Before our bootcamp, I had only been exposed to design thinking once before. During my 10-week internship this past summer at Cognosante, all of the interns had the opportunity to complete a side project in the company’s design thinking lab. I was captivated by the process then, and this time was no different.
Background: I interviewed two of my peers to try and create the “ideal” cell phone for them. One of the key insights I landed on was that my subjects felt their phones failed them when they were in situations with little to no service (i.e. concerts, baseball games, etc). They lacked the ability to find directions and communicate with their parents and friends in these instances. To remedy this, I prototyped EventEase, an app that would allow various information (venue maps, walking directions, a play on an “out-of-office” text to automatically be sent to select contacts, and more) to be preloaded to one spot, without the need for cellular data or WiFi.
As someone who enjoys concrete, neat solutions, design thinking definitely doesn’t come naturally to me. However, I completely see the value in the process and after going through it again, I have picked up on a few critical lessons that have allowed me to more actively embrace innovation:
- Silence is golden. I hate silence. Like, really truly hate it. It makes me uncomfortable and the second I sense it, I try to fill the gap. But with design thinking, silence seems to be where the meat of your insights actually come from. Though it was difficult, when my interview subjects appeared to be done talking, I would try and let the silence linger for a few moments. More often than not, people don’t want to talk too much or drag out a story, but when they realize you’re not trying to rush them, they’ll dive back in and provide more details.
- Your first idea probably won’t be the one you pick. The idea I chose was actually the 5th idea I wrote down during our ideation stage. It was incredibly useful to write down any idea that popped into my head, though, because the first couple ideas were very obvious and uncreative solutions. It was only after I got those out of mind that I was able to really think in an innovative way.
- Feedback is crucial. It’s often hard to accept constructive criticism, especially when you think an idea is great from the start. But unlike traditional problem-solving methods, iterative feedback guides you throughout the entire design thinking process – and in the end, it saves you from having to make monumental changes because you’ve been adjusting along the way. By presenting my ideas (especially when they weren’t fully developed yet) to my subjects and paying attention to both their verbal and nonverbal cues, I was able to design a product that solved a real issue in their lives, instead of getting stuck solely on what I thought was useful.
- Don’t just think outside-the-box, throw the box away. This is definitely something I need to be more open to, but design thinking really allows you to look past feasibility when you first brainstorm ideas. Some of the most captivating ideas from our class were ones that seemed to transcend what I would typically think as a logical or feasible solution. It’s a lot easier to take the essence of a “crazy” idea and boil it down to something attainable, rather than trying to make a conventional idea innovative.
I’m really excited to continue to pay attention to the lessons I’ve learned so far and implement design thinking methodology into future projects!