According to the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/obesity-and-overweight#:~:text=Worldwide%20obesity%20has%20nearly%20tripled,years%20and%20older%2C%20were%20overweight.&amp;text=Most%20of%20the%20world's%20population,overweight%20or%20obese%20in%202019.">World Health Organization</a> in their April 2020 report, global obesity has nearly tripled since 1975. In fact, in 2016 they reported that more than 1.9 billion adults who were over 18 years old were overweight.&nbsp;Now that's a huge “wicked problem” to tackle. Would you agree? Let's assume you were approached by a Government-sponsored institute in your country that is trying to tackle overweight and obesity in low-socioeconomic status households in your country. &nbsp;Please answer the following.&nbsp;<ol><li>How would you approach the problem?</li><li>Who are the various stakeholders in this project?</li><li>What user research methods would you deploy to empathise with your target users?</li><li>Try to deploy these techniques with at least 2-3 people who are battling with overweight or obesity in your networks. Pay attention to the following.</li></ol><ul><li style="margin-left:40px;">How do they describe their own experience?</li><li style="margin-left:80px;">What are their challenges, frustrations, fears, and objectives?</li><li style="margin-left:80px;">What do they think, feel, hear, see, say, do, and what do they need to do?</li></ul>Document your findings and discuss them in the discussion forum.Be sure to leverage the use of empathy maps in your process.&nbsp;

Assignment Empathise

This introductory course will consist of a series of tutorials, discussion opportunities, and assessments.&nbsp;The topics covered include the following.<ol><li>What Is Design Thinking<ul><li>What exactly is a wicked problem?</li><li>Why is Design Thinking Important?</li></ul></li><li>The History of Design Thinking&nbsp;<ul><li>The origins of design thinking&nbsp;</li></ul></li><li>The Phases of Design Thinking - A Synopsis&nbsp;<ul><li>The Five Phases of Design Thinking&nbsp;</li></ul></li><li>Building Empathy with Customers&nbsp;<ul><li>How to Empathise?</li><li>Understanding Customers through Empathy Maps</li><li>Customer Journey Maps</li><li>Making Sense of your User Research Data</li><li>Reflect, Analyse, Synthesise, and Define</li></ul></li><li>Define the Design Challenge&nbsp;<ul><li>What exactly is a Problem Statement/Point of View in Design Thinking?</li><li>How to Define your Problem Statement?</li><li>Space Saturation and Group</li><li>How Might we Questions?</li><li>What Happens Next?</li></ul></li><li>The Idea Generation Process<ul><li>What is ideation?</li><li>Why is ideation significant?</li><li>Key idea Generation Design Methods</li><li>How to Organise an ideation workshop?</li><li>What happens next?</li></ul></li><li>Getting Started with Prototyping&nbsp;<ul><li>What is a Prototype?</li><li>Why is Prototyping Important?</li><li>Types of Prototypes</li><li>Low Fidelity Prototypes</li><li>High Fidelity Prototypes</li><li>How to Prototype?</li><li>Reflect, Analyse, and transition to the Testing Phase</li></ul></li><li>Evaluating your Designs&nbsp;<ul><li>What is user testing?</li><li>Why is it important to test with users?</li><li>When should you test with users?</li><li>Testing Methodologies</li><li>User Testing Guidelines</li><li>Do you stop at user testing?</li></ul></li><li>Summary<ul><li>Lessons Learned from Design Thinking.&nbsp;</li></ul></li></ol>There are no prerequisites for this course and You must enroll to download your certificate of completion. To successfully complete the course, you must complete and pass the final assignment.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Here you'll define design thinking and provide examples of how you can apply it in your career.&nbsp;

What does design thinking mean to you?

In your opinion, what are the key elements of design thinking?

What are the key elements of design thinking?

What do you think? Do you always have to start at the empathize phase of design thinking? Could you immediately start testing?

Is design thinking a linear process?

A Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking 

Now that you have gathered data from your customer interviews and observations (i.e., what they need and want, their pain points, how they feel, think, and how they behave in their natural environment), you're now ready to bring <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">clarity and focus </a>to the design space.&nbsp;Essentially, in the Design mode, you're unpacking, analyzing, and synthesizing your findings from the Empathize mode, to create a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which is basically your point-of-view (POV). Ultimately, by formulating your POV, you'll be able to kick-start your design project.<h4>What Exactly is a Problem Statement/Point of View in Design Thinking?</h4>Your POV is<a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf"> defined as follows</a> - &nbsp;It is “the explicit expression of the problem you are striving to address.”&nbsp;Your POV will steer you toward the right challenge to address, based on the insights you've garnered from your user research.&nbsp;<blockquote>“More than simply defining the problem, your Point of View is a unique design vision that is framed by your specific users. Understanding the meaningful challenge at hand, and the user insights you can leverage, is fundamental to creating a successful solution.” &nbsp;– d.school, Bootcamp Bootleg</blockquote><h4>A Good Problem Statement embodies the following characteristics</h4><ul><li>It is human-centered and is framed with a strong focus on your users, the insights, and their needs.</li><li>It is actionable - (e.g., it might be useful to begin your problem statement with verbs such as ("create", “adapt”, or “define”).</li><li>It focuses and provides the right scope to solve your design challenge.</li><li>It should be broad enough to encourage creative freedom for your team and prompt innovation. However, it should be narrow enough so you can focus on efficient and practical solutions that meet your customers' needs.</li></ul>You may exploit the <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">POV Matlib </a>design technique to formulate your problem statement. You'll need to ensure that you integrate the following components (the user, users' needs, and surprising insights) to define your POV. You'll want to frame your statement like this:“[USER] needs to [USER’S NEED] because [SURPRISING INSIGHT]” - <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">Standford d.school</a>.For example, &nbsp;we synthesize the following POV from the data we've gathered about Tom, an obese person who suffers from social isolation and loneliness and uses food for comfort. He also feels judged by his social contacts and desires a sense of support from his community.“An obese person with a poor body image needs to feel more socially accepted when engaging in physical activities and healthful eating because in their world social isolation and lack of support is more dangerous than the health risks of obesity.”&nbsp;In the above example, you're driven to take action right? Note that defining your problem statement/POV is an iterative process and as such, it can be revisited and reformulated many times.&nbsp;<h4>How to Define your Problem Statement?</h4>As mentioned earlier, you'll need to define an actionable and meaningful problem statement. Although this process may seem daunting, there are a number of well-known and trustworthy creative techniques, which can be leveraged to interpret your findings and observations from the Empathize Mode.<h4>Space Saturation and Group&nbsp;</h4>According to the <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">Standford d.school</a>, &nbsp;space saturation helps you to:<blockquote>“unpack thoughts and experiences into tangible and visual pieces of information that you surround yourself with to inform and inspire the design team. You group these findings to explore what themes and patterns emerge, and strive to move toward identifying meaningful needs of people and insights that will inform your design solutions.”</blockquote>By exploiting this method, you're gathering and visually presenting all your findings from the empathize phase in one space. In this process, you will saturate a wall, whiteboard, or large piece of paper with post-its and images from your user research. To synthesize your data, you'll need to organize the post-its and images into groups of similar/related patterns. You'll further be able to <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-2-in-the-design-thinking-process-define-the-problem-and-interpret-the-results">develop deeper insights</a> and connect the dots, which will further help you to define your design problem and create solutions that meet your customers' needs.&nbsp;<h4>How Might We Questions</h4>You can ask <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">how might we? </a>questions to refine and rewrite your problem statement.&nbsp;So considering your problem statement for an obese person Tom, we could ask the following questions.&nbsp;<ol><li>How might we make Tom feel better about himself?</li><li>How might we make Tom feel supported by his peers?</li><li>How might we improve Tom's self-image?</li><li>How might we provide a non-judgemental and joyful experience for Tom?</li><li>How might we encourage Tom to be consistent with his healthful lifestyle practices?</li></ol>These how-might-we questions will be helpful to transition you to the Ideate stage where you'll start looking for innovative solutions to help your customers.&nbsp;<h4>The Five Whys Technique</h4>The <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007%2F978-981-10-0983-9_32">five whys technique</a> is a great tool to exploit when trying to determine the root cause of a problem. Let's say your findings also reflect that Tom is struggling with overeating. We'll need to drill down into source/s for his overeating and unhealthy practices so we help him. Therefore, we could ask the following questions.&nbsp;<ol><li>Why is Tom overeating? → He overeats when he is stressed.</li><li>Why is he stressed? → He has a poor self-image.</li><li>Why does He have a poor self-image? → he doesn't like the way he looks. He feels ashamed of himself.</li><li>Why does he feel ashamed of himself? → He lacks self-confidence and feels judged.</li><li>Why does he feel judged? → Tom experiences self-judgment and experiences judgment from others with respect to his overweight. People watch what he eats and ridicule him for consuming “unhealthy” snacks.</li></ol>In this case, the root cause of Tom's overeating can be associated with judgment namely (self-judgment and judgment from others). Thus, our final problem statement could look like this:Obese people need judgment-free and peer-supportive interventions to promote more healthful eating habits.&nbsp;<h4>What Happens Next?</h4>Now that you have defined a well-scoped and meaningful problem statement, you will transition to the ideate mode to develop innovative solutions to address your design challenge. To generate as many compelling ideas as possible, feel free to exploit the how-might we technique. You'll notice that as you go through the phases of design thinking, that the process is very iterative and you'll constantly revisit your problem statement to ensure you're moving on the right track.&nbsp;<h4 style="margin-left:0px;">Additional Readings</h4><ol><li><a href="https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/stage-two-design-thinking-define-the-problem/">https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/stage-two-design-thinking-define-the-problem/</a></li><li><a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf</a></li><li><a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-2-in-the-design-thinking-process-define-the-problem-and-interpret-the-results">https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-2-in-the-design-thinking-process-define-the-problem-and-interpret-the-results</a></li><li><a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf</a></li></ol>&nbsp;

