The design has been viewed to solve problems for a long time. It’s helpful to create products, spaces, models, experiences, or other forms. It has been used only in creative fields that require designers to achieve tangible goals.
The design can make real change in any age and any field. The biggest problems are not in creative areas, which is not valid! Design is the best place to find the issues of relevance to society, the environment, and humanity.
What is Design Thinking?
A design approach to community development means using strategic and physical design thinking to affect change. According to Stanford Social Innovation Review [1], design thinking refers to “using design techniques for more complex problems such as finding low-cost healthcare around the world.”
This adds an element of humanity to traditional community planning by using both traditional and non-traditional methods of reaching a community’s conclusion.
Design thinking is a collaborative effort with other members of the community. In contrast to the past, where a small group only made design decisions of designers, design thinking involves working with customers. The community to find innovative design elements that can positively affect the environment is now possible.
Design Thinking: Can it Benefit Society?
In simple terms, Design Thinking is the problem-solving approach adopted by creative professionals, and applying it isn’t as challenging as applying rocket science. It has a tremendous potential to make this world and Society better, more inclusive, happier places to live in. By doing a Great Learning’s design thinking Stanford course, one can understand the intricacies.
Let’s continue to think about Design Thinking as an excellent tool for solving more significant social problems.
What is Design Thinking all about?
We will describe design thinking as a tool for problem-solving. It involves looking at the known aspects of a problem to find the more obscure factors. It seeks to understand the problem iteratively. Also, it analyzes its many facets to find the root causes. Design thinking challenges existing conditions to open up new ways of thinking and acting.
This strategy’s key concept is its user-centric approach for solving problems. It starts by understanding and analyzing how users interact with existing solutions. Then, newer and better design solutions are created through iterative steps.
Design thinking can be associated with many phases/stages/modes. The most common are the five below:
- Empathize: To empathize means to understand the user’s needs. It is to place oneself in their shoes and to be able to relate to what they are encountering and what they anticipate from a design solution.
- Definition: To define means to identify and solve the problem. Then, analyze it using the knowledge gained over time.
- Ideate: The idea of challenging situations and creating innovative solutions.
- Prototyping: This is the process of creating solutions and materializing them.
- To test the practicality and compatibility of the solutions, they are tested in real-life situations.
Design Thinking to solve social problems
Social issues and environmental problems are two areas where design thinking can make a difference outside creative fields. Many studies have proven the same, and such strategies are indeed helpful to find social issues. The human-based design thinking approach can be powerful in liberating societies from irrelevant status quos.
You can apply design thinking to social problems to design product-service combinations to solve such problems. The social problem can then be identified as a design issue. After that, you can solve it by creating services, models, and experiences. These projects and instances have been seen in various settings around the world. They either seek to improve and optimize existing conditions or create new frameworks for a redefined function.
Design thinkers are often drawn from different backgrounds and fields. This is so that they can see the same problem through multiple perspectives and angles. Design thinkers interested in social issues must have unique skills to contribute to the result. They also need to be open-minded, curious, optimistic, and capable of learning from failure.
Design Thinking Skills are Important
Design thinking offers a process that allows for applying innovation. Out of plenty, this is the main benefit of design thinking. Although trial and error proved to be a surprising way to find out what works and not, it is often costly, time-consuming, and ineffective. However, design thinking can be a more efficient way to create innovative solutions.
Design thinking can be a clearly defined process that allows for strategic innovation [2]. It can be fabulously advantageous for your career, both in terms of advancement and salary. This may shorten your journey to attaining success, and we all dream about the same!
Are you a fan of design thinking?
There are many innovative ways to problem-solving, and design thinking is one example. As there are so many benefits of design thinking, one may quickly feel attracted to this concept.
It’s helpful to check how others greet problems and evaluate whether you have the same tools available. However, you must know your course and deliver what customers and users want. You can get the proper training to master it through design thinking courses online from Great Learning.
An online workshop or course that anchors on design thinking can be taken. If upgrading your design thinking skills is your design or needing a more collaborative environment, this can be a good option.
Conclusion
Every Society has multiple layers, which is why we have to deal with every social problem. Society is the best place to find solutions to all these problems – it’s contextual, localized, and relevant.
Design thinking is a powerful way for solving social problems and providing efficient, functional solutions that arise from Society.
As designers and design thinkers, it is up to us to go beyond traditional problem-solving methods towards more dynamic, more suited, and more essential means of making the world a much better place.
Ref 1 – https://ssir.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation