So, are you ready? Got your idea? Great! What’s next? NDAs for your team to keep the idea locked down, in case someone wants to steal it? Don’t worry, you’re not alone in your fear; it’s only human. But you’re going to have to get over it and take your cue from the MIT Media Lab, the interdisciplinary laboratory of the prestigious Massachusetts Institute of Technology, whose motto warns: ‘Demo or Die’.
The motto traces its origins to the 1960s when Stanford University was experimenting with a product creation program that called for the collaboration and expertise of several different departments at the university. The technical stage required more than just technicians, the design stage more than just designers, and the medical stage more than just physicians. For the first time, the concept of co-creativity was explored, and it proved to be of the utmost importance.
Peter Rowe, who served as the driving force behind the program, codified the experience in the 1980s by coining the term ‘design thinking’. In addition to combining the approaches of different specialists, the concept also relies heavily on the opinions and feedback of the end user – the customer or the consumer. Their opinion often trumps all others. The challenge is to adopt the insights provided by the end user while still guaranteeing the viability of the project.
The design thinking approach is based on the premise that what you’re seeking can only be found by venturing outside of the room. You have to go out and look for it, to build it from the ground up with the very people for whom it is intended. Walking them through it simply isn’t enough. You must ‘show’ them the idea through the use of a prototype in the form of an object, illustration, or sketch. Whether physical or digital, it should be something they can see, touch or otherwise experience to best understand its intended use. This will help them to explore a range of possible solutions and work on building the best solution alongside you – one that’s often quite different from how you imagined it.
Managing Emotions While Receiving Tough Feedback(Opens in a new browser tab)
This approach passed under the radar for quite some time, used by only a select circle of insiders. Steve Jobs was one of them. Back when he was designing Lisa – a predecessor of the Mac – he began thinking about solutions for users to interact with the screen. He entrusted the problem to the very first design thinking firm, IDEO, which had recently set up shop in Palo Alto. Rather than staying cooped up in their offices racking their brains, the design thinkers took to the streets, posing one question to potential customers: ‘What do you think you would do with this object?’ Their answers resulted in the birth of the computer mouse.
In an age when monopolies are mostly a thing of the past, user experience is the ultimate X factor. You can never count on being the only one out there offering an electric scooter, smartphone or app that delivers groceries. You have to find a way to differentiate your product from the rest, and that difference hinges on the unique experience you can offer the customer. It’s what makes your product first desirable and then indispensable, like Steve Jobs’ mouse. You work hand-in-hand with the customer to think about the product, letting them help you uncover what it is they really want.
Rolf Faste, a design professor at Stanford who worked with Peter Rowe, established seven steps of design thinking to be taken before commencing the prototype phase. Others would later reduce the process to five steps or even three. I prefer the Faste method, which I find the most comprehensive and which lets you integrate feedback as you go along.
I realized after the fact that I had applied the very same method to the process of developing Epic. The core concept of the company was this: to disrupt the way people give to charity by adding value to it. I had a firm grasp on how to do this, but I still needed to formalize the idea, to give it structure.
Here’s how we applied the seven design-thinking steps:
Define: The first step is to identify your problem and frame it properly. For Epic, that meant finding a way to simplify the donation process, a field fuelled by good intentions but lacking in professionalism. The objective was thus to change the system in order to change the lives of children born into hardship.
Research: This step involves listing all the problems the intended user has encountered in the past. For this, I ventured out of my office and into the field to meet with philanthropists, business leaders, politicians, social entrepreneurs, and social workers, and asked the question: ‘Why aren’t you giving more?’ or ‘Why aren’t you receiving more?’ The list of grievances came thundering in like an avalanche: the excessive choice of NGOs, the lack of trust and time, the lack of transparency in how donations are used and a lack of follow-up regarding their impact, the difficulties in getting noticed by donors and earning their trust, and more.
Ideate: What solutions can you identify to address these problems? Don’t hold back. Put as many ideas down on paper as you can, with an eye towards your future customers, not just your team. Don’t judge the results too harshly, even if the solutions seem far-fetched. Use brainstorming to encourage creativity and amass even more ideas. Write them down. All of them.
Prototype: Cross-reference and fine-tune your ideas, returning to your future users to propose an initial model and get their feedback. During this step, I discovered that one of our key objectives would be building a portfolio of donation enterprises based on rigorous selection criteria, while also quantifying their social impact. I also identified the problems these enterprises were facing, paralyzed by the opaque nature of foundations, as well as their overly technical vocabulary and the daunting amount of time and energy their processes required. Epic’s mission would be to bring both parties – donors and recipients – together.
Choose: By the time you reach this step, your ideas should be getting clearer. Objectives are revisited and the most innovative proposals are chosen to bring your original instinct to life in concrete form. I came to realize Epic’s users would not only be philanthropists but also companies whose CSR commitments called on them to give and who needed greater sophistication in the donation world. The Epic project was beginning to truly take shape.
Implement: Write up your action plan, finalize your prototype, venture out the door again and return to your end user. You need to listen to them once more. For Epic, we tested our NGO questionnaire, a file that can be completed in less than 45 minutes and contains enough information for the first round of screening. We also developed other donation-gathering solutions. These included payday rounding, cash rounding at checkout, and the sharing pledge (when an entrepreneur offers up a small percentage of their company’s shares). I realized that I would also have to put ‘tailor-made’ solutions into place that would arise from company-specific design thinking processes created for each and every company seeking our services. I later codified that process through the Epic Giving Lab, which I will elaborate upon later.
Learn, learn, learn: The design thinking process doesn’t stop with the launch of your product. Have you fully understood how it works? Good. Keep the technique on hand. Feedback from your customers will remain your primary source of information for the ongoing improvement of your product. As far as I’m concerned, this is a crucial point. A successful entrepreneur must be open to learning new things every day and absorbing new information like a sponge.
