Design Thinking as the world knows is a concept that some believe to be abstract while others believe to be a facade for innovation or just another fancy business jargon.
In reality, Design Thinking is and always has been prevalent since the industrial era or even before that! The society as a whole was not able to pinpoint and say ‘This is Design Thinking’ but whatever innovations that had stemmed were majorly human-centric which led to more innovations. Nobody had taught people creative thinking back then; nobody had understood what prototyping meant; failure was never an option, but ‘experiments’ were allowed, confusing? People ‘trying new things to make their lives better’ was the underlying first principle of coming up with new ideas and solutions for their problems.
At first, Design Thinking was believed to be confined to the domains of architecture and engineering. Today, it is domain agnostic. It shapes society and culture to improve communities.
To believe in the idea of Design Thinking, people would need evidence, substantial proof, and examples of Design Thinking in action. This blog aims to educate readers on various examples of Design Tthinking across domains and to educate them on its capabilities.
There is no one solution to a problem
Design Thinking is typically applied to look into complex (or wicked) problems where there is no single source of truth. Most innovations, the train, the airplane, the ship were to solve a complex problem of their time, where fast, safe transport was a question.
Design Thinking is not a one-size fits all approach with a fixed formula like math, instead, it is to explore whether there are better ways to solve a particular problem.
Take Blackberry for example, around the early 2000, business enthusiasts and corporations were integrating IT into their systems to work better and more efficiently. Faster communication was expected to manage their work better. Blackberry found out that calling and notifying colleagues was a tiring job. They introduced us to the first concept of email notifications.
In addition to that, they had made emails secure and reliable. Blackberry introduced their first phones to the business market. The phone had a small screen, keyboard buttons, and the iconic trackball that allowed seamless syncing and continuous access to corporate emails. The company continued to expand functionality in the BlackBerry Enterprise Server (BES) and BlackBerry OS.
As we realize that there is no one solution to solve a problem, Apple Inc., took over the market in a swing, creating massive disruptions in the mobile phone market. Not only that, Apple had integrated everything, everywhere all at once- a single device. The rest was history.
Times have been changing
Innovations have been making significant changes throughout humanity; one important aspect that we have to note is that, most ground-breaking innovations are made keeping the user in mind. That is Design Thinking.
Food has been an essential need for the sustenance of human life. The food that we consume has taken a huge transformation. From long-lasting shelf lives, portable foods, and even foods that don’t require much preservatives
One such example is ID Foods, an Indian company that has redefined the packaged food industry. ID Foods recognized the struggle for Indians, especially South Indians whose staple source is rice-made foods.
Idly – rice cakes – require a batter that would require storage, and the process of making it can be quite tedious. ID’s founder, PC Musthafa recognized the struggle in his hometown Kerala, and had come up with ‘Why don’t we pre-prepare the batter and sell it as a ready-to-make batter for homes?’
Today, ID Foods is a huge hit as they prepare pre-cooked parathas, and even have come up with a vada maker which has turned around the lives of Indian families at home.
The larger picture
From food to the mobiles we use, it all comes full circle to impact society as a whole. Design thinking is not only applied to consumer goods and essentials, but it also has the potential to impact lives at large – the larger alignment to society.
Social changes have been made through Design Thinking. From Policymaking to State Planning and Governance, Design Thinking has quickened the pace of innovation in these areas to make life and the community better.
One such example is how an IAS officer, Sandeep Nanduri, an Officer based in Tamil Nadu, helped transgender people in Thoothukudi District, start a milk cooperative, to earn a sustainable livelihood. His project on making transgenders work independently in collaboration with one of the popular dairy companies made them self-sufficient and less reliant on others.
The above social innovation stems through the crux of Design Thinking, which is to understand the end-user. For a larger audience – the community – common interests are acquired through observation and understanding the situation from their shoes.
Staying ahead of the curve with Design thinking
These innovations that have been mentioned are not a one-hit wonder. These innovations stand out from other innovations as long-lasting and futuristic. Applying Design Thinking provides the last 2% to stay ahead of the curve in all markets.
According to McKinsey, companies that incorporate Design Thinking have higher revenue and better shareholder returns.
The most successful brands use Design Thinking. IBM, Google, Airbnb, PepsiCo, and Nike are just a few of the wildly successful brands that consider Design Thinking a core part of their culture and way of doing business. Former PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi famously told Harvard Business Review that design had a voice in almost every crucial decision the company made.
Design Thinking doesn’t just improve products, it improves corporate culture. Companies say Design Thinking has improved the working culture at their organizations and it makes their innovation processes more efficient and user-centric.
With this overview of Design Thinking and its examples backed up by statistics, Design Thinking is impactful and will continue to make changes in society as a whole, improving the grand narrative – The World.