Define the Design Challenge

<h3>How to Empathise?&nbsp;</h3>Observe - Notice how the customer interacts in their natural environment. During your observation, it is imperative to challenge or disregard your previously held assumptions about your customers. This enables you to uncover hidden truths and also helps you to gain a deeper understanding of how your customers think and feel. In addition, you'll gain insights into their goals, behaviours, beliefs, values, and motivations. This in turn will improve your understanding of why they act the way they do. You'll also uncover unexpected insights that will help you to better empathize with your customers. Finally, by observing your customers, you'll discover information that your customers might not even be aware of.&nbsp;Engage - Talk with your customers. Find out what are their preferences, what they dislike, and what's frustrating them. At this stage, I highly recommend <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/contextual-interviews-and-how-to-handle-them">contextual interviews</a>, which are very flexible and have been proven to reveal authentic information about your customers. Here's an important point to note, listen to their stories and always ask “Why?” to uncover deeper meaning.Watch and Listen - Here you can exploit the <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/thinking-aloud-the-1-usability-tool/#:~:text=Definition%3A%20In%20a%20thinking%20aloud,keep%20up%20a%20running%20monologue.">think-out-loud methodology</a> to identify how the customer interacts with the system or how they complete a task. You can always interrupt your customer to understand the "Whys?" behind their actions. Give a listening ear and document all your observations and findings.Pay attention - Based on the nature of your business or research, it might be prudent to empathize with a variety of users from a specific demographic or various demographics. You might be wondering why is this necessary? This is important to gain a thorough understanding of different users having various perspectives or experiences so that you do not apply a &nbsp;generic or “one size fits all” approach to your design.&nbsp;Making sense of your data through Empathy Maps - Now that you have gathered all the necessary data relating to your customers' context, you will now transition to analyzing and synthesizing your data. &nbsp;To make sense of your data, I wholeheartedly recommend the use of <a href="https://gamestorming.com/empathy-mapping/">Empathy Maps</a> developed by the founder of <a href="http://xplane.com/">XPLANE, </a>Dave Gray and Alex Osterwalder. In this way, you can visualize the customers' attitudes and behaviours, and ultimately, gain a deeper level of understanding of your customers, develop empathy for them, and point out the gaps/ambiguities in your research. Before we proceed to how the empathy map works, let's first define it.<h4>Understanding Customers through Empathy Maps</h4>An empathy map is defined by <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/empathy-mapping/">Sarah Gibbons</a> as follows.&nbsp;<blockquote>“A collaborative visualization used to articulate what we know about a particular type of user. It externalizes knowledge about users in order to 1) create a shared understanding of user needs, and 2) aid in decision making.”&nbsp;</blockquote>Here's how it <a href="https://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-006-PNG.png">works</a> as described by David Gray.<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:100%;"><img src="https://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-006-PNG.png"><figcaption>Updated Empathy Map Canvas ©2017 David Gray Photo credit: David Gray, Gamestorming, Empathy Map Canvas, http://gamestorming.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/Empathy-Map-006-PNG.png</figcaption></figure>From the empathy Map Canvas, we can see that the process is customer-driven and -centered. Basically, the empathy map categorizes who your customers are, what they need to do, what they see, say, hear, and what they're doing and feeling. It's pretty flexible and straightforward and can be constructed in approximately &nbsp;20 minutes. An empathy map can be printed or sketched on a large piece of paper or whiteboard. You'll definitely need your markers and coloured post-its for this exercise. Feel free to do an empathy map for each persona and do a couple of iterations to deepen your insights.Start by gathering your team members, bringing all your qualitative data, personas, and all the insights you've formulated from your user research. Then you'll need to define the goal and scope of this exercise. For example, you'll want to specify the following as inspired by this <a href="https://easyretro.io/templates/empathy-map/">article</a>.&nbsp;<ol><li>Your expectations of what you want to learn from the empathy map.</li><li>Who you're creating the empathy map for? Is it for a specific user?</li><li>What do you want to learn from this empathy map exercise?</li><li>How does it fit into the bigger piece of the picture as it relates to your project?</li></ol>Remember, the overarching goal in this process is to empathize with and understand your customer. From the empathy map above, we can infer that it is comprised of seven key areas, which are described below.<h4>1. Who are your Customers?</h4>In this section, you're trying to understand and empathize with the persons you're designing for. In fact, you're trying to understand their situation and identify their role.<h4>2. What do they NEED to Do?</h4>You're now trying to identify the various tasks that your customers need to accomplish. You want to know what your customers need to do differently and what decisions they need to make in order to accomplish their tasks. You'll definitely want to capture what success looks like for your customers. How is your product or service going to change their lives?<h4>3. What are they SEEING?</h4>Again, here you're diving deeper into the customers' perspective. You'll gain more insights into their interactions with the product/service in their context of use. You might want to explore, the following.<ul><li>What is your customer encountering in their natural environment?</li><li>Who and what are they exposed to?</li><li>How are they interacting with other people and things in their environment?</li><li>What's their perception of what others are saying and doing?</li><li>What are they watching and reading?</li></ul><h4>4. What are they SAYING?</h4>This section includes the direct quotations you've gathered from your user study. You'll also want to note what your customer is saying while using your product/service. Possible quotes may include.&nbsp;&nbsp;“I am not sure what's the purpose of this feature.” “I need something that's easy to use.” “It should be efficient!”<h4>5. What are they DOING?</h4>&nbsp;Here you'll want to consider what your customer is physically doing while interacting with your product or service. For example, he/she is uncertain how to navigate to the next step on a website and keeps going backward instead of forward.&nbsp;You'll also want to assess if your customers behave differently in public or in private situations. For example, formerly a female customer posted regularly on TikTok. However, she was recently enlightened about the privacy issues surrounding the app. Accordingly, she publicly denounces the use of the app and stops posting but secretly watches other people's videos.<h4>6. What are they HEARING?</h4>This section describes what the customer is hearing and how it influences their interaction with the product of service. You'll want to pay attention to your customers' response to what others (e.g., family, friends, social media influencers, researchers, educators, and industry experts, etc.) are saying and note how they respond to these claims about the product or service. Go deeper into how this makes them feel.Examine if they're searching for product reviews on social media, YouTube, blogs, Instagram, Facebook etc.&nbsp;<h4>7. What are they THINKING and FEELING?</h4>This section captures what the customer is thinking and feeling throughout their experience with a product or service. &nbsp;Here you'll need to be on the lookout for what the customer chooses not to articulate. This may include their Pains (i.e., their fears, frustrations, reservations, concerns, and anxieties) with respect to your product or service. You'll also want to examine why they are reluctant to articulate their feelings.&nbsp;Here are a few example quotes.“It's difficult to understand how to use this.” “It's too confusing!”“Why does the page take so long to load?” “Am I doing something wrong?”Also, examine their Gains (i.e., their wants, needs, hopes, and dreams) with respect to your product or service. For example, your customer expresses the following.“It would be nice to have a brighter colour &nbsp;as this is quite boring!”“This is fun!” or "I really like it!"<h4>Customer Journey Maps</h4>You may also use a <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">journey map</a> to gain empathy for your customers through their experiences. According to <a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">Stanford d.school,</a> it's an excellent tool to “systematically think about the steps or milestones of a process.”In creating your journey map, you'll need to capture and identify multiple observations of your customer e.g., how they interact with your product or service or the timeline of events and routines in a customer's day. You can create a journey map from your observations and insights or you can ask your customer to illustrate a map of their routines and explain it to you. &nbsp;<h4>Making Sense of your User Research Data&nbsp;</h4>Once you have completed your empathy and/or journey maps, you should take a moment along with your team members to analyze and reflect on your findings. You'll want to document and visualize the new insights and perspectives garnered from the empathy map exercise and note the inferences and conclusions you've formed about the data. Your coloured markers and post-its will be very valuable in the analysis phase. Be sure to take as many pictures of the process and final results as you can as this will be handy for the future steps of the design thinking process.&nbsp;<h4>Reflect, Analyze, Synthesize, and Define&nbsp;</h4>Once you have completed the empathy map and/or customer journey map exercise, you should take a moment along with your team members to analyze and reflect upon your findings. You'll want to document and visualize the new insights and perspectives garnered from the empathy map exercise and note the inferences and conclusions you've formed about the data. Your coloured markers and post-its will be very valuable in the analysis phase. Be sure to take as many pictures of the process and final results as you can as this will be handy for the future steps of the design thinking process.&nbsp;Let's get ready to move on to the DEFINE Stage. Now that you have gained significant insights from your customers, you'll now ready to bring more clarity to your project. You've already started to gather all your insights from your user research and empathy maps exercise, so it's time to bring more clarity to your project&nbsp;<h4>Additional Resources</h4><ol><li><a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20201023155329/https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/empathy_map.html">https://web.archive.org/web/20201023155329/https://dschool-old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/empathy_map.html</a></li><li><a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf</a></li><li>Feel free to watch the video below too!</li></ol><figure class="media"><oembed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jSJmQrp21z0"></oembed></figure>

