Regardless of how cautious one can be, there are a few times when the designer and his creative ability to think beyond, might hit a roadblock. To avoid this situation, there are a few ways one can reinforce the mind to be more resilient.

One, Understanding Fragility and Anti-fragility. Fragility is a term, which indicates vulnerability to damage. Fragility means being vulnerable to shocks and unexpected events that would damage the system. These fragile elements are already pre-conceived in the mind as fear, doubt, and limiting beliefs. These elements create fragileness in the mind. Anti-fragility, however, benefits from the damages to grow stronger. Growing through challenges is the core of Anti-fragility. Clarifying doubts, overcoming fear, being open to perspective and having various beliefs are anti-fragile. Roadblocks as previously mentioned, create a fog to see beyond or seek further ideas. These roadblocks are considered anti-fragile elements that would only help in the creative process.

The other challenge for Design thinkers is how much have they included their customers in the design process. Some Design Thinkers would end up conforming to their biases and go by the trends of a particular design. Uniqueness and inclusivity would be lost. Dr Aaron Bruce, Chief Diversity Officer at Art Center College of Design, says the following about inclusive design, “If you do not intentionally include, you will unintentionally exclude.” Being inclusive of our collaborators and our users ensures diversity and inclusion to leverage different perspectives and backgrounds. Inclusivity would involve everyone related to the product, from the internal team to the customers who use it. By realizing unconscious biases, a designer can include everyone who would use the product. Realizing unconscious bias would involve questioning self-beliefs and assumptions. This process would make the Design Thinker more inclusive of everyone while he designs the product. The realization process would further translate to Humanity-centred design.

Thinking for humanity would also involve Visualization. The power of Visualization allows the designer to dive deep into the possibilities. This enables thinking without being held back by current challenges. It may seem difficult at first, but according to the concept of anti-fragility, hesitation of ‘this can’t be done’ and not achieving a visualized state, induces mild stress to keep the idea going to ‘this is exactly what should be done’ The stress state would enable the human mind to grow and come up with innovative solutions.

Humanity-centered design is to design for the entire community. (this is different from human-centric; wherein in human-centric is the focus on the individual and humanity-centred is more global), rather than the social. Social innovations such as Uber Cabs, the Smartphone, and other innovations cater to the larger community of the society. Uber solves the problem of anxiety-inducing wait times for the entire community. The smartphone brings in an entire ecosystem of five or more individual gadgets in one device. One other classic example is an alarm clock. The alarm clock ringer is designed in such a way that only one sleeper hears it. The snooze option requires the ‘wake’ state to snooze it. The purpose of an alarm clock is clear for every designer and it conveys exactly what it is made for to sound an alarm and wake you up. Which in most cases, is a universal tool to get up from sleep.

The concept of re-enforcement of the Design Thinking process starts from the mind. A clear understanding of your anti-fragile elements would unlock so many creative spaces to explore. Humanity-centered design, makes the designer create solutions for the community as a whole and not for specific target customers. Humanity-centered designs solve world problems, which would be a great opportunity space for designers to monetize their products as well. Hence, Humanity-centered design and understanding one’s fragile and anti-fragile elements would eventually enhance and re-enforce the mindset before Thinking The Design.