Design Thinking Holds Tremendous Value for Businesses
No one can challenge the importance of great designs, which are a seamless combination of beauty, aesthetics, simplicity, and comprehensibility. Top-of-the-line designs are simple but incredibly powerful in conveying a sense of purpose and direction. Its utility stems from the fact that it is immensely successful in responding to a user's need. However, apart from understanding these characteristics of a good design, it is important for a business to properly comprehend the ROI that such designs generate so that they can be doubly sure that the time and money spent was worth it. The answer to this question, in fact, is pretty simple. You do not have to go much beyond looking at the numbers. Modern organizations operating in a rather dynamic and complex business environment are realizing increasingly that quality designs can give them an edge by helping them respond efficiently to the ever-changing consumers' needs and preferences. Top Fortune 500 names like IBM, Apple, Google, Nike, Disney etc. have underlined time and gain the role of creative designs in helping them achieve their objectives and drive business growth.
Design thinking, which seeks to combine seamlessly desirability for customers, viability for businesses, and feasibility for technology, is not a new concept as people mistakenly believe. It has been evolving since 1950 and has now become a force to reckon with in the business world owing to its ability to contribute to the bottom line.
Popularized by Tim Brown (CEO of IDEO, a global design firm), design thinking is "a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success."
Design Thinking — what it is
Design thinking, often called a philosophy, a culture, as well as a methodology, is an approach to creative problem solving that makes critical inputs in developing unique products centered on human needs. It is also important to remember that designs are not just there for aesthetical or visual purposes; their primary objective is to serve a business's interest by driving its sales and profits.
Top corporations' distinct inability to create products centered around their customers' specific unmet needs gave rise to the idea of design thinking. As such, design thinking, at its core, arises from and revolves around customers. It takes into account people's ethnographic background, motivation, values, needs, requirements, habits, desires etc. Design thinking as such takes a more humane approach by shifting the focus from being seen as a business-centric engineering solution to one that revolves around customers.
According to Charlie Cannon, Chief Design Officer at Epic Decade, design thinking is "the application of design techniques, design methods, and design frames of mind, not for the production of new artifacts or objects, but to the application of developing new models of business value, potentially new business themselves […] from the design of things to the design of ideas."
According to Fast Company, "the company's key discovery is that design thinking is not about the roles that people occupy; it's about people, and their interest to collaborate, be creative, participate, seek to understand, have empathy, and create solutions […] and the unexpected results that come with it."
IEEE, the world's largest professional organization technically, estimates in its article "Why Software Fails" that the amount spent on IT projects worldwide is approximately $1 trillion a year.
The organization in its report emphasizes that user-centered design failures like incomprehensible requirements, miscommunication between customers and developers, and petty politics indulged in by stakeholders are responsible for project failure in 25 percent of the cases.
"Fixing an error after development is up to 100 times as expensive as it would have been before development."
– Susan Weinschenk, in the animated video "ROI of User Experience"
To avoid such costly mistakes and attain your objectives, it is best to outsource design work to India where highly competent and knowledgeable designers can help you develop better products at a faster rate. Hire designers who have proven expertise in the field and you could enjoy huge cost savings.
