Design thinking helps everyone - not just the design team
Overall, companies are still working to understand the strategic value of design, landing on very different phases of the UX maturity model. However, there are many methodologies that can be used to build this skillset. One that is particularly powerful is the design thinking process.
What is the design thinking process?
The design thinking process is a set of activities that design and research practitioners complete in order to understand user needs and problems, then build the best solutions to solve those problems. While design is frequently believed to purely encompass visual appeal, design thinking does have scientific backing through fields like Human Computer Interaction, User Research, and Cognitive Psychology.
As an example, the Double Diamond approach is a very common framework design teams use. While this article will not dive into the intricacies of that specific process, it will examine the organizational benefits of design thinking overall.
How can this help organizations, and not just design?
Higher ROI
Good UX is an expectation of users now. Companies that don’t prioritize it immediately lose competitive advantage. At a minimum, it’ll keep you in the race, At most, it’ll build engaging, life-long relationships with users.
The general rule in organizations that routinely focus on improving UI/UX is every dollar returns $10-$100. — UX Planet
Build once and build it right
Designers and researchers will work to discover the true problem that needs to be solved by doing foundational research. This includes methodologies like observational studies, contextual inquiries, diary studies, interviews and personal development.
Once the problem is understood, designers are then able to create and build potential solutions before an engineer truly begins work. This allows teams to correct issues while they’re still in an easy-fixable phase of the product lifecycle, and avoid potential revenue burn by building the wrong solution.
Anyone who has ever experienced rebuilding an MVP after launch due to a lack of product-market fit, or not having the correct solution, understands true frustration. Tech teams become demoralized, leadership wants answers, and users leave your product from friction. These can all be avoided by doing UX due diligence upfront. While it can seem like this will slow the product lifecycle, it’s faster in the long-term.
Slow down to speed up.
Fewer engineering cycles
When UX organizations are empowered to do foundational research, engineers will inevitably spend fewer cycles building. With the true problem understood and aligned around, and less guesswork about user needs, teams can be confident that they are building the right product.
This comes with ancillary benefits as well. Reducing cycles makes a huge impact on company revenue, team morale, and communication across the organization.
Cheaper
Design is objectively cheaper than engineering to change prototypes. It’s significantly less complex to create a testable design than it is for engineers to build a solution to test (or not). Rethinking a design in Figma takes less time and money than engineers needing to rework code.
Breaking designs (instead of code) also has no potential impact on the live site. For the small cost and time needed to do user testing, companies are able to avoid major issues on production that cost real money.
Deeper understanding of users and their needs
Prioritization is typically a very difficult task, especially in large organizations. When companies have a defined framework to prioritize, things move much quicker. Personas and jobs-to-be-done (which require foundational research to create) are two ways to make that determination.
Prioritizing work based on user needs is a good way to build long-term relationships with users, and hypothesize which projects will have a higher ROI. These frameworks also work incredibly well with other prioritization and goal-setting tools like OKRs.
When companies fundamentally understand their users, everything becomes more efficient.
Conclusion
Successfully implementing the design thinking process allows entire organizations to truly excel — reducing unnecessary spend, engineering cycles, and ensuring the right products are being built.