Design thinking helps you create better products, services and outcomes–by solving problems with end-users in mind. It’s more than simple brainstorming, so what basics do you need to know? Faculty design thinking experts from UNC-Chapel Hill offer practical advice to get you started.
Our Innovate Carolina team talked with two, in-house design thinking experts to explore the promise of this problem-solving method: Melissa Carrier, a professor of the practice the Department of Public Policy and director of social innovation with Innovate Carolina; and Liz Chen, assistant professor at the Gillings School of Global Public Health and Innovate Carolina’s design thinking lead. Carrier and Chen provide design thinking workshops and consults to Carolina faculty and startups, plus organizations outside the University via Innovate Carolina’s innovation services hub. We also asked Laura Klinger, executive director of the UNC TEACCH Autism Program and associate professor, Department of Psychiatry at UNC-Chapel Hill, to weigh in on design thinking. Klinger used the design thinking approach to help companies address challenges faced by employees with autism.
Liz Chen: Design thinking is a creative problem-solving approach that can be used in combination with other methods and approaches. One of the key distinctions is the fact that the first phase really focuses on understanding the intended audience and how they understand the issue and issues surrounding it. It forces those of us who are problem solvers to engage with real people, and actually go back and question basic assumptions about whether this is actually the best use of time and resources to solve this particular problem. We’ve seen it used most often in the business world, but we are now starting to see more faculty and students use it in change making work and in academia as well as in community work. We hope this trend continues, and that we can drive towards more innovative solutions that actually change lives and outcomes for real people.
Melissa Carrier: I would only add that design thinking, which is often called human-centered design, has its origins in industry with designers creating consumer products. And so it has evolved from being a tool that you use to create everyday things that we enjoy as consumers to a tool that’s really powerful in solving really tough social issues and challenges. It puts the people that are experiencing those challenges at the center, not the designer themselves. I think that’s probably one key distinction.
Laura Klinger: Design thinking is an interactive, creative problem-solving process that integrates the perspective of multiple community partners to address a community need. Central to the design thinking process is incorporating the perspectives and recommendations of the community members who are most impacted by the problem that is being solved.
Melissa Carrier: Design thinking is not the end-all-be-all solution to problem-solving and, as Liz mentioned, it is used in partnership with other approaches and methods. And I think that’s really key. It also is not the same as traditional problem-solving that most of us are familiar with where we have a problem that we’ve identified, we’ve observed it and then we jump straight to a solution. Design thinking is really different because it forces users to take a few steps back from the solution and spend quite a bit of time really understanding context and identifying multiple problems before you even get to solution building. So design thinking is a bit distinct from how we’ve traditionally thought about solving challenges.
Liz Chen: I also think it is not simply cherry-picking specific methods in isolation of an understanding of the bigger design thinking process. For example, the version of design thinking we often teach at Carolina offers brainstorming as a method in the ideation phase. But just because you do a round of brainstorming does not mean that your entire project or your research is design-thinking centered.
Melissa Carrier: Yes, it’s not about doing just customer interviews and focus groups and cherry-picking so you can have a solution in mind and validate it. Design thinking is much richer and deeper in engaging with others and all stakeholders in understanding the problem and defining that problem, and then searching for the best solution.
Liz Chen: I generally think that when many faculty, staff and students hear the words innovation and creativity, they immediately opt in or opt out given those words. We want to really emphasize that everyone has the potential and the ability to be both creative and innovative, and the design thinking approach does equip you with the mindsets, the skills and the process to get you there.
Laura Klinger: Design thinking offers a variety of tools to promote creative thinking and innovative problem solving. Beyond the traditional approach of bringing together team members to discuss opinions, design thinking uses an active approach to engage team members (e.g., community immersion and observations; brainstorming, and prototyping solutions).
Melissa Carrier: Mindsets are more important than the many different types of methods out there. We try to move people away from debating the merits of any one method.
Liz Chen: In our problem-solving approaches, we usually take data given to us from others and we don’t spend enough time humanizing it. So I think the mindset of needing to engage with real people to understand experiences from their perspectives needs to be centered in change making work. From there, I think that one mindset that is more challenging for people to embrace is the general mindset about learning from failure. In a culture where it seems competitive to put things out in the world, you want to just get it right.
But breaking down ideas for solutions into bite size pieces that you can put in front of people in the form of either paper prototypes or videos and mockups will allow for quick generative feedback early and often before you get to something that looks remotely like what you would imagine it in the field. Learning from failure seems obvious but really takes dedicated practice in order to fully integrate it into your work.
Laura Klinger: At the UNC TEACH Autism Program, we used design thinking to address the need for increasing employment success for autistic adults. Only 33 percent of autistic adults are competitively employed. We created a community advisory board of autistic adults, employers and vocational rehabilitation agency partners who used design thinking to create an online training program (TEAM WORKS), dedicated to supporting employers to enable success in their autistic employees. We presented TEAM WORKS at the 40th Annual TEACCH Autism Program Conference, have received interest from employers across the country and are hoping to launch in Spring 2022.
Liz Chen: I love hearing from students who have recently taken our design thinking course and have started to already change the way in which they practice or conduct research. Even small changes like altering interview questions for planned focus groups or one-on-one interviews so that they allow for some of the design thinking methods to be incorporated. Or lab teams who are now facilitating brainstorming sessions and really emphasize the importance of no judgment so that more ideas are considered. I love hearing everyday applications of design thinking.
Melissa Carrier: I spend a lot of time working with our student and faculty entrepreneurs on campus, and I get really excited when design thinking can be used by them to research their solution and create the kind of impact they want to have because it allows them to validate who is at the table and how they’re engaging with others in meaningful ways. It’s exciting to watch that transformation in our entrepreneurs.
Liz Chen: I’d love to connect with anyone who has questions. In addition, two helpful resources I would recommend: IDEO’s free design kit and the Creative Reaction Lab’s Equity-Centered Community Design Field Guide.
Ready to incorporate design thinking into your work or research? For any questions on how to get started with design thinking, visit Innovate Carolina’s design thinking page or contact Liz Chen at Liz.Chen@unc.edu.
| UNC-CH