Building Empathy with Customers

We're making moves! In the previous sections, we've explored the following stages of the design thinking process Empathize, Define, and Ideate.&nbsp;<ol><li>In the Empathize mode, we're trying to understand our customers and their context.</li><li>In the Define mode, we're formulating a meaningful and actionable problem statement.</li><li>In the Ideate mode, we're collaborating to generate novel, and unconventional ideas to solve our design challenge.</li></ol>Again it is needful to say that the design thinking process is not always linear as multiple stages may overlap. Now we're ready to dive into the penultimate stage i.e., Prototyping.&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/QuvlAFAKvgnvAYFEKixZ1-Design_thinking.png"><figcaption>The five stages of design thinking adapted from the <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process">Interaction Design Foundation&nbsp;</a></figcaption></figure><h4>&nbsp;</h4><h4>What is a Prototype?</h4>A prototype is a quick, simple, and scaled-down version of a product, which is constructed to evaluate a design concept or process before actually investing too many resources into product development.&nbsp;<blockquote>“They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to prototype our ideas, we avoid costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a weak idea for too long.”&nbsp;— <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/prototyping">Tim Brown, CEO &amp; President of IDEO</a></blockquote>In addition, prototypes have <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/prototyping">varying degrees of fidelity</a> to demonstrate tangible design concepts and evaluate them with customers. &nbsp;<h4>Why Prototyping is Important?</h4>With the deployment of prototypes, you'll obtain the following.&nbsp;<ol><li>&nbsp;See a manifestation of your ideas in realtime.</li><li>Evaluate whether your design concepts work as intended.</li><li>Direct insights into how your customers experience and feel about your proposed solutions. Furthermore, you'll understand what your customers think about your product in terms of usability and relevance. You'll also gain early insights into how to improve their experience. It's an excellent tool for problem-solving and ideation. Wouldn't you agree?</li><li>&nbsp;Understand how they interact with and value your designs, which ultimately helps to design for a better experience and improve the quality of the interaction.</li><li>You'll also gain a deep and rich understanding of how the product/service fits and matches your customers' needs in the real-world.</li><li>It provides an opportunity to inspire your design team through tangible design solutions and to have a directed conversation with your customers.</li><li>The insights gathered will be helpful to prompt redesign and innovation of the final product.</li></ol>Prototyping is iterative so you can quickly revisit, adjust, and fine-tune your design concepts, and turn them into ideal market solutions.&nbsp;<h4>Types of Prototypes</h4>There exist a plethora of prototyping techniques to help you to bring your design ideas to life. Nick Babich, from Adobe, asserts in his <a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/29/prototyping-difference-low-fidelity-high-fidelity-prototypes-use.html#gs.tw1ts9">article</a>, that prototypes can vary in terms of their fidelity. The notion of fidelity and its constituents are further explained below.&nbsp;Note well: If you're designing a physical device, then 3D printing can be ideal to rapidly generate a tangible version of your design concept and evaluate it with your customers.<a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/29/prototyping-difference-low-fidelity-high-fidelity-prototypes-use.html#gs.uw211c">Fidelity </a>- This refers to how closely the prototype matches the look and feel of the final product. In essence, it conveys the level of detail and practicality of the product. Furthermore, fidelity can vary in terms of visual design, form, interactivity, and content among others. We'll explore these in a bit more detail later on. We'll now discuss low-fidelity and high-fidelity prototypes.<h4>Low-Fidelity Prototypes&nbsp;</h4>Low-fidelity prototypes are usually deployed at the early stage of the prototyping process. They are ideal to translate your design ideas into <a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/29/prototyping-difference-low-fidelity-high-fidelity-prototypes-use.html#gs.thejnx">tangible and testable artifacts</a>. They are in essence, a rudimentary characterization of your design concept. With low-fidelity prototyping, you're more concerned with testing the functionality of your idea rather than having a polished look of your design concept. Low-fidelity prototypes are quick, easy, inexpensive, collaborative, and require minimal skills to design.&nbsp;In terms of its visual design, content, interactivity: you'll keep them to a minimum, only presenting the basic -shapes and -elements of the visual hierarchy. Only the relevant aspects of the content are displayed in these prototypes. Interactivity is also limited as these prototypes do not convey complex animations or transitions.&nbsp;Types of Low-fidelity Prototypes&nbsp;Popular low-fidelity prototyping techniques include the following.<ul><li>Paper prototyping - With this technique, you can simply design a mock-up of the user interface (UI) of your digital product without any elaborate software. All you'll need is a pen and paper. Then you can sketch different screens showcasing the product's UI. You can also simulate the interactivity by having one person move the screens around/mimic complex interactions based on the user's choice of navigating the prototype. Paper prototyping is inexpensive, easily revised, rapid, and helps the design team to detect and identify complex problems with the designs. Although they can be useful, paper prototypes are unsuitable to demonstrate visually complex or highly interactive digital products.</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/GSHF7UNkhZ7vVrmDnMtk5-paper_prototype.jpeg"><figcaption>An example of a paper prototype.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;<ul><li>Clickable WireFrames - A wireframe is a schematic representation of the pages or screens of a digital product. With clickable wireframes, designers can demonstrate the user flow of a digital product as well as arrange the visual (e.g., layout, icons, data visualizations, text, photos) and navigational elements (e.g., menu, buttons, scrolling, or swiping up and down) of a digital product without actual coding. &nbsp;Designers leverage tools like Keynote or PowerPointor or Sketch to create clickable wireframes. Please see the example below.</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:93.4%;"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/L0Ac2C1Kp0ApEWjh2Sg4E-sketching-wireframe-example-made-with-justinmind.png.webp"><figcaption>An example showing a clickable wireframe source: <a href="https://www.justinmind.com/blog/20-inspiring-web-and-mobile-wireframe-and-prototype-examples/">https://www.justinmind.com/blog/20-inspiring-web-and-mobile-wireframe-and-prototype-examples/</a></figcaption></figure>&nbsp;Clickable wireframes are great to convey your design ideas and can serve as an excellent reference point for devising your design requirements. While they do have their advantages over paper prototypes, clickable wireframes are still limited in terms of evaluating the actual usability of the digital product. In fact, their static quality makes it difficult to determine key aspects of what the customer feels or thinks, as well as their overall experiences while using your product. In addition, wireframes are not ideal to convey complex animations or transitions.Although paper prototypes and clickable wireframes are advantageous in fostering design thinking, supporting rapid exploration and experimentation with design concepts, as well as, &nbsp;soliciting the customers' opinions and experiences. They immanently lack the level of detail and realism required to adequately support usability testing.&nbsp;<h4>High-fidelity Prototyping</h4>High-fidelity prototypes are inherently detailed and realistic, as they closely resemble the final version of the product. Due to their realistic nature, high-fidelity prototypes are ideal for usability testing e.g., you can assess whether the graphical elements or interactive elements of your product really work. Accordingly, users are more inclined to behave more naturally and share more meaningful and honest feedback, as interacting with your prototype feels like the real experience. High Fidelity prototypes can be created with tools such as Adobe XD, Figma, InVision Studio, and Azure RP 9.&nbsp;Here is an example of a high-fidelity prototype created in InVision Studio.<figure class="media"><oembed url="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ksk2P14OXsQ"></oembed></figure>Unlike low-fidelity prototypes, most if not all of the visuals, content, and interactive elements are featured in high-fidelity prototypes. As such, it is well suited to demonstrate a tangible and clear representation of the main features and functionality of your product, while simultaneously providing a rich and interactive experience for your customers. Notwithstanding their advantages, high fidelity prototypes can demand more resources (eg., more time for development, high financial cost, and requires more technical skills to support development).<h4>How to Prototype?</h4><ol><li>Simply, by starting - First, you'll need to start right? Grab your pen and paper and start adding more details to those ideas from your ideate session. You can peer-test, to evaluate your preliminary design concepts to gain deeper insights into design decisions you're making or those that you'll need to make to improve the user experience. You'll also garner more meaningful insights into the design requirements or interactive elements necessary to address your design challenge.&nbsp;</li><li>Set clear goals - For e.g., what need are you addressing with this particular prototype? What are you trying to test and what do you expect to achieve following the evaluation of this prototype? Remember you're rapidly exploring and experimenting with different ideas so avoid spending too much time with one particular prototype.</li><li>Design with your customer in mind - You may ask these questions: What problem are you trying to address? What feature would make their lives easier? How would they interact with this feature? What are their expectations of the product? To keep in check, always go back to the drawing board and evaluate if your design addresses your problem statement.</li><li>Exploit the right tool - Use the appropriate tool that suits your needs and also that of your team.</li></ol><h4>It's time to Reflect, Analyze, and Transition to the Testing Phase.</h4>Prototyping and testing often occur in tandem. Accordingly, once your prototype is created, you'll need to evaluate it with your target users. As mentioned above, you'll need to set clear goals, while carefully thinking along with your teammates about what you're going to test and what are your expectations/assumptions of the evaluation. Once you have garnered the customer-insights, you'll need to adequately analyze and reflect on your key findings, which inevitably will prompt iterative prototyping and retesting sessions until you've reached the optimal product design that satisfies your customers' needs.<h4>Additional Resources</h4><ol><li><a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/ux-tools-wireframing-and-prototyping-tools">https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/ux-tools-wireframing-and-prototyping-tools</a></li><li><a href="https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/29/prototyping-difference-low-fidelity-high-fidelity-prototypes-use.html#gs.thejnx">https://blog.adobe.com/en/publish/2017/11/29/prototyping-difference-low-fidelity-high-fidelity-prototypes-use.html#gs.thejnx</a></li><li><a href="https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/design-thinking-stage-four-prototyping/">https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/design-thinking-stage-four-prototyping/</a></li><li><a href="https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/wireframing/wireframe-design-definition/">https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/wireframing/wireframe-design-definition/</a></li><li><a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/etch-a-sketch-how-to-use-sketching-in-user-experience-design">https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/etch-a-sketch-how-to-use-sketching-in-user-experience-design</a></li><li><a href="https://hike.one/update/why-use-micro-animations-in-your-design">https://hike.one/update/why-use-micro-animations-in-your-design</a></li></ol>&nbsp;

