IBM Design Thinking Flashcards
Everyone designs who
devises courses of action aimed at changing existing situations into preferred ones.” - Herbert Simon
Technique to get the team to understand the differences in perceptions
Draw a vase, then design a better way to experience flowers at home
Design thinking originated in the
late 1960’s- early 1970’s
Stanford d. school model of design thinking (steps)
Empathize Define Ideate Prototype Test
3 principles of Enterprise Design Thinking
Focus on users
Restless reinvention
Diverse Empowered Teams
The loop in EDT
Observe - Reflect - Make
The keys
Hills, Playbacks, Sponsor Users
Hills format
Who: Who is your user? Refer to them by name.
What: What will your user be able to do that they couldn’t before? Start with a verb and avoid solutions.
Wow: What differentiates you from the competition? This is measurable.
Playbacks are
story-based presentations that share insights, ideas, and updates to a user experience
Example of 5 Whys (just read)
Windsor Airline’s consistent flight delays are hurting the company’s bottom line.
Why might that be?
Because the majority of their flights don’t depart on time.
Why?
Because on average the gate isn’t locked 10 minutes before a flight’s scheduled takeoff.
Because the dispatchers don’t have the passenger data, which is legally required for the gate to close.
Because it’s not clear who’s on the final passenger list.
Because gate agents struggle to negotiate last-minute passenger changes.
Design thinking at its core is the process of
understanding the situation, recognizing where it can be improved, and then creating a better future for the people involved. This is the concept of moving from as-is, to to-be.
3 questions to ask about your users
Who are your users?
What do your users do on a daily basis?
What do they struggle with the most when they try to complete important tasks?
When you feel overwhelmed by a complex domain, try some of these methods to learn more:
Next time you review an idea, design, deliverable, etc. ask yourself what the user would think of it. Then go through the 5 Whys activity to dig deeper.
Have questions? Do some desk research (you can learn a lot about a person’s experience on the internet), or interview a stakeholder or subject matter expert to start to get a handle on things before talking to users.
A lot of users will document their experiences and share them online, which can be a great way to observe remotely. Think user-generated videos, review sites, and social media.
“The last best experience that anyone has anywhere,
becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere.” - Bridget Van Kralingen
A brain-stretching exercise before ideation
Imagine a cube
paint one side red, other blue, other yellow
rotate, spin, throw around
unfold the cube
How do we have brilliant ideas?
By leaning into the absurd.
examples of misaligned team
Teams break out into solo work and end up duplicating efforts, or delivering things that aren’t useful.
Alternatively, teams might belabour a conversation when an agreement has already been reached, and get stuck spinning in circles.
ways to align the team
Next time you’re in a meeting where the conversation spins in circles, ask everyone to grab something to write with, visualize their thoughts, and then take turns sharing.
Next time you’re in a meeting where only one or two people share their opinion, hold a silent and anonymous voting session to expose everyone’s viewpoints.
specific moments where everyone on the team needs to be aligned:
Starting a new project or initiative.
Deciding as a team on a future experience for your users.
Reviewing progress as you deliver.
Starting a new project or initiative – answer questions like…
Who will be the users and stakeholders? What experience are we trying to improve and why?
Deciding as a team on a future experience for your users. Answer questions like:
What do we think our users need to be successful? How are we going to serve those needs?
Reviewing progress as you deliver. Answer questions like:
Do we successfully deliver value to our users? Are we still aligned as a team?
the first step to answering the question is ___
is knowing what questions to ask
What to do with the problem statement once you’ve refined it
as a source of research questions you want to answer
as a prompt for brainstorming ideas for solutions
as a discussion point for your whole team to align around a shared goal
When all else fails…
just start with Reflect.
Reflection means to pause, take a breath, and look at what’s known and unknown. From there, you can make a plan to move forward.
Reflect questions
Who are our users? Who are our stakeholders?
How do we define success?
What did we Observe or Make? What’s working and what isn’t?
What’s our plan? What’s on our roadmap?
Steps to doing Assumptions & Questions
First draw a cross with Assumptions and Questions logged
Then make a 2x2 grid with Risk and Certainty plotted on X/Y axes, move the A&Qs accordingly
Move the highest risk/uncertainty items to another reversed cross grid and diverge to find ways to figure out how to answer those questions
The best plans are created and owned by
the whole team—not just a design researcher.
