Product design with design thinking

As a dreamer, you will need to focus on generating ideas without judgment, evaluation or restrictions. This position is meant to unlock as many ideas as possible form the team. From this position, you aren’t aware of any barriers, budget restrictions, technology limitations, etc. Dream big! Ask yourselves: What do we really want? How do we imagine our solution? What would be the ideal product or solution? Build on other team members' ideas and re-shape those ideas to dream bigger

Cluster the best ideas before you move to the next step. Move the ideas to the critic position. Note: Some teams move forward with one idea per session to keep the meeting short.

From the best ideas/idea, start figuring out what steps and resources you would need to take to make that possible. Think of this like an action plan required to make those ideas a reality. Ask yourselves: What would need to be true to make this possible? How can we apply this idea? What would be our action plan? What would be our timeline and why? What resources would we need? What would facilitate the process? Tip: Believe that those ideas are possible before you start finding the reasons why the idea is not possible.

Now you have an action plan, so you and your team will focus on finding solutions and tackling roadblocks. Ask yourselves: What are the key barriers? What problems do you see? What could go wrong with this idea? Would this idea satisfy all our needs? For how long? What is missing? How important is what we are missing? What are the weaknesses?

Add the test or experiment number here if you are experimenting with this idea multiple times.

Describe your solution and provide information about your proposal.

Add your sketches, colors, materials, price comparison, etc

Send your prototype or a link to your online app/webiste to your end user and film how they use your solution. Share the link to that video here.

Look at you user using your prototype and evaluate how the use it. Where are they struggling? Are they reaching the goal? What do they think? What's their reaction? How much would they pay for it?

Start by finding information online, which is the easiest way to gather data quickly. Write down a number of places where you customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data. Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. Comments on these sites are excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel. Place special emphasis on posts where customers define their fears, needs, habits, and personal dreams. Add all the information to the board.

After everybody is done in the previous step, review and discuss all findings. Takedown individual customer ‘attributes’ onto sticky notes. Add one attribute per sticky note. This will be your Persona board. You may choose to group notes on the board into similar sections such as: 1 Background 2 Demographic 3 Goals 4 Motivations 5 Frustrations/Fears 6 Skills You may choose to change those sections. You will know when you have enough information when you feel like you know this person. You should be able to imagine their beliefs, passions, aspirations, fears, hobbies, etc. Continue finding information until you feel like the personality of your persona is fully-formed and feels as real as a close friend. Write down a name for this Persona or use the most common name that comes up in your customer files. This will help your team to have empathy for the customer as if it were a real person. You may also choose to have more in-depth interviews to flesh out your Persona, and to choose a stock photo for your Persona.

In this step, brainstorm elements for the life narrative of your persona and add it to the board. If you have interviewed customers for this Persona, it is ideal to use a life story that is a composite of those of your real customers. Note: Add additional Persona templates to the board if you have more than one different customer segments. Alternatively, start a new session using the "Persona" tool or use the "Persona with card decks" tools for multiple personas.

By now the board should be complete. You and your team should know how your customer looks, what they say, what they think, how they feel. If the picture is not yet clear, go back and add more details to complete the board. In this step, discuss the completed board with all participants and highlight important points.

Make sure you have a persona in mind before starting this exercise. If you don't yet have one, create one using our "Personas" tool, or have a pre-defined persona in mind. You may add a link to the persona on the board. Before proceeding, you should know basic information about the target: such as Age, Sex, Lifestyle, Hobbies, Status, Education, Location, Interest, Groups, etc. You should also know key characteristics that will differentiate your user from other people. Make sure everyone understands who they are before you start building the empathy map.

Start by finding information online (the easiest way to gather data quickly). Write down a number of places where your customers may hang out online, and make sure your team searches for recent data. Excellent places to search are online forums, Facebook groups, comments sections of popular blog posts, Google reviews, and Amazon reviews. These pages are often excellent places to observe the way your customers really feel. Note: Doing some research before you open the board and discuss this session further with your team can facilitate the process.

An empathy map is easy and visual matrix that captures knowledge about a user’s behaviors and attitudes. It is a useful tool to helps teams better understand their users. Empathy maps have four elements: What does she/he SEE?** What is she/he finding in her/his daily routine? What is she/he experiencing? Maybe people, activities, or things. What are the people around her/him doing? What is she/he watching, reading, and exposed to in her/his environment? What marketplace could influence her/him? What does she/he DO and SAY?** What are her/his behaviors? How does she/he conduct herself/himself?Why? What is her/his attitude? What is she/he saying? This could change depending on where she/he is, who she/he is with, or is nearby. Attitude can be actions towards others or how she/he conveys something. How her/his behavior changing recently? What does she HEAR?** What is the user hearing and how is it influencing her/him? What things impact her/his thinking? —not superfluous information streams. Influencers should focus on the people, things, or places that influence how the user acts. Consider personal connections with family, friends, and coworkers along with what is being said in the media by bloggers, social media influencers, and experts in fields.