Getting Started with Prototyping

Complete the following quiz to reinforce what you have learned in this course.&nbsp;

Final Assessment

As discussed in the previous section, there are a number of creative techniques you can exploit in your ideation workshop.Have you already gone through the list?Let's consider the problem statement:&nbsp;Obese people need judgment-free and peer-supportive interventions to promote more healthful eating habits.&nbsp;<ol><li>Which creative techniques would you exploit to support idea generation to address this challenge?</li><li>What ideas come to mind to address this challenge?</li></ol>Share your answers in the discussion forum.&nbsp;

Assignment - Creative techniques for Ideation

In this course, we will focus on the <a href="https://static1.squarespace.com/static/57c6b79629687fde090a0fdd/t/5b19b2f2aa4a99e99b26b6bb/1528410876119/dschool_bootleg_deck_2018_final_sm+%282%29.pdf">five-stage model </a>originally proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school). These five components are explained below.&nbsp;<h3>The Five Stages of Design Thinking&nbsp;</h3>The stages are visualized and explained below.<ul><li>Empathize - understand your customers' physical and emotional needs and pain points.</li><li>Define - gather insights from your <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/contextual-interviews-and-how-to-handle-them">contextual inquiry</a> and define the problem you're going to solve.</li><li>Ideate - Brainstorm to generate ideas about how you're going to solve the problem/s you've identified.</li><li>Prototype - Bring life to your ideas through prototyping.</li><li>Test - Evaluate how your customers interact with your prototypes.</li></ul>&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:96.26%;"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/ZSDOeT3nA-O9pSnogE-ZX-Design_thinking.png"><figcaption>The five stages of design thinking adapted from the <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process">Interaction Design Foundation</a>.</figcaption></figure>&nbsp;In the upcoming sections, we'll dive a bit deeper into each stage inspired by the <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">research</a> at Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school).&nbsp;&nbsp;

The Phases of Design Thinking

Going back to our problem statement:Obese people need judgment-free and peer-supportive interventions to promote more healthful eating habits.&nbsp;<ol><li>What prototypes can you come up with to design a judgment-free intervention to support healthful eating habits for obese people?</li></ol>Start with paper prototypes.Later you can experiment with wireframes using Powerpoint.For High Fidelity Prototypes, feel free to use InVision Studio (it's free) if you're designing a webpage or mobile application.Remember to test your prototypes with potential users or with your peers.Discuss your solutions in the discussion forum.

