Secret to Design Thinking: Just LIE

A lot of people today have heard of design thinking and have some vague idea about what it is. For the ones who haven’t, check out this link or read this post or just go to the next “networking event” around you. Every person or organization that knows the term - design thinking - has its own version. Tim Brown, who is the CEO of IDEO (one of the best known design and innovation firms in the world), also, has his own version which you can watch here. I have been an avid observer and a keen learner of this space since a while now and have formulated my own image. I believe, to be a good design thinker, you need to LIE. Yes, it is an acronym and, no, I am not expecting you to actually lie.

LIE stands for Listen, Imagine, and Empathize. These are not just verbs or actions that you need to do, but are skills that you need to hone to be a good design thinker. You listen to people and sounds around you all day, you constantly imagine yourself in the past, present or future situations and you empathize with people and other living beings. But that is not good enough. Design thinking is as much an art as it is sheer hard work. In fact, all innovation is.

Innovation is not a flash of epiphany that occurs to the so-called innovators. Innovation is a skill that is acquired by these innovators using techniques and tools available or built by them. Design thinking is similar in that you can learn the process and can continue doing it over and over again to become better at it. All you have to continually do is follow a three step process (not necessarily in that order):

1. Listen – like a blind person
2. Imagine – like an infant
3. Empathize – like a mother

In each of the above set of people – blind individuals, infants, and mothers, the respective skills come naturally. They don’t have to imbibe them into their behavior. For a grown up male who has perfect vision, these skills need to be honed and worked upon to come close to following an ideal design thinking process. The core of design thinking is to understand the needs of humans; hence, it is also known as human-centered design. Fulfilling the needs of humans as the ultimate goal is epitome to design thinking.

"You‘ve got to start with the customer experience and work backwards to the technology." – Steve Jobs during the World Wide Developers Conference in May 1997.

Listening is not the same as hearing. Listening needs you to pay attention to what you hear and process it as you are hearing. Listening expects your mind to be much more involved than just receiving sound bites. On the other hand, a blind person listens at a whole another level. For her to understand her surroundings she has one less source of input (her eyes) than normal; hence, her auditory input needs to compensate for her visual input as much as it can. To truly make an attempt to listen, you have to listen like a blind person does.

 You learn about concepts and images as toddlers by observing, touching, smelling, and tasting objects around you. But these are all inputs to your mind, which is collating all the information and forming pictures constantly. This is your imagination performing it at its best. According to research, your mental growth happens the most in the earliest years because in your mind, everything is possible. Nothing seems too difficult to imagine as the slate is clean. That’s when your paintings are vivid, your colors are wild, and your objects are crazy! You know no bounds. Your imaginations starts getting limited by boundaries as you start learning either by yourself or by a person who is “educating” you.  To truly get in touch with your imagination, imagine like an infant.

 A human mother keeps the baby in her womb and carries her around for nine months. In almost all the other species of animals too, the mother is involved in giving birth to the baby and nurturing her initially. This activity gives all mothers a unique natural skill to empathize for her baby like no one else can. She does not have to try to feel the baby’s pain. Each problem that the child goes through, her mother feels the pain at least as much as the child. Hence, if we imagine the child as your customer, you need to empathize like her mother to truly address her needs. Think about the customer like her mother would and you will naturally start designing for her demands.

Design thinking is touching all sorts of businesses and industries today, like technology did in the past decade. It is increasingly important that you think about your end customer and design your product or service for her. Listening, Imagining, and Empathizing are skills that are crucial to design for this end customer. So keep your ears open, let your mind wander, and feel the pain for whom you are designing!