Write down a concise definition of your problem or challenge. It should be a short, single sentence. You can create it as a question, as well. For example: "Improve my user experience design." or "How can we improve our UX design?"

Next, define the problem in terms of consequences and what solving the problem could mean. Think about the ultimate impact achieved once the problem is solved or reasons you might want to solve this problem. For example: "we want to improve UX design so that older people will be able to buy online easily" or "we want to improve UX design so that more users make it through the checkout process". All participants should write down the potential benefits of solving the problem, and the consequences of not solving it.

Now break down the barriers you're facing. They could be: Time-based Resource-based Geographic Cultural Competition-based Skills-based etc. Write as many barriers down as you can.

Define the challenge again after thinking about all topics and barriers. Use the perspectives you've just put together to redefine the problem statement.

Define your design challenge/ product challenge or problem you are trying to solve. Define your goals.

For example: Create a Card deck to guide the conversation. Provide Pictures and add them to the board Zoom or Skype call (videorecording) Email invitation Prepare the introduction, questions and the thank you message Gift Card - The Interviews rely on the user giving their opinions, recalling events, and discussing them. If the event is hard to explain or recall use card decks or images to help the user remember.

Hi, my name is [ NAME ] and this is [ NAME ]! As explained during our [EMAIL, PREVIOUS CONVERSATIONS] we are conducting research about [BUYING BEHAVIOURS, CLEANING BEHAVIOURS, etc]. The purpose of this research is to ...

Create a list of general questions. We have a few categories on the board based on the purpose of the questions. Add additional categories if you need them.

Add all your questions on a timeline.

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Add alternative questions. Add your assumptions. Use the empathy board to understand your user and create these assumptions.

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Follow the process and the questions during the interview. During or after the interview add the notes to the board. Compare those notes with your assumptions. Provide a link to the video for future references. For multiple interviews add their name or use different sticky note colors. Show some empathy by asking related questions.

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Important tips: Don't make assumptions. Ask the user and challenge yourself on those assumptions. Make sure you take notes. You need to write down exactly how each person talks and says things. Do not take notes using your own words or a representation of what you think they mean. Observe their behavior and micromovements. Take notes of facial movements, pauses, etc

You can open the board to discuss and analyze findings with your team. Once everyone is happy with the analysis you can move forward and share your highlight and key insights here. Keep in mind that User Research Interviews are not used for product testing. these interviews will help you know whether people believe they would use a design or idea. The Interviews rely on the user giving their opinions, recalling events, and discussing them.

During the interview or phone call, keep this board open or take notes. Add one insight per sticky notes. Evaluate how people feel and their emotions. Do they sound excited? Are they confused?

Place product features and ideas you want to discuss onto the sticky board, and into the correct column. We have two: Must-have: Excluding one of these qualities or features will be negative because the customer/user expects it or because it's very attractive to the customer.** Must-avoid: Excluding one of these qualities or features will be positive.**

As team lead: Provide a few options As a team member: vote

Bezos team writes a 6-page memo. We believe a 1-2 page memo can be sufficient. Ask you a manager or team lead for more details. Share the link here or add a document inside the board.

Read the memo and share your thoughts Additional: You can add notes inside the board or save your thought for the meeting/discussion.

We recommend reading this blog post: How to lead goal-oriented meetings? Decide if you are going to encourage everyone to read for 20 min during the meeting in silence. You can add a timer, and everyone can add notes and thoughts inside the whiteboard during those 20-30 mins. Once everyone is done reading the discussion can start. Before you start the discussion/meeting: Choose a ‘Facilitator’ Prepare and specify the goal of the meeting. This must be clear and understood by the team for you to be productive. Make sure to have a clear metric and decision-making process so everyone is in sync, and you can close your meeting with a final decision. Nova provides the necessary evaluation and discussion tools that will help you have a transparent and goal-oriented decision-making process.

Write down one or more hypotheses about how you think people will answer each question from the previous step.

Prepare the board with questions or any images or information you need during the session.

Add them as participants. If this is not a group interview dialogue you need to create a new session per participant.

Before you start working on the whiteboard: Make sure your participants/guests are not able to join the session. Start: Open the whiteboard and analyze the information and look for interesting concepts you didn’t know. Also, check your hypotheses and compare them with your findings. Tips: Discuss with your team your findings and how you can translate those insights into key and strategic product features, value propositions and ads.

During the interview or phone call, keep this board open or take notes. Add one insight per sticky notes. Evaluate how people feel and their emotions. Do they sound excited? Are they confused?