Assignment - Prototyping

<h3>What is Design Thinking?</h3>Tim Brown, executive chair of the <a href="https://designthinking.ideo.com/">IDEO </a>asserts that&nbsp;<blockquote>“Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”&nbsp;</blockquote>In essence, design thinking takes a human-centric approach to solve problems creatively and prompt innovation across various disciplines, industries, and in different aspects of our lives. Design thinking is also considered a creative problem-solving methodology to address “wicked problems".<h4>What Exactly is a Wicked Problem?</h4>Wicked problems are extremely ambiguous. According to the <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/wicked-problems-5-steps-to-help-you-tackle-wicked-problems-by-combining-systems-thinking-with-agile-methodology">Interaction Design Foundation</a>, it is defined as follows.<blockquote>“A wicked problem is a social or cultural problem that’s difficult or impossible to solve—normally because of its complex and interconnected nature. Wicked problems lack clarity in both their aims and solutions, and are subject to real-world constraints which hinder risk-free attempts to find a solution.”&nbsp;</blockquote>Common examples of wicked problems include but are not limited to the following.<ul><li>Education&nbsp;</li><li>Financial crises</li><li>Poverty</li><li>Health care</li><li>Obesity&nbsp;</li><li>Sustainability</li><li>Climate change</li><li>Technology Access&nbsp;</li></ul>Today, many companies including Apple, Toyota, Microsoft, Samsung Electronics, Bank of America Corp., PepsiCo, and Nike are exploiting design thinking to solve wicked problems and stimulate innovation. Moreover, design thinking has become a buzzword in education, with the focus on developing the students' <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/dept/SUSE/taking-design/presentations/Taking-design-to-school.pdf">creative confidence</a>.&nbsp;<h4>Why is Design Thinking Important?</h4>The core aim of design thinking is to develop usable products or services based on a thorough understanding of the following.<ol><li>Who your customers are?</li><li>What are their experiences?</li><li>What are their physical and emotional needs?</li></ol>Basically, by leveraging design thinking we are immersing ourselves in our customer's context. By this, we can gain the following.&nbsp;<ul><li>Build customer empathy i.e., developing a deep understanding of our customer's in their natural environment.</li><li>First-hand insights into their everyday lives, i.e., by identifying their behaviours and experiences, emotions, feelings, likes, uncover pain points (i.e., problems/frustrations that your current or prospective customers are experiencing with a product or service), and needs.</li></ul>Ultimately, by empathizing with your customers, &nbsp;you can achieve the following.&nbsp;<ol><li>Clarify ambiguous problems or identify those that were difficult to define.</li><li>Visualizing what could make their lives easier and more enjoyable, and how technology can improve their lives.</li><li>It favours an iterative and creative approach to problem-solving that prompts ideation, reflection, experimentation through prototyping, and ultimately, the development of innovative products and services.</li><li>Design new and efficient products or services that satisfy the customer's needs.</li><li>Provide solutions to solve your customers' pain points.</li></ol><h4 style="margin-left:0px;">Brief Overview of the History of Design Thinking</h4>Herbert Simon's seminal text on design theory and techniques, “The Sciences of the Artificial (1969),” is one of the most thought-provoking and influential texts expounding on the science of design, which ultimately emerged as one of the first seminal works to formalize the design thinking process.&nbsp;<a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-get-a-quick-overview-of-the-history#:~:text=Simon%20was%20the%20first%20to,book%2C%20Experiences%20in%20Visual%20Thinking.">Simon's seven-stage model </a>remains the foundation for several emerging design thinking models today. Although there might be differences in the number of stages, it is important to note that they all rely on the same principles highlighted in Simon's design thinking model. To dive deeper into the origins of design thinking I encourage you to read this <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking">Wikipedia article</a> in addition to <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/design-thinking-get-a-quick-overview-of-the-history#:~:text=Simon%20was%20the%20first%20to,book%2C%20Experiences%20in%20Visual%20Thinking.">Design Thinking: Get a Quick Overview </a>of the History by the Interaction design foundation.In this course, we will focus on the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) five-stage Design Thinking model, which will be explained in more detail in the upcoming sections.<h4 style="margin-left:0px;">Additional Resources</h4><ol><li><a href="https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00320">https://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/DESI_a_00320</a></li><li><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14606925.2019.1594961">https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/14606925.2019.1594961</a></li><li><a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process">https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process</a></li></ol>

What is Design Thinking?