A Research Plan is
an outline of learning goals and activities. You list your biggest questions along with how exactly you will answer those questions, when, and with whom.
A basic Research Plan has four components:
One or two high-level objectives: “What do we need to know?”
A timeline: “When will we do this work? When will we complete it?”
A short description of the types of people you’ll talk to: “Who represents our users?”
A list of research activities or methods: “How will we answer this?”
Contextual Inquiry:
Act like a fly on the wall, silently observing, or interview participants in-context to get additional layers of detail.
Cognitive Walkthrough
In order to learn first-hand where people struggle or find success while they engage with what you make, allow them to interact with the experience without any help or direction.
Interacting with Research Participants - Steps
- Introduce yourself and everyone on the call
- Give them an idea of what you’ll talk about
- Develop rapport - respect for their time, make them feel comfortable, treat them with decorum
Draft a research plan, step 1
Step 1:
Define one or two high-level objectives.
Ask yourself: “What do we need to know?” These are learning goals. Reference your Assumptions and Questions artifact for ideas.
Draft a research plan, step 2
Step 2:
Create a timeline.
Ask yourself: “When will we do this work? When will we complete it?” Break down your Research Plan into smaller chunks. What questions can you answer in two or three weeks—instead of two or three months?
Draft a research plan, step 3
Step 3:
Describe the types of people you need talk to.
This description is commonly known as a screener in design research. Usually, screeners describe your user group, but they might also reflect someone like a subject-matter expert. Ask yourself: “Whom do we need to talk to?”
Draft a research plan, step 4
Step 4:
Pair methods with objectives.
Begin to think about what might be in your discussion guide as well. Ask yourself: “How will we answer our high-level objectives? What specifically will we ask and how?”
Tips for research plans
Be specific, this is not the time to be vague
Don’t skip stakeholder interviews
Synthesis is…
The act of sifting through raw research data—interview notes, recordings, survey results, and more—to find themes and patterns
Findings are…
User wants… Surface-level facts learned during your research, such as “6 out of 10 people clicked on the correct button.” Findings are things you can observe. Pain points are examples of observed findings.
Insights are…
User needs… Underlying themes discovered through synthesis. They capture the “why” behind your findings. Insights might describe the reason a group of users act a certain way. They are actionable and inform decision-making. (5 Whys help uncover them)
Types of diagrams for synthesis
Affinity Maps: cluster by theme
Two-by-two Matrix: Use this approach when your data reveals two spectrums of categories or themes.
Decision Tree: Show a process and highlight key decision points by organizing your data into a user journey.
Venn Diagram: Uncover similarities and differences across multiple categories.
Avoid the “analysis paralysis” of being stuck between Observe and Reflect by
only collecting as much data as you have time to synthesize.
How to collect just enough data to not be paralyzed
Digitize your data—this makes it easy to share, search, and revisit.
Research a question or topic for one week, then spend the second week synthesizing data collected.
Over time, combine your weekly synthesis documents to uncover larger themes and tell more complete stories about your users’ experiences.
Once you’ve synthesized your data into actionable insights you might be able to:
Write drafts of Hills
Write needs statements for your users
Make a prototype
Make a persona
It’s helpful to do an Empathy Map before an _____ because many of the inputs overlap.
As-is Scenario Map
Where an Empathy Map helps you step into your users’ shoes, As-is Scenario Maps help you
gain a better understanding of your users’ current workflow, experience, and pain points.
As-Is Scenario Map, step 1
On a large section of wall space, hang a few large white stickies side by side. Draw four rows all the way across the stickies and label them Phases, Doing, Thinking, and Feeling.
As-Is Scenario Map, step 2
Next, brainstorm what your users are Doing, Thinking, and Feeling. Use your Empathy Map as a reference and copy over any findings to the As-is Scenario Map.
Pro-tip: Copy these onto new sticky notes or photograph your original Empathy Map before moving the notes.
As-Is Scenario Map, step 3
To identify Phases, review and cluster the Doing, Thinking, and Feeling rows. Group similar actions, thoughts, and feelings together.
Take a look at the order of the steps and ask yourself: “Is this the real order? Should I rearrange anything?” Draw rough columns that represent the unique phases of your user’s experience. Give each phase a name.
