What Innovation Is and the Five Stages of Design Thinking
Have you ever seen something at school and thought, "Why is it like this? It could be better"? For example, a crowded canteen queue or a bin full of mixed rubbish. That feeling is the start of innovation.
What is innovation?
Innovation is a new idea that is actually used and makes people's lives a little better. Innovation does not have to be high-tech either: a numbered sandal rack in front of the school prayer room can be an innovation if it stops sandals from getting mixed up.
We call it STEAM innovation because we use many fields at once: science to understand causes, technology and engineering to build tools, arts to make solutions attractive and easy to understand, and mathematics to measure and compare.
Design thinking: thinking like a designer
Design thinking is a way of solving problems that starts with people, not with tools. It was made popular by the d.school at Stanford University and the design company IDEO. It has five stages:
- Empathize: observe and interview the people who have the problem.
- Define: state the most important problem in one sentence.
- Ideate: collect as many solution ideas as possible.
- Prototype: make a simple, cheap version of the best idea.
- Test: try the prototype with users and listen to their feedback.
The order does not have to be a straight line. While testing, you may discover something new and go back to empathizing or ideating. Going back and forth like this is called iteration, and it is normal.
An example at school
Nadia's team wants to tackle rubbish in the canteen. At first they want to build a smart bin with a sensor right away. After observing, they find that bins already exist, but the labels have faded and the bins are far from the eating tables. The right solution turns out to be much simpler. This is the power of design thinking: we do not guess, we find out.
The design thinking canvas
In this course you use a design thinking canvas: one sheet of A3 paper (or a digital document) divided into seven boxes: User, Empathy Findings, Problem Statement, Ideas, Prototype, Feedback, and Next Steps. You will fill in this canvas bit by bit in every module.
The golden rule: fall in love with the problem, not with your first solution.