This CX Mini Masterclass provides an overview of design thinking and how this methodology can be used to craft new experiences, refine journeys or build solutions around the needs of other stakeholders. Show host and customer experience expert, Julia Ahlfeldt, explains the 5 key phases of the design thinking approach and how CX professionals can incorporate this into their repertoire. If you want to learn about the relationship between design thinking and CX management, then this episode is for you.

Not just another business buzzword

You've probably heard the term "design thinking" before. Unlike "customer experience" or "user experience" (UX was the subject of episode 56), the concept of design thinking has been around for a bit longer. It also has a much less nebulous definition.

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.Tim Brown, Executive Chair of IDEO

The origins of design thinking start in the late 1950s and early 1960s as creativity techniques for designers and engineers. Through the 1960s and 1970s design thinking methods and theories began to take hold in the fields of industrial design, architecture and product design. By the 1980s and 1990s people began talking about this in terms of human-centered design. During this time, design thinking firms such as IDEO came into being and the most innovative and forward-thinking organizations started to embed design-centered business management. From 2000 onward, we’ve seen the steady rise of design thinking as a proper business discipline that can be applied by organizations to many different contexts.

The 5-step methodology

Design thinking aims to solve problems at the intersection of three things: desirability, viability and feasibility. Design thinking methodologies push teams to balance these competing forces. Unlike CX, which doesn't have a set approach or methodology, classic design thinking has an adaptable 5-step approach. This is often represented as a double diamond.

* Empathize - arguably the most important phase of the process. This is all about understanding the user, their needs, feelings and perspective through research. When we talk about putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes, we’re essentially talking about establishing empathy. How can we build something for someone if we don’t understand who they are?* Define - probably the step that most organizations neglect. Once we understand the user through empathizing, we need to leverage that information to establish their point of view and express the problem we want to solve. The more specific, the better. In design thinking the problem is often posed as a “How Might We” statement that give clues about the user and their needs. An example problem statement might sound something like: How might we provide quick and healthy meal options to the busy working mom on the go, this statement could experience several rounds of re-framing to make it more and more specific. Einstein once said that if he had an hour to solve a problem, he’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem. Einstein was onto something. * Ideation - this is what people often think about when they envision design thinking. They imagine word clouds and post-it notes and all kinds o...