In this episode we dive into the 5 stages of Design Thinking: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. While they are normally applied when creating products for consumers, after listening to this episode you will have some key take aways for why you need to apply these principles to your creative process.

Too often someone comes up with an idea and commissions someone to create it. They get to work prototyping and figuring out how to make that idea.

However if we first stopped and reversed this process we would be much better off. If we tried to actually understand the person using product, defined what their problem is and then came up with as many different way of solving their problem, we would in the end come up with much better and creative products.

Quotes

“Before you do anything, we're going to stop and make sure we understand our users. We're actually going to make sure we're not only addressing a problem, but addressing the right problem.”

“We have to understand our user in order to properly give them something that they need or want.”

“One of the things that we do most often in business is we look for one right solution. We rack our brains trying to find that one right thing when, more often than not, there's not just one answer. There might be three or four possible answers that all would work wonderfully.”

“So a lot of times when we do this, we think about what to build or what to create. But in design thinking, we build in order to think.”

“We have a motto of fail faster and fail cheaply. If we fail on a small scale and learn really fast why we failed, that's awesome because now we know what doesn't work about the idea, so we can fix it and make it right.”

“You prototype as if you know you are right, but you test as if you know you are wrong.”

“Design really used to be a marketing tool to get people to buy something, and now it's more of a tool to create change.”

Links

Marion Design Co. - https://www.mariondesign.co/

IDEO - https://www.ideo.com/

Robert Curedale books - https://www.amazon.com/Robert-Curedale/e/B00DQ3OZOU%3Fref=dbs_a_mng_rwt_scns_share

Jessee’s LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/in/countryjessee/