As-Is Scenario Map, step 4
Identify the highs, the lows, and any gaps in your user’s journey. Circle and label areas that are particularly positive or negative for your user, as well as blank areas where you need to learn more. Work these blank areas into your next research plan.
Clickable prototype:
a digital experience (e.g. website, mobile app) that people interact with directly, even if the back-end system isn’t functioning.
These experiences can be made with prototyping software (e.g. Invision, Sketch), or directly in code. The point is to show complex screen flows, explain functionality, or test specific interactions with users.
Complex flow-chart:
a diagram that shows the possible user paths through a system.
Flow charts can show a user going through a physical experience, like going through airport security, or a digital experience, like purchasing a car online.
Service blueprint:
a specific diagram that shows all angles of a user’s experience as a system. It represents the point of view of the end user, the service providers, and their technology systems.
These are powerful artifacts that layer multiple human interactions with the technological systems that make those experiences possible.
After Big Idea Vignettes, The first step is to evaluate each idea against these criteria (prioritization grids)
Will this idea deliver business value?
Will this idea have a positive impact on our users’ experience?
Can we build this idea with the resources at hand?
Prioritization Grid tips
Don’t dwell on the no-brainers
Feasibility isn’t about tech (HR & GTM also important)
Consider the market – user importance is how well you address user needs as well as how the idea compares against others in the market
we continuously engage in design research and prototyping…
When we move between moments of making, reflecting, observing, and back again
everything we make is a prototype. No idea or solution is ever done. It’s simply ___
ready: ready to launch, ready to test, ready for feedback.
“evaluative” research
purpose is to evaluate an idea, user flow, or prototype.
- learn whats not working
- find out what people will do in realistic scenarios
- Understand how your users think about abstract concepts
how might a prototype or idea change as a result of research?
Small usability changes: move buttons around on a website so that the actions are more clear to users.
Content changes: replace the words or images on an app so the message makes more sense to users.
Structure updates: change the order of different tasks within a process.
two tools that pair well together to do evaluative research
cognitive walkthrough and feedback grid
A Cognitive Walkthrough is
a method to test a prototype or solution with a user. You show them the prototype, give them a task to complete. Then the user completes the task while saying their thoughts out loud while you observe. This way, you get insight into what the user’s reaction is to the various elements of the experience in real time.
A Feedback Grid is
a synthesis tool for capturing feedback of any kind. It works particularly well with the Cognitive Walkthrough because it separates findings into categories that are relevant to testing.
For cognitive walkthrough research plan, answer these questions (5)
What questions do you want to answer? What are you going to test? What scenario do you want to recreate? What task will the user perform? What types of users will you need to test with?
Tips for CW interview
- don’t go alone – bring someone to take notes
- arrive early to setup, make sure that everyone sees the screen
- print out 2 interview guides
- prepare phone to do transcripts
- introduce everyone in the room
- make the interviewee comfortable
- give a brief description of the product
Dig deeper when…
the user has a clear reaction (like, “OK!” - why did they say that, what did they expect?)
CW are best for overall products - T?F
False, it’s best for specific tasks
Hills related to agile
Hills are like themes, that link to epics, that link to user stories
One way to keep teams focused on the Hill at hand is to
pair Hills with Experience-Based Roadmaps, to show what user enablement will be delivered over time, and in what order
Questions to ask during experience-based roadmapping
when will you deliver on the ideas and prototypes you have created? what’s the scale of the user outcome? what user value will you create?
How Experience-based Roadmaps are different from your average roadmap or delivery plan.
They don’t only describe project work, but primarily dictate when a user will be enabled to do different things. They focus on the people using the product, service, or whatever is made, instead of the underlying technology or functionality.
The near-term enablements often take the form of
Hills.
As you go further into the future, the enablements become fuzzier, or less defined, because without learning from how the near-term ideas will play out when implemented, it’s less clear what should come next.
Playbacks are
the way we continuously inform each other of our work and our users’ stories across complex teams and systems. They are story-driven presentations that create a shared vision by focusing on user needs and user value.
Consider these elements and how you might arrange them to tell your story:
an introduction of your users, their goals, and needs
the user’s As-is Scenario, including pain points and opportunities for improvement
research insights
market opportunities
the user’s To-be Scenario, illustrated by a prototype of their new experience
a plan of action: Hills and an Experience-based Roadmap
Each part of the loop provided a playback and now
at the end, the final playback concatenates smaller playbacks
