Design thinking model emphasizes on the need to empathize with the customer in order to define the customer need and develop a product which has utility.
Prof. (Dr.) Deepshikha Kalra
Prof.(Dr.) Deepshikha Kalra is Dean at MERI College, New Delhi. She has more than 20 years of Experience in Teaching and Software Industry.she has been awarded with prestigious award of distinguished Faculty award by Ambassador of Bhutan .She is also the recipient of Iconic women creating better world for all by WEF.
She is MHRD certified Innovation Ambassador.Dr Kalra has been instrumental in developing courses on Economics of peace with HWPL South Korea and Design thinking with ETU Russia.
Design thinking is one concept, which is much talked about when it comes to business environment or when it comes to innovation. But let us understand what this design thinking is all about.
It’s a problem solving approach which is Human centric in nature. It is the form of thought that enables movement along the knowledge funnel and facilitates Out of Box thinking. The firms that master it will gain a nearly inexhaustible long term business advantage.Now, what is it? Let me explain you with a very simple example. Look at this picture.
This truck is stuck under the bridge because of the height of the bridge was lesser than the height of the truck. All the engineers of the organisation were called that how to move the truck, because neither they could break the bridge nor they could break the truck. Finally, the engineers came with an answer that there is no way out. Either we should break the bridge or we should dismantle the truck. But that was a very difficult situation. And then suddenly there was a passer by who was going around and he saw the problem .He immediately said, there is no need to dismantle, simply deflate the tyres of the truck. So height will go down and you will be able to move the truck. So what is it? It was a simple way of looking at the problem from a different angle. And that’s what design thinking is. It’s not that only management gurus are big experts can talk about design thinking. Anybody can talk about design thinking. It is how you look at the problem.
Design thinking focuses on accelerating the pace at which knowledge advances from mystery (an unexplainable problem) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guide us toward a solution) to algorithm (a replicable success formula) as knowledge moves through this knowledge funnel productivity grows and cost goes down .
And then that is called design algorithm and people keep on elaborating it only rather than looking at the other side too. Organisations need to relook at the information gained during the trip through knowledge funnel, in order to avoid blindsided. There could be some black spots, which are still not being considered in this particular algorithm, which can give a new way or a new dimension to this problem. Here I would refer to a case of McDonalds and Subway
What happened? MacDonalds was the market leader for Aegis in the US. To the extent that everywhere you could find the golden arc o when you used to move on the roads of US and they even started drive on delivery of Mac. The USP of MacDonald’s was meticulously designed layout of the store and well defined processes. There was no crisscross at all in the assembly line at all . That’s why they were able to deliver well in time ,people going to their offices in the morning, used to prefer Mac Burgers because of fast delivery resulting in to the growth & success of the brand . A lot of other companies, tried their luck in the segment of fast food , but they could not succeed.
Why? Because they were just working on developing a different kind of burger but then came one organisation which looked at the problem from a different angle, or when they studied the citizens of others, they found that yes, they want fast food but they want healthy fast food because now they are becoming more health conscious.
And that’s when Subway addressed to that problem, that black spot that consumers can make the sub in their own way with a variety options in the kind of sauces, vegetables, pickles etc. to the extent that one can even decide the kind of bread he/she wants and now it was burger only but a healthy one.
Design thinking model emphasizes on the need to empathize with the customer in order to define the customer need and develop a product which has utility.
