Design thinking

What is design thinking?

A human centred approach to the design of services and solutions, typically starting with user research to understand the needs of those using the service or solution, followed by iterative cycles of ideation and prototyping, refining the service or solution based on user feedback.

Knowledge

• Understanding of best practice service design techniques.
• Through discovery, an understanding of the holistic context and specific user needs and technical / legal / environmental constraints to feed into design.
• Knowledge of the legal and ethical framework for design practice. An understanding of how to work in a cross functional team.
• Knowledge of Agile approaches to delivery. Understanding of prototyping tools.

Skills

Able to:

• Understand user needs: Empathising with users to conduct user research, eliciting meaningful information using techniques such as one to ones, surveys, observation/ethnography, and workshops.
• Define: Well researched and accurate problem statements that accurately reflect the challenge or problem to be solved through design.
• Ideate: Consider and generate or co-create a wide range of potential solutions to the problem or challenge.
• Create service blueprints: To visually map out the service, including understanding user interactions, integrations and key enablers and constraints.
• Prototype and test: Create visual options for further iteration and build, ranging from low fidelity sketches through to technical prototypes to enable users to visualise and to interact with the service as it is iterated and developed.
• Collaborate and iterate: Work with users and as part of cross functional teams including service designers, developers, Product Managers, and testers to continually iterate the design to its conclusion.
• Communicate: Clearly and succinctly across users, stakeholders, users, technical and non-technical teams.
• Work in an Agile way: Operating in a collaborative, iterative way to support the development of products and services.
• Manage risk: Identity, assess and manage risks associated with service design.