How Design Thinking Can Improve Your User Experience

Design thinking provides creative solutions by focusing on the users’ problems and pain points. It is a way of thinking and working to understand and design solutions to complex issues. Businesses can apply design thinking to a wide range of fields, including product design, service design, and organisational design.

The origins of design thinking can be traced back to the work of designers in the 1950s and 60s, who began to focus on understanding the needs and wants of their customers. Over time, this approach to problem-solving has been refined and formalised, and it is now used by organisations and individuals worldwide.

We at Growth Jockey invest a great deal of time in identifying the challenges your business faces to create a unique tailor-made strategy to address each one.

Central Principles of Design Thinking

1. Empathy: It involves understanding the needs and experiences of the people for whom you are designing. This involves listening to and observing users and trying to see the world from their perspective.

2. Experimentation: It involves trying out different ideas and prototypes to learn what works and what doesn’t quickly. This allows designers to quickly test and iterate on their ideas and learn from their mistakes.

3. Collaboration: It involves working with others to generate and develop ideas. This includes working with experts from different fields, as well as with users and other stakeholders.

Stages of the Design Thinking Process

These are the five stages in the design thinking process:

1. Empathise

This is the first stage of the process, and it involves understanding the needs and experiences of the users. It also involves understanding what needs to be added or improved in the overall user experience to be satisfactory. This can be done through research methods such as user interviews, observations, and surveys.

It is essential to truly understand the world from the user’s perspective to understand their needs and pain points. It is critical to keep aside any assumptions from the design team.

2. Define

In this stage, designers use the insights gathered from the empathise stage to define the problem that needs to be solved. This involves identifying the root causes of any issues and creating a clear and concise problem statement.

Some of the commonly asked questions could be:

• What were the patterns in the data gathered?

• Which was the most common feedback they received?

• What difficulties did the user experience?

3. Ideate

The ideate stage is all about generating and developing ideas for possible solutions to the problem statement. This can involve brainstorming sessions, sketching, and freewriting. Freewriting involves setting a timer and letting ideas flow freely without judgement or revision. Once the timer goes off, you can pull out the best idea from the lost.

It is essential to be as creative and open-minded as possible during this stage and not be too attached to any idea. Ideating in a team allows a more significant number of ideas to be generated than an individual’s ideas.

4. Prototype

Prototyping is a valuable tool for taking the ideas generated during the ideation phase and turning them into something tangible. Prototypes can be as simple as sketches or paper models or more complex interactive wireframes. Creating a prototype allows designers to evaluate the feasibility of their ideas early on without investing too much time or resources.

While modern design software often has advanced prototyping capabilities, such as animation, it is crucial to focus on refining ideas that may not ultimately be feasible or viable for the market. It is vital to balance exploring ideas and being efficient with time and resources.

5. Test

The final stage of the design thinking process is testing. This involves testing a prototype of the solution and gathering user feedback. Designers can then refine and improve the design and make any necessary changes before bringing it to market. It is essential to be open to feedback and willing to iterate on the design to create the best possible user experience.

By following these four stages, designers can improve the user experience of a product or service by genuinely understanding the user’s needs and iterating on the design until it meets those needs.

Proficient in the entire design thinking process, we at Growth Jockey move through every stage in the design thinking process with care to create a strategy that will unlock your business’s full potential.

Advantages of Design Thinking to Improve User Experience

Design thinking is a powerful tool that can significantly improve user experience (UX). It is a holistic, human-centred approach that involves understanding the needs and expectations of users. It provides innovative and enriching solutions, improving customer satisfaction, loyalty and retention.

There are several key advantages to using design thinking to better the UX for businesses:

Helps understand their customers

By empathising with users and trying to see the world from their perspective, businesses can understand their needs, expectations and pain points deeply. This can lead to more successful products and services that meet users’ needs while increasing customer loyalty. It will ultimately result in higher sales and revenue growth for the business.

Provides innovative solutions

Design thinking encourages creativity and open-mindedness, which can lead to more innovative solutions to problems. By generating and exploring a wide range of ideas, businesses can develop unique and practical solutions that meet users’ needs.

Sometimes, it may be a simple process of decluttering the product or service and offering a seamless and easy user experience that will bring customers back to your website or app.

Improves customer satisfaction

Businesses improve customer satisfaction by creating products and services that meet the user’s needs and improve the user experience. This can lead to increased loyalty, retention, and positive reviews for your business.

Research suggests that the cost of retaining a customer compared to acquiring new customers is 5 times higher. The success rate of selling to existing customers is around 60-70% compared to a new customer with a 5-25% success rate. These statistics ensure that businesses need to place increased emphasis on improving the user experience with their business or brand.

Fosters out-of-the-box thinking

Design thinking is focused on creating solutions that are not only innovative but also allow the teams to think of ideas that break the mould. Thinking out of the box makes solutions more effective, creating a functional and valuable product or service.

Improving user experience through creative solutions also helps promote healthy collaboration between different teams. Design thinking allows a cohesive and comprehensive process to emerge, providing a richer and smooth workflow to improve the final product or service.

Our in-house experts at Growth Jockey leverage the best design thinking practices and implement them to create the ultimate UX design that takes your business to the next level.

Inspiring Examples of Design Thinking in Practice

Netflix

Streaming giant Netflix has repeatedly utilised design thinking to eliminate customer pain points and improve user experience. Netflix initially delivered film DVDs to customers compared to its main competitor, Blockbuster, which required customers to pick up and drop off DVDs personally. As trends began to shift, it became an on-demand streaming service when DVDs became outdated. The user experience has continued to evolve and become easier by incorporating the design thinking process.

Airbnb

Airbnb had an abysmal revenue averaging around $200 per week during the initial months of operations. They soon realised that the poor quality of images shared by Airbnb hosts was deterring customers from completing bookings. The founders urged all hosts to invest in high-quality cameras to click and post pictures. This resulted in doubled revenues for Airbnb hosts. By focusing on solving the problems their existing customers were facing, they could utilise design thinking to improve their customer experience.

UberEats

Another example of leveraging customer feedback and pain points is the food delivery app, UberEats. By understanding their delivery partners’ grievances about parking in busy locations, they could add detailed instructions to their navigation app. This enabled their drivers to efficiently pick up the food from restaurants and deliver food to customers. Using the feedback given by their delivery executives, UberEats was able to eliminate significant pain points and improve partner experience, a crucial part of delivering a seamless customer experience.

Conclusion

Design thinking is a powerful tool to creatively and systematically solve complex user-centric problems. It involves empathy, experimentation, and collaboration, and helps businesses understand customers’ needs and pain points. Whether you are designing a new product or service, the principles of design thinking can help you create solutions that are both innovative and effective.

We at Growth Jockey recognise the need to implement design thinking to improve your user experience and provide your business with innovative solutions to implement these principles.

At Growth Jockey, we are committed to delivering tailored solutions that effectively address the critical challenges faced by our clients across various industries, ultimately enhancing the user experience. Regardless of your company's size, whether it's a small-scale enterprise or a large corporation, you can now leverage advanced technologies to optimize your user experience. Take a proactive step towards unlocking the next level of growth for your brand by reaching out to us today!