’t, if you hadn’t heard about design thinking or you know, something, a little bit about design thinking, but you know, how to actually try out or do some of these things, right? Either either as individual or as a group of people. So there’s this one method, right? There’s a lot of thinking about personas, a lot of different personas. And we could have a whole episode about that. Generally, I’m gonna say something that’s dead. If you are a designer, or a marketing person, or anyone who actually works somewhere, you might be angry and stop listening to them. I don’t know. But I’m generally against personas.
Martin Whiskin 29:31
How dare you? Yeah.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 29:35
So let me just rephrase that. I’m not against personas, but I’m against misuse of personas. And I see a lot of misuse of personas. And so typically, the way that I see it misused is you create a persona and then you based on that you generate some biases on what is that persona capable of doing As you’re already before you are designing anything you already decided, you know how smart and what capabilities this person have, in order for you to say, right, this doesn’t need to be usable, user friendly, because the person already knows this. And so that’s a misuse of personas. And then you can have like 10, different personas. And then you’re kind of designing for everyone, all at once, which generally is a very bad idea, just like the essence of this podcast, it’s like season one, we have this, it’s a podcast for everyone, which is a, you know, it’s a paradox. Because if you design something for everyone, you decide for no one. So it’s, it’s really, really bad. But like, and that’s what happened when you use persona. So generally, I’m for one persona, that doesn’t describe intelligence or capabilities, but just desires needs and, and problems set that person have. And so you tie that into jobs to be done, which is a very specific method of understanding the person or the, the individual that you’re designing for. So let’s just say you created this one persona, and you describe needs desires and problems his persona have. And then you can kind of investigate that you can map that person out, you can have interviews, and and try to really understand that. And then based on that, you can have a job to be done. Right. So I don’t know if it can I use you, Martin? Of
Martin Whiskin 31:53
course, you can use me in any which way. No one’s saying,
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 31:58
wait a minute. But you’re in a different country. So a job could be done? would be you have a client who needs a phone message, right? And then you ask, you ask the so the job to be done, is what you really want to figure out what is the job? It’s like, Well, why do they need that message on their phone answering machines, right? It’s like, it can be a cue it can be we’re not here, or can be addressing closing times of the store, whatever it is, like, it can be a lot of things, right? So you ask these three questions, and you fill out the blanks. And the first question is when you know, and that could be customer’s call into her phone, I want to, that’s a second sentence, and then you fill in the blank of I want to, and that will be a want to make sure that they understand when they can come to the store. And when the phone is available. It’s like opening time so that they know when to call, right. And then I actually spoiled the last one. So I can, you know, make sure that they come to the store at the right time or call at the right time. Right. So the three sentences that were you fill out is when dot dot, dot, I want to.dot.so I can dot dot dot, right. And when you do that, you really can explore that, that need that the user have, and that desire. And, and you you it’s a very, very good practical way of, of doing that, right.
Martin Whiskin 33:43
So this is that will be quite a good exercise for businesses to go through and just define, like, loads and loads of these when I want and so I can and to work out, you know, what they’re really providing for their, for their customers.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 33:57
Exactly, exactly. And so that’s that, and that is like a concrete tool you can just use to get into there. You know, and as we talked about, like, all you want to really do is define a problem space. It’s like you have this place called, you know, design the right thing is the problem space. So clearly defining the state they are in like I am I trying to figure out what the need that I’m trying to solve this what was the problems? What is the desires of the client, or the customer, the user, the person I’m doing it for? And then once you kind of have defined that, then you go to solution space, which is like, can we test this out and can create something and that again, is like the divergent versus convergence. You have to think about that. So if you go into the divergence like the problem space, ways of doing it, we talked about in the very beginning isn’t Like brainstorming can be one way. Now brainstorming can be tricky. And if you follow along in the design community would see a lot of people saying brainstorming doesn’t work, you should be careful with brainstorming and, and there’s some, there’s some justify justified arguments in this, right. So if you sit in a room with some really big authorities, what generally tends to happen is the ones who don’t say a lot, their ideas don’t come up. So you have to really, and the ones who have a lot of authority will just come up with a lot of ideas, and, and then people will run with those ideas anyways, and then you didn’t need the brainstorm, you could just have taken their authority and said, What do you want us to build. And so a lot of pitfalls in brainstorming, however, it is a really, really good tool, when you use it in the right way. Or if you use it, I am a fan of a method called One Two Four many, which is, you know, your take everyone in a room, you can use that in great big gatherings, and you should look 124 Many up, I’m going to leave a link in the show notes on where you can find it. But it starts with everyone sit as one person for one minute. And think about generate ideas, think about problems, think about needs, think about something, right. And they write that down. Then once that one minute has passed, you go, you go in pair, and you talk about the ideas that you have for two minutes. And then once you’re done with that, you go into a group of four for four minutes, where you talk about all of the conclusions you made in that group. And then you go to the big area where everyone kind of, but because there’s typically always one in the group of four that is capable of, or is not shy, and is able to actually, you know, communicate those ideas out to the whole group right to everyone there. So the shy person, the one who sits with the great ideas, actually have an opportunity to, you know, come to the table with with great ideas. And, and it’s a very, very great way of actually, you know, making sure that that some of these imbalances that happens in group dynamics, which is what happens in brainstorming typically is is avoided it just to a wide extent
Now I’m just talking, that was a divergent right, then we have the convergent, which is back to your acceptance like you. You You already explained this, I guess
Martin Whiskin 37:50
I’m a genius.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 37:52
You’re a genius. We have prototypes, and wireframes and prototypes and wireframes, in my mind is a really, really great. It’s like a classical example of wireframes done wrong, is that you put so much effort into it that it doesn’t look like it looks like a final product. And so typically, you will work with something called low fidelity and high fidelity wireframes and low fidelity and high fidelity prototypes. Sometimes you want to build prototypes that looks like a final product. And they let users actually click around in it or use it for real, right, you 3d print something and then you give it to someone so that they can try it out physically or, you know, something like that. But you spend as little time on generating as high value as possible, so that you actually see if it works or not. Right? So it’s kind of like tuck you know, don’t use a lot of time on it. Just really try to really try to get to two seeing if you can fulfill that desire. And that’s it. I think these these were the tools you can use them now. We’re way over time, Martin, what do we do
Martin Whiskin 39:06
with fffh? We don’t need to do an outro anymore. We’ve got that
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 39:10
should we rerecord everything and make it shorter?
