Design Thinking For Dummies - A Critical Analysis

 

I first found this book in my 8th-period art class, Design Thinking. Design Thinking (DT) is a human-based approach to innovation that aims to make creative ideas and business models by focusing on the needs of people. The book teaches you about various techniques and tips for doing design. DT can be used to develop new products, create new services, design new business models, and design social innovations.

The book starts off with an analysis of the basics of DT, such as focusing on people from the start and finding lead users, or people that are the first to recognize an innovation trend. DTers are expected to be empathetic toward their product users. Their ideas should be visualized through creative and simple methods. 

DT is split up into five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Despite the clearly defined phases, DT is not a linear process. Rather, it is nonlinear, meaning that one can go back and forth along the steps, repeating previous phases as necessary. 

The first step is "empathize". You want to be in the person's shoes and wonder what pains the person might be going through. What does the person see and hear? What are they thinking? These questions can all influence the way that they go about life. Once you identify some things that can be "annoying" to a person, you can move on to the next step. 

The second step is "define". A question can be defined through market research and clarification. Some keywords that may be used in market research and defining the question can include health, ecology and sustainability, and education. Then, you need to identify the gaps in your knowledge about the topic and fill them. Analyzing the stakeholders, or people who can influence your idea, can also be useful. 

The third step is "ideate". In this stage, the ideas are created. You can develop ideas systematically (ideation) or in a flash of genius (illumination). Some techniques that can help with ideation include making a mind map or a morphological box. 

The fourth step is "prototype". Here, you actually create some rough drafts of your product. 

Finally, through testing these prototypes, you can see if your idea has potential or is valid. 

This textbook helped guide me through my DT class at Uni. Through reading this book, I was able to get a solid grasp of the ideas and motivation behind DT. One thing that could be improved is the layout. Here, the ideas are strewn around with not that much organization. Making like a flow chart at the beginning with all the phases and implementation ideas with page references would have helped greatly with the readability of this book. 

Overall, I learned a lot from this book and would recommend it to peers who are interested in designing things or learning more about design. 

Final Score: 8.5/10

-Jay