In the previous sections, we explored the four phases of the design thinking process, which are summarised below.&nbsp;<ol><li>Empathise - Understanding the customers and their context.</li><li>Define - Formulating a meaningful and actionable problem statement.</li><li>Ideate - Collaborating to generate novel, and unconventional ideas to solve our design challenge.</li><li>Prototyping - Creating a mock-up of our design concept to be evaluated by potential customers.</li></ol><figure class="image image_resized" style="width:85.94%;"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/QB3KhD7WoVoSdYABKplFL-Design_thinking.png"><figcaption>The five phases of design thinking adapted from the <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process">Interaction Design Foundation</a>.</figcaption></figure>Now we've reached the fifth stage of the design thinking process and that's the test mode. Note well that this might not be the final stage, as you may uncover insights that lead you back to the empathise, define, or even ideation mode, in order to refine your proposed design solutions and make them better. Again it is needful to say that the design thinking process is not always linear as multiple stages may overlap. In this case, you may find that prototyping and testing often occur at the same time.&nbsp;<h4>What is User Testing?</h4>Testing provides an opportunity to evaluate your prototypes and gain direct feedback from your prospective customers. In the test mode, you'll empathize with your potential customers and assess their experience with your design solutions.You may assess the following:<ol><li>What do they like or dislike?</li><li>What do they find difficult or frustrating or confusing or misleading?</li><li>Are they able to successfully complete the tasks?</li><li>Where do they get stuck?</li><li>How are they navigating to complete their tasks?</li><li>How long does it take to complete a specific task?</li><li>What are they saying?</li><li>What do they want?</li><li>What are their suggestions for an improved user experience?</li></ol>At this point, it is imperative to seek feedback and clarification through your “Why?” questions. In this way, you'll dive deeper into the problem-solving process and uncover insights to refine your designs and provide a better user experience for your customers.&nbsp;In test mode, it is best to evaluate your prototypes in the users' natural context. For example, if you are evaluating a wearable fitness device, it is ideal to incorporate the users' everyday routines in the evaluation. In addition, if you're exploiting a narrative technique, then scenarios depicting real-life situations can be recreated at this stage.&nbsp;<figure class="image image_resized" style="width:61.49%;"><img src="https://teachsomebody-nextjs-storageprod-prod.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/public/3GmQ5MCT_ifpsd382qprU-software-testing-5722928_1280.jpg"><figcaption>Why do we test?</figcaption></figure><h4>Why is it important to test with your users?</h4><ol><li>To identify usability issues before you launch your product and uncover unexpected insights that could lead you back to the drawing board. Ultimately, this reflective process will be beneficial to refine and improve your final product.</li><li>As mentioned earlier, in the test mode, you'll be able to empathize with your customers and unveil deeper insights into what works and doesn't work with the product.</li><li>It provides an opportunity to revisit and refine your problem statement. It is quite possible that your user evaluation results could suggest that your solutions did not adequately address the problem, you made incorrect assumptions about your customers' behaviour or <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">you didn't frame the problem in the right way</a>.</li><li>By identifying bugs and errors at an early stage, you can save time and money. By exploiting an iterative approach, you can revisit the issue/s and address them based on new customer insights and feedback rather than fixing them after development. User testing will provide customer feedback that will help you to make informed customer-centered decisions that will satisfy their needs as well as help you to avoid expensive development errors.</li><li>You'll improve customer -satisfaction, -retention, and -advocacy - &nbsp;By testing directly with your customers, you'll improve your chance to accelerate their acceptance of your product or service. In addition, you may form good relationships and as such, it is highly likely that customers may come back and refer you to their networks (colleagues, friends, and family), i.e., once your design solution satisfies and exceeds their expectations.</li></ol><h4>When should you test with users?</h4><blockquote>Don't wait until you're ready to release your product on the market to test your designs. That's a dangerous move! &nbsp;To meet your customers' &nbsp;needs and expectations, &nbsp;you'll need to test early and quite often.</blockquote>You may deploy low-fidelity prototypes (e.g., paper prototypes) to determine if your initial ideas are worth further exploration.&nbsp;Once your team and customers are onboard with your initial prototypes, you'll add more details and make your design concepts more realistic through clickable wireframes. As customer acceptance with your low-fidelity prototypes improves, you'll move on to testing with more visually appealing, &nbsp;content-rich, and interactive prototypes (i.e. your high fidelity prototypes). In so doing, you will provide a richer and more interactive experience for your customers and gain richer and deeper insights into their overall experience and usability of your design solution.<h4>Testing Methodologies&nbsp;</h4><ol><li>Guerilla testing - this is basically going to a public space (e.g., a snack bar) and asking people to evaluate your prototypes. This is quite relevant for testing your preliminary concepts and you may leverage your low fidelity prototypes in this test. You'll randomly test your participants and you can offer to pay for their drink or snack in return.</li><li>A/B testing - also referred to as bucket testing or split-run testing and involves running randomised experiments between two prototypes (A and B) to determine which prototype performs the better. Review this <a href="https://uxplanet.org/an-ultimate-guide-to-a-b-testing-on-pre-live-apps-4bd57679e8cc">article </a>to gain a thorough perspective on how to run an A/B test.</li><li>Usability testing - the act of evaluating your product with your users. It helps you as the designer to identify how users use and misuse your product or service, identify the areas of your designs that need improvement, and also helps you to better empathise (understand how they think, feel, and experience your designs) with your customers. There are several types of usability tests including quantitative and qualitative evaluations as well as in-person and remote evaluations. Read this <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/">article</a>, to learn more about usability testing and its various types.</li></ol><h4>User Testing Guidelines</h4><ol><li>Devise a clear plan and scenario It is important to set specific goals e,g., &nbsp;What's the setting? What tasks do you want your customers to complete? How many tasks do you want them complete? - Be sure not to overwhelm the users with too many tests. What do you want to learn from the user test? What are the expected outcomes of your user test?). This is done so that you can build the right prototype that addresses your design challenge and select an appropriate testing methodology.</li><li>Recruit your participants i.e., enlist participants that represent your target group. Offering an incentive can boost motivation to participate in your study and prompt their interest to participate in further evaluation of the prototypes or final product.</li><li>Evaluate in the context of use. In other instances, try to replicate the customers' routines and natural environment through scenarios that match their situation.</li><li>Specify the roles for your testing procedure. In this case, you'll want to specify the following as inspired by the Standford d.school bootleg bootcamp<a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf"> Testing with Users</a> method card.<ul><li>Host/Facilitator - The person who will guide the users to transition from reality to the situation where they will interact with and evaluate the prototype. The host translates the scenario, explains what the prototype is about, and how it works without sharing too many details. He or she is also responsible for building rapport with the user, making the user feel comfortable so that they will share their honest opinions and feedback as it relates to the product. The host will also clarify the users' assumptions and uncertainties and often leads the questioning process.</li><li>Players - You'll want to assign people to different roles to create and enrich the experience of interacting with your prototype.</li><li>Observers - It is vital to assign a team of observers in your evaluation session. In this way, they can capture how the user experiences and interacts with the prototype. Videotaping the interactions can be useful to identify unconscious or unobserved behaviours (e.g., facial expressions, gestures, and general body language) and interactions with the product.</li></ul></li><li>Say less and Show more - provide a minimal context and allow your user to interact with your prototype without too many explanations of your design rationale.</li><li>Listen and let them actively share their experience throughout the evaluation. &nbsp; &nbsp;Here the host can ask Why? questions or ask the user to think aloud as they execute their tasks. You can ask questions like what do you think is happening here? What do you think this does? What's your first impression of this feature? What do you expect to happen here? &nbsp;What does this icon/button/menu mean to you?</li><li>Observe how your users use and experience the prototype. Observation can be useful to capture inconspicuous behaviours and interactions with the product.&nbsp;</li><li>Clarify with questions - &nbsp;It is vital to follow-up with your customers. Ask them questions related to how the products make them feel, what they find difficult, confusing, and be sure to ask why.</li><li>Don't forget to document your findings and observations. This is useful to help you reflect, analyse, and synthesise your findings. Ultimately, it helps to make evidence-based and customer-driven decisions about the final design of the product.</li></ol><h4 style="margin-left:0px;">Do you stop at user testing?</h4>After you have run several tests and noted your observations and findings. You'll need to spend some time in reflection with your teammates. You'll analyze your findings and determine how you can improve your design to address the design challenge. Your test results will reveal what works well and what doesn't and could lead you to revisit the define, ideate, as well as prototype modes. It may take several rounds of refining your solution before you reach an ideal solution that fits in your customers' context and operates as expected.&nbsp;Guess what again? Even after your product is released on the market, you'll need to run more tests to meet new requirements, &nbsp;improve product features, address system errors, or modernize your product or service offerings.&nbsp;<h4 style="margin-left:0px;">Additional Resources&nbsp;</h4><ol><li><a href="https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/user-testing-design-thinking/">https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/user-testing-design-thinking/</a></li><li><a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/">https://www.nngroup.com/articles/usability-testing-101/</a></li><li><a href="https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-testing/top-7-usability-testing-methods/">https://xd.adobe.com/ideas/process/user-testing/top-7-usability-testing-methods/</a></li></ol>