Martin Whiskin 39:16
No.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 39:18
Oh, there’s one thing I forgot a white white. Can I do that you?
Martin Whiskin 39:22
Can I just suggest that we that you mentioned, viable, feasible and desirable. Thank you. I know when that came, I was
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 39:34
looking at my notes. So when you’re building something generally right, we look at the if we go back to the thought, thank you very much, Martin for bringing that question up. I’m going to answer it now. So we so we think about, you know the business way and the design thinking way and then we we kind of like let’s just try to be zen. And, and, and don’t think that anything is bad and everything is there for a reason. And, and, and understand that there’s a reason for the business way, the old way of thinking and the design thinking way of thinking existing. And that, that is just different ways, if you want to create different products, right, but in all of them, we have to wear three hats. Like we have to wear the business hat, we have to wear the tech hat. And we have to or engineering hat and we have to wear the design hat. Right? So we have to we have to embrace all of them. And, and, and in the old school way of thinking you thought about each of them as a step in the process, right? So in the old way you think business first, you think how can we make money? And then you think tech second? How can we create a technical solution. And then you apply design as an afterthought. Whereas in Design Thinking you go, alright, equally is like all three of these different hats. And they can be titles, right? The business side would be product management, the tech side would be engineering and developers. And design would be designers, whatever, it’s like UX, product designers, interactions, it’s like any of these different types, right? And so you have these three, and you understand that they overlap each other, and that they have to collaborate. And so the business hat you put on and you think, is this viable? Meaning there’s like the amount of money and effort I put into it will actually get that back. Right? Is there? How long does it take to create this? I have to have a sense of, of cost of producing it versus what can I make on it? Right? So because if you use more money on making something than you, you gain from it, then this like it’s not worth doing? Like if production cost is too high? It isn’t. And then you asked tech, you have the the the technical hat on in this era, is it feasible? And And would that mean this, like, what are we going to do? What are we going to produce? But also how long is it going to take? Right? And it and that’s the overlap between business and tech is, if I know that this will take 20 years for me to to make that thing, then, you know, maybe the cost is so high that it won’t be worth it. But if that, you know if we can work for 20 years, and then maybe the profit would just, you know, immediately come back to us, then maybe it’s it’s good. And then the last hat is the design hat? Well, it’s not the last, the third hat is the design hat. And that is it desirable? And, and if that is added as an afterthought, it’s like how can we make it desirable? Then you’re kind of missing the point because it really is like it is if it’s not desirable, should we make it at all right? Can we can we make does it does it? Does it really solve? You know, does this solution solve the problem correctly? Is it something that that will, you know, really, you know, really create, because that’s part of the business side as well. If we make something that’s desirable, people will actually buy it. Because it really solves a, a, it fulfills a need that they have, right. And so all of these three things is, you know, Is it viable? Is it from a business point of view? Is it feasible from a technical point of view? And is it desirable from a design point of view, these three hats you should always wear, when you’re kind of producing something, anything making anything, you should have these three, except when it’s art, and you’re very rich, and you don’t need money.
Martin Whiskin 44:35
But this is something that again, that I can like sit down and talk to my business peers about because yes, it it might be feasible, you might actually be able to do it. But if it’s not viable, you can’t just plow into things without thinking about it. Is it going to be worse? Is it actually going to going to work out? I know I understand the importance also of trying stuff Have to see because sometimes, you know, you just never know whether whether stuff will work, but it’s yeah. So I’ve I’ve taken some stuff from this I’m going to pass on. I think that’s really good. All Thank you. Well, thank you for having me today.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 45:17
Thank you for being here. I love you very much. This is absolutely awesome. And yeah, so And the last thing about it is right is is is this thing where in order to get to the business viability or the feasibility or the desirability, you experiment, like you can use all of these design thinking to get to that maybe you don’t know to begin with, you need to investigate stuff before you know if if it’s if it’s a business viability, right. So and I think that’s the that’s the closing. That’s the outro
Martin Whiskin 45:58
Beautiful.
Thank you for listening to another episode of Hidden by design. You can find out more about us at hiddenbydesign.net. Or you can find us on LinkedIn. My name is Martin whisking. This is Toby on Ling God Sorenson net. Yes. Got it. That’s good. You can also like, subscribe, follow the podcast on all of the platforms that’s important to follow it on all of the platforms. Give us five stars. And an excellent review, please, as well. Thank you.
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 46:26
Can I say something?
Martin Whiskin 46:27
No,
Thorbjørn Lynggaard Sørensen 46:28
we love you. I said something in which I’m a bad boy.