Going into the Design Thinking process I was not optimistic. When asked to create improvements to a phone I, like the majority of our class, drew what appears to be an iPhone, exactly as I have it. I didn’t believe that I would be able to come up with anything unique or worthwhile through the process. Luckily, I was quickly proven wrong
Discover
We started the Design Thinking process by interviewing our classmates. A good starting point was to ask my partner to walk me through how he used his phone throughout the day. From this I was able to gain some insight into what role his phone played in his life. But, I didn’t get much insight into the needs being met by his phone – his experience with his phone seemed very similar to mine, and as I explained before I didn’t think my experience was leading to any unique ideas. When we began the second round of interviewing “Dig Deeper” is where I began to gain more insights. What was most surprising and helpful in this round was asking him to tell me about a time when his phone failed him. I learned that Sebastian had a tendency to drop his phone and has experienced many problems with charging his phone. This led us to talk about what he wanted out of his phone that it wasn’t delivering on.
Define
Next, we defined the problem that Sebastian was experiencing. I began with “Sebastian, a chronic phone dropper, needs a way to have accessible and intuitive phone customer service and part delivery because he feels he spends more time and money on fixing small problems with his phone that is worth it”. From here, I got feedback from Sebastian. I think in defining the problem I jumped ahead in my mind and tried to think of a product or service ahead of defining the problem. I immediately thought, ‘he drops his phone a lot and has problems but doesn’t like the effort of going to the Apple or AT&T store, so he needs an accessible customer service app.’ Needless to say, I got a little ahead of myself and while Sebastian’s immediate response to reading my problem statement was that it was spot on, as we began to talk about it more in depth we realized we weren’t totally hitting the nail on the head quite yet. Luckily, I was able to get enough feedback to understand the crux of Sebastian’s phone ailments. My revised problem statement was, “Sebastian, an unlucky smartphone user, needs a way to use GPS, messaging, and other key phone features when his phone dies because he is afraid of being lost without his phone and not being able to complete regular life activities.”
Create
The Create phase was definitely my favorite phase. I am a creative thinker and visual learner, so getting to draw out my ideas on paper made them come to life. Before the clock started, my mind was buzzing with different ideas to solve Sebastian’s phone troubles. I came up with 4 distinct ideas including products and services. I found it helpful to emphasize quantity, not quality in this phase. I came up with 1 or 2 ideas which I thought maybe already existed or were ‘bad’ ideas, but I still wrote them down because I knew they were still ideas. When we received feedback on our ideas, I discovered I again made a few assumptions about Sebastian’s phone experiences. When describing my ideas to him I alluded to my favorite idea, and was surprised when Sebastian thought that a different one was exactly what he needed. This showed me how important it is to get feedback on ideas. In an ideal situation, I would have more than just one person to get feedback from, but because the project was to solve Sebastian’s problem it made sense to just have him critique the ideas. The last part of create was to sketch and create models for our best solution considering the feedback we received from our partners. My final solution was a software, so my 3D model ended up looking like an iPhone, but I thought my design was unique and minimal.
Evaluate
The final phase was to show our partners our 3D models, letting them interact with and learn about them. This was such an interesting phase for me when Sebastian showed me his prototype because from his descriptions earlier on, I had imagined something different. Seeing his interpretation of the product was so interesting. Because we had differing perspectives I was able to give him good feedback. Sebastian liked the design of layout of my prototype and he gave vital feedback to improve user experience.
Takeaway
The Design Thinking process was a huge success for my partner and me. We learned a lot about each other and both came up with unique products and services that met our needs. I was very surprised by how well it went! It was challenging to get the creative juices flowing, but once we started telling stories about our phone fails we were set.