What is Design Thinking - Innovate with Brandgraphy's Guide to Creativity

Design thinking is putting a structured, analytical thought behind the creation of a product, service or a digital/physical experience, to deliver the outcome in such a way that it fulfills the criteria of the client/organisation who has ordered the service, under their budget and constraints.

People also define Design as a - way to solve problems. To design something, is essentially to create/manufacture it from a raw idea on paper to a fully functional reality - imagine a bridge, a small scissor, a cradle, a spatula, a nose ring, a chair, a bulldozer, all are designed by teams that comprise of designers, project heads and the client herself/himself.

Design is not an isolated excercise, it is done as team work. Design is also not an activity that one does for only themselves, it is a process to serve the need of another person. So, studying the person for whom the service is called for; is extremely important. Designers commonly refer to the concerned person as the USER of the product/service.

Let's make you think like a designer now, it's the best way to learn, to do it in the head! right!

Task: Design a chair for seating school children in 6th grade

Solution: Begins by asking questions about the user - in this case male and female students, so the challenge already has 2 genders with different biological needs when it comes to a chair.

• For how long the students would sit on this chair? How would the ergonomics work? How can the chair support the spine, for children at a growing age without affecting it?

• What kind of table would be used along with the chair? - one needs to decide the space that needs to be alloted for legs to fit comfortably in a table-chair arrangement

• What is the space of a typical classroom in this school, what's the floor plan, one needs to think of the total area one single chair would occupy, and how may students on average sit in one classroom? Is it 20, 30? 40? higher?

• What should be the colours of the chair? Are we using the chair as a means to evoke joy as well?

• What material the chair should use? Schools are for the long term, a chair must last 15-20 years, should it be wood, hard recyclable plastic, can we combine the materials?

• Should the chair be produced in different heights to be more inclusive of all kinds of body shapes?

• Should the chair be also customizable for a differently-abled child?

• Is the chair easy to move around for 6th graders?

• What is budget for producing one chair, from the school's end, remember, when it comes to design, budget is the first and foremost factor in selecting material.

• Some thoughts for the the chair's production timeline - Can the chair design be easily duplicated by any kind of manufacturer, are the chair parts readily available, the technology used to produce the chair, is that something that would stay for 10-12 years?

• Can the chair design be fixed by local carpenters easily in an event of it breaking down?

• How should the chair handles be? Thin, thick etc.

What happens next? Once we decide, the answers to all these questions, our way is clear, we get the clarity to go ahead in a specific direction and build a sketch of the chair, which will go into production for the first physical prototype, the chair can be tested in the classroom, in a real environment with students from both genders and if everything feels appropriate, one can into production at scale. The designer must get user feedback from the chair users - the 6th graders and implement the feedback for the final prototype. 

This is called Product design, a realm of design where one can be commissioned to build anything - from a cage for cockatiels to car seats for automobiles. Product design usually covers a wide range of discipline and many designers specialise into what they like the most, for example - jewellery design is a niche, watch design is another. Let’s look at some of the core areas that design schools train designers for.

User Interface Design 

A user interface refers to application design in information technology. Here, the designer is responsible to create an intuitive, easy to navigate application for a specific user group. Think new age Fintech apps and how they are so different from the archaic banking apps of yesterday. Today, apps are all about an excellent user experience - where UI, app speed and quality of services delivered in time; matter the most to people. Take for example, a food delivery app, finding the food to order should be easy, processing the fee too, and finally the food ordered should arrive on time, otherwise no UI can save you from a user’s disappointment, this brings us to the next one - Service Design.

Service Design

A fairly new area for the industries to recognise in the past few years, though Service design has been around since 1992, it wasn't a well known term until now. Service design is all about creating an effective process to deliver the best experience to the end client/customer while making sure that all resources are effectively utilised.

Imagine a Coffee shop chain, a goods delivery

service, a fashion retail store etc. It is Service design that differentiates brands competing in the same space, by the mere difference in experience in the way a customer "feels" and all brand personnels, processes, tools involved in the act of service delivery have to be deliberate about it.

Service designers create very detailed user journey map and a blue print of the entire shopping process, service design is applied internally as well, imagine setting up a response system for a rocket launch, you could use a good service designer here, what do you say?

Watch this talk to know more...

Industrial Design

Think everyday objects - scissors, spoons, bulb holders, coffee cups, door handles, floor lamps, switches, mixers and grinders, irons etc. the list goes on, Industrial design is focussed on producing objects and devices that are meant to be used by a wide variety of the public, for the masses you may say, with a keen eye on ergonomics. Good design is always invisible, because it makes the experience of using something effortless. And, Industrial design is a great example of design as a practice that aims to provide smooth functionality to the public. Let's think further, imagine the way a metro rail seating is designed, imagine a ship's automatic door, imagine something as tiny as a salt shaker, everywhere; industrial designers spend their days on creating and improving services and experiences for things that need to utilised for public at large. Do look at this video to get a glimpse on how industrial designers think.

Fashion Design

Think shoes that can sense your movement, breathe better, or just really light enough for you to move around. It all comes from Fashion designers, creating products for us to wear for pleasure, function and comfort. They execute the the responsibility of creating garments and accessories from textile or other materials that they find appropriate. Fashion design requires a geometrical thinking, any garment or accessory is drawn on a piece of paper first, the process is called "Pattern-making".

People usually associate an artistic mind with clothes, but a designer should be geometrically really strong in being able to deliver the right fit, as the human body contours very uniquely for everyone. Nowdays, the retail industry has some standard fittings that can be used widely for producing T-shirts, dresses and such. Here is a video of a typical pattern making workshop which throws light on how it actually works.

Fashion design is classified into Menswear, Women's wear, Kids Wear, Lingerie, and Accessory Design also falls into that umbrella, but it's a field of depth on it's own, they all require niche experience to master the perfection of producing goods and garments for each category. Fashion is also an area where the visual touch in terms of colour sense, craft, embroidery etc. plays a very vital role, for clothes are like canvas to a fashion designer.

Design thinking process opens up the brain to a new way of thinking, which is entirely different from academic thinking, it's a way to start on a problem, but come out on the other end with a solution, sometimes with many trials on the way.

It's a very interesting route for someone interested in creating products, building brands or improving processes, no matter where they are, everything can be improved. If you are someone who is interested in creativity with functionality, then this is the way! Design can help you innovate and come up with novel solutions which impact everyone we know.