Design Thinking: Observation, Research, and POV
T.5: Observing and Researching Stage
Goal
Confirm our assumptions about our target group, which can be adjusted or changed. Also, we need to learn as much as possible about the user and their needs or desires.
Researching, Observing, Empathizing Process
- Problem statement draft/design challenge draft
- Empathizing with customers
- Collecting primary and secondary data
- Data analysis
- Data interpretation
- Validate design hypothesis and generate new ones
Steps to Follow to Collect Data
- Data about potential users’ profiles: Demographic data about the potential users of the solution (age, gender, income), behavioral data (info of the knowledge of the product category)
- Data for validating our problem statement draft: Customer perceptions about our problem statement position. Testing our problem statement draft
- Data about existing alternatives and expected solutions: Perceptions about an ideal solution and existing alternatives.
- Data for validating our design challenge draft: Perceptions about an ideal solution and design challenge draft
Why is Consumer Research Important to Aiding Design Thinking Throughout its Entire Process?
Because:
- It helps designers to personalize their services.
- It supports designers to create services that can provide an appealing consumer journey and all the adequate touchpoints to customers.
Empathy
The ability to understand the feelings of others. To build empathy with customers means putting yourself in their situations and seeing a problem from their point of view.
Types of Techniques
A) Questionnaires:
- Open-ended questions allow free-form responses.
- Closed-ended questions offer pre-defined choices.
- Multiple-choice questions provide several answer options.
- Scaled-response questions measure intensity on a predefined scale.
B) Focus Group:
Process of obtaining ideas to a marketing problem from a small group of respondents by discussing it. 5-9 participants. Three roles: participants, observers, and a moderator that conducts the focus group.
Consumer Behavior Analysis
- Perceived Problems and Desires: (collecting expectations and desired changes)
- Consumer Influences: (Personal and external factors / Impact of demographic context)
- Consumer Perceptions: (Positioning competitive brands based on attributes)
- Behavioral Variables of Looking for Benefits: (Functional and monetary values / evaluating benefits and cost associated with the offering)
- Decision-Making Behaviors: (Price sensitivity and design preferences / information search channel preferences)
- Service Usage Behaviors: (Frequency and user roles / differentiating lead users and usage patterns)
- Post-Service Behaviors: (sharing experiences and channels used)
T.6: POV
Objective
Establishing a common knowledge for the solution space. Will help you to keep on track in order to provide a wide scope for your team to start thinking about a solution.
POV Steps
Redefining Personas as the Right Users
- Creating fictional characters based on user research.
- Representing different user types and segments.
- Fine-tuning segmentation of consumers using buyer persona canvas.
Defining Different Points of View (POVs) of the Design Challenge
- Creating actionable problem statements.
- Condensing researchers’ perspective on the problem.
- Advancing presumptive solutions towards deep insights.
Generating and Analyzing POVs
- Figuring out potential use situations.
- Tailoring post-customer relationships.
- Developing a well-defined design challenge.
User Requirements Specification (URS)
- Stating important characteristics for design success.
- Guiding the generative phase with usability and desirability goals.
- Detailing design constraints and potential use scenarios.
T.7: Ideation
Creative/problem solving where ideas are generated. Based on the problem stages we create the improved version of the solution.
T.8: Prototyping
Goal
To test the design concept, the service design and their underlying new proposed ideas and solutions to approve or reject them.
Service Prototyping
A simulation of the actual service design where the parts of the service and user experience are going to be temporary.
Prototyping Strategy
We need time and budget to build the prototype. Size of the sample of users that will test the different prototypes. It can be fully functional or be created to exhibit only partial functionality that contain only a few design requirements at a time. Prototypes can use similar or different service components and materials than the final design.
Types
- Physical: cardboard prototyping
- Virtual: A digital simulation of a product (Virtual reality, computer simulation)
- Fidelity: (close final product): Mock-ups