Evaluating Your Designs

Now that you have gone through the Empathise and Define Modes in the design thinking process, you'll now focus on generating multiple alternatives to solve your design challenge. It's important to note that Design Thinking is a <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate">non-linear process</a> and as such you might encounter overlaps between the ideation and define stages. Notwithstanding this overlap, the insights garnered from both stages can be resourceful to steer the generation of a repository of ideas, design concepts, and solutions to address your design challenge.&nbsp;<h4>What is Ideation?</h4><blockquote>“Ideate is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation. Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes. Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.” &nbsp;Stanford d.school &nbsp;An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE</blockquote><h4>Why is Ideation Significant?&nbsp;</h4>Ideation is crucial to transition from understanding your customers and identifying their problems, to create solutions that satisfy their needs. This is the opportune time to leverage your understanding of your customers and the problem space and conceive a broad pool of novel and&nbsp; “disruptive”&nbsp; solutions that will change their lives. As Aurora Harley explains in <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-ideation/">Ideation for Everyday Design Challenges</a>, your goal is to explore or generate a broad pool of ideas, “with no attempt to judge or evaluate them.” &nbsp;At this stage, your aim is to discover new angles and unearth unpredicted areas for innovation while suspending judgment. In essence, you're thinking outside the box, to drive innovation for your solution concepts. Moreover, your focus is more on <a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-ideation/">quantity and not the quality</a> of your ideas. Later, you'll determine the best solution through customer evaluation and -feedback. Furthermore, in the ideate mode, you want to go beyond <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">“obvious” </a>design concepts. By doing this, you'll achieve the following.&nbsp;<ol><li>“Create fluency (volume) and flexibility (variety)” in your solution concepts. - Stanford d.school: Introduction to Design Thinking Process Guide.</li><li>Harness strengths, collective brainpower, creativity, and diversity of ideas from your teammates.</li><li>Generate atypical, novel, and innovative design concepts that will inspire your customers and prompt a positive experience with your product or service.</li></ol><h4>Key Idea Generation Design Methods</h4>Stanford d.school &nbsp;explains the following as you begin the process of ideation.&nbsp;<blockquote>"You ideate by combining your conscious and unconscious mind, and rational thoughts with imagination. For example, in a brainstorm you leverage the synergy of the group to reach new ideas by building on others’ ideas. Adding constraints, surrounding yourself with inspiring related materials, and embracing misunderstanding all allow you to reach further than you could by simply thinking about a problem." <a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">Stanford d.school &nbsp;- An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE&nbsp;</a></blockquote>At this stage, there are a plethora of creative techniques that you can exploit to generate novelty and innovation in your designs. Kindly see the list below, which is not exhaustive.&nbsp;<ul><li>Prototypes</li><li>Sketches</li><li>User Enactments / Roleplay</li><li>Scenarios</li><li>Storytelling</li><li>Storyboarding</li><li>Sketching</li><li>Mindmapping</li><li>Brainstorming</li><li>Bodystorming</li><li>Gamestorming</li><li>Cheatstorming</li><li>Crowdstorming</li><li>Brainwriting</li><li>Brain dumping</li><li>Co-creation workshops</li><li>Synectics</li><li>Creative Pause</li><li>Analogies</li><li>Provocation</li><li>Challenge Assumptions</li><li>SCAMPER</li><li>Worst Possible Idea</li><li>Impose Constraints</li></ul>I recommend that you explore in detail the list above to determine, which method is ideal for you and your team.<h4>How to Organize an Ideation Workshop?</h4>While an ideation workshop can be fun and exciting, you'll need to actively plan and prepare for this session. You may follow the guideline below to ensure the success of your workshop.<ol><li>You'll want to invite a diverse group of people, so they can bring their unique perspectives to the session. &nbsp;Around 7-10 people should be ideal as too many people could be quite overwhelming.</li><li>You'll need to create a clear outline for the session, including the overall goal of the workshop, an ice-breaker, the different activities, and the creative ideation techniques that will be leveraged. Preparing a list of how-might-we questions beforehand to address the problem statement would be optimal.</li><li>It is highly recommended that you set a time limit for each activity of the workshop.&nbsp;</li><li>It is imperative to create a comfortable space where your “ideators” feel safe to share their creative ideas and perspectives.</li><li>You'll definitely need to appoint a design facilitator to guide your team, impose constraints, set targets, and steer your team in the right direction. This person should also encourage the team to think outside the box and to generate as many unconventional and novel ideas as possible.</li><li>You'll also want to assign note-takers who can visualize and record the teams' ideas along with their new insights and perspectives.&nbsp;</li></ol><h4>What Happens Next?</h4>Once you have completed the session, all ideas need to be collated, categorized, and refined so you can move forward into the prototyping phase. You'll definitely need to devise a selection criterion to pinpoint which ideas are most feasible and should be transported into the prototyping phase. To evaluate your design concepts, you may exploit affinity diagrams to group your designs. Or, as recommended by <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/author/rikke-1">Rikke Friis Dam</a> and <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/author/teo">Teo Yu Siang</a> you could leverage the <a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/topics/four-categories-method ">four categories method</a> to organize your ideas according to their<a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate"> “relative abstractness, ranging from the most rational choice to the 'long shot' choice.” </a>Another option you could exploit is to vote among your ideators to determine which top three ideas should move forward into the prototyping phase. In this way, you can preserve innovation and have sufficient ideas for evaluation in order to decipher the best concept to satisfy your customers' needs.&nbsp;<h4>Additional Readings&nbsp;</h4><ol><li><a href="https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-ideation-in-design-thinking/">https://careerfoundry.com/en/blog/ux-design/what-is-ideation-in-design-thinking/</a></li><li><a href="http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf">http://web.stanford.edu/~mshanks/MichaelShanks/files/509554.pdf</a></li><li><a href="https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate">https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/stage-3-in-the-design-thinking-process-ideate</a></li><li><a href="https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf">https://s3.xopic.de/openhpi-public/courses/1NcWQVnyTA0dLYw9kHLs4e/rtfiles/35m0Q8qXYjvHO7FHuwgVgg/bootcampbootleg2010.pdf</a></li><li><a href="https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-ideation/">https://www.nngroup.com/articles/ux-ideation/</a></li></ol>

The Idea Generation Process

Test your high-fidelity prototypes and let us know your findings in the discussion forum.&nbsp;<ol><li>Which testing method will you deploy?</li><li>Test with at least two people in your network who represent the profile of your target user.</li><li>What will you change in your designs to meet your customers' needs? &nbsp;</li><li>Share your responses in the discussion forum.</li></ol>

Assignment Testing

In this course, you have explored how to apply creative thinking problem-solving strategies to design usable and innovative products and services &nbsp;by:<ol><li>Empathising - Understanding your users and their context, their needs, feelings, needs, and expectations.</li><li>Defining - Defining and re-working your problem statement in a customer-centered way.</li><li>Ideating - Coming up with a plethora of ideas in ideation workshops.</li><li>Prototyping - Creating tangible and testable versions of your design ideas.</li><li>Testing - Evaluating your design concepts with your customers.</li></ol><h4>Lessons Learned - Design Thinking is:&nbsp;</h4><ul><li>human-centered - the user and their needs are the focal points of the design.</li><li>efficient - you can easily test the relevance and feasibility of your design concepts for e.g., through low-fidelity prototypes.</li><li>flexible - design thinking is not always linear.</li><li>iterative - multiple stages overlap throughout the design process. You may need to refine, redesign, and retest to design products that meet your users' needs.</li><li>adaptive - user feedback and reflection on your findings will lead to the reframing of your problem statement.</li><li>experimental - you'll need to run several tests before your product is ready to be released.</li><li>collaborative - it involves teamwork and frequent dialogue and testing with your customers.</li><li>reflective - Reflect on your findings to transition to the next stage as well as to improve your designs.</li><li>cost-effective - low fidelity prototypes can save you time and money.</li><li>innovative - customer insights and feedback will drive the development of innovative products and services.</li></ul>I hope you enjoyed this beginner's guide to design thinking. Please share your level of satisfaction with the course by rating it. &nbsp;

Summary

Dive deeper into empathy and its macro components e.g., self-awareness, mental flexibility, and emotion regulation, which are regulated by specific parts of the brain.



A Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking

Assignment Empathise

A Beginner's Guide to Design Thinking

Instructor

Kadian Davis-Owusu (PhD)

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