How to Apply Design Thinking to Your Next Digital Transformation Project

Try the design thinking approach to evolve your digital strategy

The design thinking approach is all the rage today. Whether it’s part of product development, process improvement, service design, user experience, or to address other complex business challenges, more and more leading companies are embracing the design thinking framework to reinvent their business, improve their customer experience and digital interactions, and expedite digital transformation. But according to the Vice President User Experience Design at Appnovation, "Design Thinking is not new and at its simplest form it’s just placing the user at the center of your thinking. What is new is how we adapt and use this methodology in new areas of business that operate in a different way. This can drive transformation and real change that benefits the business.”

Resolve challenges with the user at the center of the solution

Any creative user experience (UX) designer can hang out a shingle and call themselves a design thinking consultant. Similarly, any talented development and engineering expert can recommend or build a technology solution to address your challenges. But are you sure your digital needs are the same as your customers’? That’s where design thinking comes in. A design thinking framework uses a combination of collaborative thinking, brainstorming, ideation and creativity to get to the real root of your business problem — from the customer’s perspective. Using this process, design thinkers generate a range of potential solutions, and can even oversee prototyping and testing. This way, everyone can agree that the recommended digital strategy solution is the best one (for customers and for the business).

Digital strategy and design thinking together leads to outcomes

How do you really know which design thinking workshops or design thinking consultants work best for your business? A great design thinking service is also a full-service digital consultancy. It has all the experience with integrated tools, technologies, platforms and applications that are needed to help companies do business better. Digitizing your business also involves optimizing the customer experience (CX) in a very tangible way. Design thinking agencies like Appnovation use a design thinking approach that leads to real outcomes.They understand customer journey mapping, along with the systems, platforms and technologies that underpin your business. They are therefore in the ideal position to deliver the best, most intuitive and most customer-friendly technology solutions. And that’s what digital transformation is all about, isn't it?

Get the most out of design thinking and technology innovation

Blending and upgrading technical competencies, digital technologies and user experience as your organization evolves is the cornerstone of digital transformation. It sounds easy, but it can actually be tough to do. Consider Airbnb. Now this is an organization that gets design thinking right. In fact, design thinking was a major factor in Airbnb’s success. When the technology-first mindset is replaced with a customer-first mindset using a design thinking problem-solving model, the technology becomes better, the user experience becomes better and your digital transformation does what it’s supposed to do. It solves your business problems, makes your business more efficient, and takes customer satisfaction and brand loyalty to new levels. Visit California, Mattel and 9/11 Memorial are just three client partners who have benefited from Appnovation's design thinking approach to business.

Change management is part of design thinking too

Change is happening all around us. And it’s coming faster and more furious than ever before. It can sometimes be tempting to take the quick and easy approach to problem solving. Buy another Software as a Service (SAS). Build a new app. Sell through a new channel. Collect more data. These tactics could all work. But most likely they’ll fail, unless design thinking methodology is used to identify the core customer issue in the first place, and to spotlight the reason why a particular solution is the best one for your business AND for your customers. Of course, even if design thinking techniques are used, no new idea will stick if it isn’t properly socialized with stakeholders. This includes customers and employees most of all. They need to understand what’s coming, get excited about it, and truly believe that it will make their lives easier. The reason design thinking works is because it humanizes problems and solutions and makes it easier for people to get on board with change. It’s simple change management 101.

Inspiring possibility with design thinking

As a design thinking company and full-service digital consulting business, Appnovation has always leveraged design thinking to inspire possibility for some of the world’s most exciting brands and deliver amazing digital solutions. It’s just part of our DNA to collaborate with our partners using a design thinking approach. Our design thinking consultants help clients understand, ideate, validate and build professionally-designed, innovative, customer-centric and engaging digital experiences. But even though we’ve always offered design thinking services, we’ve only just begun spotlighting this unique capability. Take a look at our new design thinking consulting services web page. There you can learn more about Appnovation’s design thinking workshops, our design thinking expert services and how we integrate design thinking into the problem-solving process for our digital strategy clients. Give us a call if you’d like to know more.