Leo

Annie
June
Quincy
Rocket

Five-Step Design Thinking Process

Step 1. Empathy
Janna: Hello! How are you guys feeling today?
*imaginary response na we’re feeling great*
Janna: That’s good!
Anyway are you ready to start learning about the five-step design thinking?
Random person: YES!
Can anyone guess what’s the first step?
Kristine: EMPATHY
Janna: Right, empathy is the first stage of the Design Thinking Process:
What is its purpose?​ To gain the empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to
solve.
How do you do this?​ You consult experts to find out more about the area of concern through
observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their experiences and
motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical environment to have a deeper
personal understanding of the issues involved.
Why is it important?​ It is crucial to a human-centred design process such as Design Thinking,
and empathy allows design thinkers to set aside his or her own​ assumptions​ about the world in
order to gain insight into users and their needs.

Step 2. Define (Quincy)

Gia: Hi Guys. Its me ____. Let’s start finding the next puzzle piece!!
Gia: Hey guys (pertaining to my groupmates) do you know anyone who could help me find the
next piece?
Groupmates: Janelle!!!!
Gia: Okay where is Janelle? Oh over there! Janelle! Do you know where the next puzzle piece
is located?
Gia: It’s a question mark! Do you know what it means?
Gia: That’s right! We are now in the Define Stage.
Gia:In the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered during
the Empathise stage. You will analyse your observations and synthesise them in order to define
the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point. You should seek to
define the problem as a ​problem statement​ in a human-centred manner.
Gia: ​The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish
features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems or, at the
very least, allow users to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty.

 
Step 3. Ideate
Zhai:Where can a puzzle piece be?
*thinking*
Zhai: Can it possibly be with Adele? Adele find it.
Zhai: Do you know what ideation is? I can’t hear you.
Zhai: Ideation is the design process whose main concern is idea generation. In here we create
ideas, analyze ideas and combine ideas.
Zhai: Hmm.. but why do we ideate.Who knows why we need to ideate.
Zhai: Hmm.. where did that box come from? I think there is something magical with this box.I
wonder what’s inside.
*tenentenenteneen*
*lalabas yung ideas* (Idea 1, Idea 2, Idea 3)
Zhai: Wow! Out of the box ideas ideas!
Gia: I cannot believe it!
Zhai: It is to transform our newly acquired knowledge to potential solutions. The point is not to
get the perfect idea but rather to come up with many ideas to choose from. In design thinking,
quality supersedes quantity. We just let our creativity run freely.

Brainstorming is one technique where synergy of ideas is taken advantage of. Building is
another technique. Ideas pop while building. While doing so, you might come up with
improvements along the way. Why not this? Why not that? What about if it’s like this? Others
include:bodystorming, mindmapping, and sketching. Once different ideas are formed, we
present them to the people we are trying to help in order to receive their feedbacks.

Step 4. Prototype
Wow! The planets are almost complete! On to our next planet…Chelsea. Chelsea. Can you
please look for the 5​th​ planet? I heard that it is violet in color and shines like a diamond! *Wait for
Chelsea to find the puzzle piece*
Chelsea, what do you think is the 5​th​ process based from that? (This hammer/pencil represents
Prototype) OR (Oh, you’re right! It is prototype!) What comes to your mind when we say
Prototype? *repeat what she said*
Here’s a short video showing what the prototyping process is. *Show the ‘funny’ video*
*witch pot* ‘Tangible’ ideas, ‘low resolution version’ of ideas, and ‘visual representation’, are all
terms referring to Prototype.
WHAT is a Prototype according to several sources?
According to Sarah Gibbons, Prototype involves building ‘real, tactile representations for a
subset of your ideas’. This stage aims at discovering what components of the ideas work and
which do not.
Margaret Rouse defined the Prototype stage as the step involving the creation of a “mock-up
that conveys the essence of a proposed solution”. The goal of this phase is “ to help the design
team weed out unworkable or impractical solutions and focus attention on ideas that are likely to
be approved by stakeholders”.
Dam and Siang specified that Prototype involves the production of a number of inexpensive,
scaled down versions of the product or specific features found within a product”. It is an
experimental phase wherein the constraints of the solutions or ideas are discovered which may
give a “better/more informed perspective of how real users would behave when interacting with
the end product”.
“Build to think and test to learn”, according to the Institute of Design at Stanford, the prototype
mode is “the iterative generation of artifacts intended to answer questions that get you closer to
your final solution”. Prototype is characterized as having low-resolution, quick and cheap to
make, but useful for eliciting feedback.
Designers are encouraged to do prototypes because it helps to problem-solve, to communicate
an idea, to fail quickly and cheaply, to test possibilities, and to manage the solution-building
process.

Step 5. Test

Michael: Do you know where is the next puzzle piece located?

*crowd answers*
Michael: Where is it Renz?
Michael: Oh there it is!
Michael: Let us see what the next puzzle piece tells us!
Michael: Oh it shows Testing, do you know why it shows ‘testing’?
Michael: I think it is the next step in the design thinking process after prototyping
Let us put it in the puzzle!
Michael: Now help me define ‘testing’
Michael: Testing is soliciting feedback, to the users of the prototype that you created. This is
another opportunity to empathize to people you are designing the prototype for.
It is important that you should not reduce to only asking whether they like the solution or not. A
tester should continue asking the reason behind every answer, you should never stop asking
“why”. A rule of thumb: always prototype as if you know you’re right, but test as if you know
you’re wrong—testing is the chance to refine your solutions and make them better. You should
also let the user interpret the prototype instead of selling the prototype to them and ask them to
compare because it can reveal latent needs.

Six-Step Design Thinking Process

Step 6. Implement
Michael: Now, we are near the completion of our puzzle, but before that we need one more
puzzle to go
Michael: Can you tell me where is the last puzzle piece?
Michael: I can’t hear youuu
Michael: Woah, there it is, thank you very much now we can put all the pieces together to
complete our puzzle
Michael: Our last puzzle piece tells us about the last step in the design thinking process, Do you
know what it is?
Michael: yes, that is right! Implementation
Implementation putting your vision into effect which is materialized. This is where we now
measure its ability to transform people’s lives based on the needs identified through empathy
earlier.