10 Benefits of Using Design Thinking for Innovation • Slash

The principles of design thinking can help you create products and services based on users’ needs. This approach comes with a series of advantages, allowing you to build solutions that convert users into loyal customers. So, in this article, we will explain the principles of design thinking. You will also learn the 10 benefits of applying design thinking methodologies to your upcoming projects to make user-centric products.

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What Do You Mean by the Principles of Design Thinking?

Before knowing the principles of design thinking, let’s learn what the term “design thinking” means.

Design thinking is an iterative approach that enables design and development teams to focus on issues and take action to overcome them. Through the design thinking method, teams can build problem-solving products by working on prototypes after understanding what customers really want.

The design thinking framework helps determine and identify problems faced by customers. Design thinking prepares great design thinkers with an enhanced vision to understand consumers’ needs. They look at a product through users’ engagement rather than from the company’s perspective or assumption of customer interaction.

Many design thinking examples verify how important it is to have a product backed by design thinkers. Likewise, there are several great design thinking books you can read to increase your knowledge.

Principles of Design Thinking Explained

Larry Leifer and Christoph Meinel from the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design proposed four principles of design thinking:

1. Human-Centric Perspective

The first rule is that in order to solve technical problems, you must always consider the human-centric approach.

2. Ambiguity

If needed, designers must think independently and creatively to find new and improved solutions.

3. Re-design

Design thinkers must learn how technology has benefited human needs in the past. At the same time, they must learn to understand these methods to satisfy user demands in the future.

4. Tangibility

Prototyping is the ideal way to gain knowledge of how a new product can fulfill customers’ needs. This rule insists on continuous experimentation, creative criticism, and discussion until the solution is found.

10 Benefits of Using the Principles of Design Thinking

1. Increased Innovation Output

The design thinking process is user-centric that allows you to build innovative solutions. Therefore, the principles of design thinking give you the ability to create products that add value to your users’ lives. This not only permits you to have happy customers but also experience improved revenue, increased sales, and referral rates. Through design thinking, you can also iterate on your existing products and improve them to meet your customers’ needs.

2. Improved Understanding of Customers

The principles of design thinking compel you to understand your customer’s behavior deeply. That includes knowing their daily habits, fears, pain points, and motivation, allowing you to have empathy for those who will use your product. As a result, you can create innovative products that actually cater to your customers’ demands.

The design thinking tools like exploratory research and interviews not only benefits the design team but also supports other business departments, including:

Sales
Marketing
Customer services

3. Elimination of Cognitive Fixedness

Cognitive fixedness is a state of mind that consciously or unconsciously creates an interpretation of a given situation. Think of a time when you thought you couldn’t build a SaaS product because the model was too complex. So you gave up on it rather than finding ways to defeat hurdles.

Well, the principles of design thinking help you overcome cognitive fixedness. You get a new and more rational perspective to see your product. Likewise, it lets you explore more creative and much better ways to find solutions instead of following traditional methods.

Also Read: 5 SaaS Application Development Practices for Building High-End Solutions

4. Enhanced Product Usability and Acceptance Rate

One of the benefits of design thinking is increased product usability. Remember, the principles of design thinking encourage building programs through empathy. Therefore, it enables you to build products that customers love to use. And since you hit the core needs through your product, it automatically attracts more users and converts prospects.

5. More Focused on Experimentation and Creativity

The principles of design thinking revolve around design, testing, and iteration. When these three factors are combined, they allow you to build winning products. Why so? It is because the design thinking approach helps you create numerous prototypes in a minimum time period.

You are able to receive fast feedback from real users and continue experimenting until the solution matches users’ demands. Moreover, design thinking also helps you decide what features to add, exclude, or modify in your current idea to make it more user-centric.

6. Offers Solutions to Customers’ Problems

The design thinking process is human-centered. In other words, it permits you to identify and solve problems for all industries at all levels. At the same time, design thinking principles help your business provide a way out of the most challenging obstacles once they are discovered.

7. Expanded Design Thinkers’ Vision

Assuming to build a problem-solving product without design thinkers on your side, no way! Design thinkers are people who are exposed to a wide range of problems and know possible solutions. So what makes them so hawkeyed? It is the knowledge of the principles of design thinking.

These principles allow them to visualize situations through an observational approach, letting them know what consumers look for in products. In fact, they can see solutions which may not be visible even to users.

8. Overcoming Wicked Problems

A “wicked problem” refers to a situation where teams cannot clearly point out issues that prevent them from proposing a way out. It slows the product-building process and kills time. So, if you come across this big rock, you can use the principles of design thinking to climb over it. Indeed, design thinking removes the veil from the missing puzzles and permits you to find possible solutions through constant testing.

9. Resource Cutdown

Design thinking streamlines the entire innovation process. It makes your daily operations more efficient and purposeful. Mistakes and failures are expected during product iteration and idea testing, but design thinking principles give you actionable next steps. Thus, allowing you to save time and money as you don’t repeat the development cycle from the initial phase.

10. Leading Team Towards Tangible Results

Paired with high technical expertise, the principles of design thinking enable teams to build successful products. When you adopt design thinking for team building, it empowers teams to create products which ensure user retention and fruitful results.

Also Read: 5 Steps to Increase Engagement with User Retention Design

Conclusion

The principles of design thinking permit teams to use their maximum creativity to develop problem-solving products. While the design thinking process helps you build innovative and engaging solutions, it also saves time and effort. Moreover, it increases your capability of exploring and including features that customers admire to use—correspondingly giving a competitive edge to your business.

Slash is packed with design thinkers. We have design thinking principles in the air, and our squad breathes it. With the combination of agile methodologies and a design thinking framework, we assure you of creating conquering solutions that your customers love. Talk to us to hire a top-class team of talented software designers and engineers.