Stage

Time to level up, gang.

In this post introducing design thinking and Human-Centered Design, we dove right into the first stage of Empathize. We talked about how to better understand the problems, needs, and opportunities of your intended beneficiaries with methods like those in IDEO’s DesignKit and by utilizing the Value Proposition Canvas.

Once you’ve immersed yourself in the experiences of your target market, you’ll probably have a lot of data. What do you do next?

Time to turn that raw data into information you can use to add value to those people’s lives.

In the Define stage of design thinking, you synthesize the observations about your users. Here are some great tools and strategies for synthesizing what you learned, as well as a video from IDEO on the process of framing your design challenge based on this information:

Defining your problem statement/design challenge is one of the most important steps of the entire design thinking process. It will guide your ideation process (stage 3) and will have major implications for the solutions you generate. Continue reading How to Frame Your Design Challenge