Capturing knowledge in the design thinking process and keeping the decision clear

1. The SUMMARY

From several design thinking projects that we have experienced, these projects will generate a lot of knowledge and take a lot of decisions in a very short time. As time went on, the knowledge became blurred, and it became less clear why the decision had been made. The resulting uncertainty can cause confusion to the design thinking team. In this article, we will use an example to illustrate how to capture the knowledge gathered in the design thinking process using the influence map (Impact map, a mind map), and how to make clear decisions with the impact guide map.

2 motives

Design thinking has become a perfect methodology of design innovation thought. An important advantage of design thinking is that the team can make a prototype very quickly, make the idea seem like, and use prototypes to collect feedback from stakeholders.

However, it also has weaknesses. A lot of knowledge is created in the design thinking process, which is difficult to capture with structured methods. In addition, several times during the project are refocused. The design thinking team needs a foundation for making good decisions and documenting them. (a) capturing knowledge and (b) having the basis for making and documenting decisions. Both of these can be supported by the impact mapping.

3 Tools

Figure 1 is the tool to explore in this article. Design thinking is a process tool, and the influence of map is the structured tool that we should focus on.

Figure 1. Tools

3.1 Design Thinking

People are often less familiar with the problems they are trying to solve. The solution created in this way can only be partially compliant or completely inconsistent with potential expectations. The design thinking process can help us overcome this difficulty. First, after analysis, we can understand the problem correctly and comprehensively. Based on the understanding of the problem, you can make a statement about the problem that is worth solving. We can get ideas and use prototypes to validate these ideas.

In Figure 1, the design thinking process is projected into the learning-build-measurement cycle proposed by Eric Riss 1. This leads to three stages of understanding, gestation and testing. All stages have divergent periods (generating as much information as possible) and convergent periods (focusing on the most promising facts). We use color to distinguish which artifacts are processed at which stage in the process.

The understanding phase is to get a regular understanding of the initial challenges. The challenge is recorded on the magenta instant sticker. Then analyze the stakeholders (yellow) who are affected by the challenge. Finally, the team gained insights into the needs (orange) of relevant people by interviewing, exchanging ideas in the identity of stakeholders or looking for analogies in other areas. The overall outcome of this phase is usually a role and a question of how we might (how might we-hmw). For example, the HMW question may be: "How can we help readers learn something new in design thinking".

The goal of the incubation phase is to find as many ideas as possible to answer HMW questions. Then find one or several of these ideas most likely, and then test them. After creating prototypes from these ideas, the results of this phase are very much like.

The goal of the testing phase is to get feedback from the relevant person on the prototype. These feedbacks affect all artifacts built in the previous phase-challenges themselves, stakeholders, and their needs. Of course, these feedback can also give us a deeper insight into how these ideas meet the needs of the stakeholders.

3.2 Influence Guide Chart

As described in Goico Atich's Book 2, Impact Mapping is a powerful methodology that allows you to focus on goals-why, find the right role-who, get the right impact-how, and ultimately define the right deliverables-what.

In the design thinking project, we find it useful to build artifacts (related people, requirements, ideas) during divergent periods of different stages. When the convergence period is refocused on the most promising artifacts, it can also be helpful to influence the mapping. These artifacts are mainly HMW problems and prototypes.

Because of the use of impact maps in a design thinking project, we've identified an important gap that makes participants feel uncomfortable. So we started to modify the impact map. The first level two (why and WHO) match the third level will lead to confusion or extra steps in the process. One of the main principles of design thinking is to focus on the needs of the people involved. But these requirements are not directly connected to the impact of the influence on the map. Of course, they are relevant, as these requirements are the driving forces described in the impact that allow the relevant person to act (e.g. the reader of this article wants to learn something new (demand), and the effect is that they will read this article).

So what we put in the diagram is not the influence of the relevant people, but the needs found in the design thinking process. We have accumulated enough experience for the impact map used in the next design thinking project. The color shown in Figure 1 also shows how we can use the impact map according to our own needs. The challenge is in the central position of the impact map (magenta), the relevant is the second (yellow), the requirement is third (orange), then the next level is a variety of ideas (green).

In addition, we begin to collect the deduced HMW problems in the modified influence map as the starting point of the gestation stage. This phase will generate a lot of ideas for possible solutions. We add them all to the impact map as a possible deliverable (what). We then use the influence map again to focus on the ideas that are most likely to be used to create prototypes. The next iteration starts from this. The feedback that is collected may force us to change the challenges, the needs of those involved, or the ideas that have emerged.