In our new Stein series “Seizing opportunities”, we share our knowledge of approaches that companies can use to achieve long-term success. What is behind the term design thinking? STEIN spoke to a design thinking expert and asked stonemasons to explain how the method can be useful for everyday work in their craft.
David Kelley, Terry Winograd and Larry Leifer developed design thinking at Stanford University in California as a concept for creative problem solving. “The basic idea behind design thinking is that interdisciplinary teams in particular can create genuine, outstanding innovations. The design thinking process aims to bring together as many different experiences, opinions and perspectives as possible with regard to a problem. Design thinking developed from industrial design. It is therefore primarily aimed at the development of innovative products and services that are geared towards the needs of people,” reads the introduction on kreativitätstechniken.info. But what exactly does design thinking mean, how does it solve a problem and what does it involve?
Design thinking involves various phases plus preparation. According to design thinker and graduate designer Tobias Greissing from Wittighausen in Baden-Württemberg, preparation is particularly important. “In this phase, the problem is defined in an open-ended way. It is important that all participants see the same problem. At the same time, a suitable environment must be created in an inspiring location. Ideally, this should include several, up to twelve people from different areas of the company, for example from sales and accounting, but trainees and the managing director as well as external specialist participants can also expand the circle,” explains Greissing, who also regularly teaches the topic of design thinking in the form of seminars in the skilled trades sector. According to Greissing, the prerequisite for a design thinking process is being able to open up to the topic and being ready for change. “Because many people have completely forgotten how to be creative – they only strive to work effectively.” This preparation is followed by six phases of the design thinking process, which all participants go through together.
The first phase is about understanding the problem. The participants gain a shared understanding of the topic and grasp the context. In the second phase, they go out into the world of the user, out to the customer, in order to understand their needs, observe them and ask them questions. Empathy is required here instead of personal interpretations and assumptions. The third phase involves answering the question “Is it still our problem?”, drawing conclusions from the first two phases “Understanding” and “Observing” and jointly defining the central challenge. The fourth phase is characterized by finding many ideas for solving this problem. In a specific, predetermined time frame, many ideas, including crazy ones, are developed using targeted creativity techniques, collected, constantly presented and queried. An idea is then selected and presented to the end user. If they can’t do anything with it, it goes back to the ideation phase or even the comprehension phase. “The background to this is that the participants can quickly come up with new ideas if they fail early on,” says Greissing, explaining the procedure. The diversity of the team helps to create high-quality solutions. In the fifth phase, the prototypes are then developed and shown in the model. This provides the opportunity to re-engage with the user. Testing takes place in the sixth phase. Before going into final production, the results are presented to the users again and then put into production or not. These six steps can be repeated several times. Corrective jumps back from one step to the previous one are also conceivable. “The concept can be refined until the best possible solution is found or the approach has to be discarded,” explains Greissing. The website of the German Confederation of Skilled Crafts (ZDH) states: “The innovation approach of design thinking helps to solve problems creatively and quickly – in multidisciplinary teams and with the user in focus. This user orientation also plays a central role in the skilled trades.”
The Federal Association of German Stonemasons (BIV) has also recognized this approach and organized a half-day seminar on design thinking with Tobias Greissing as lecturer for 35 master craftswomen at the beginning of the year. Masood Bashary from the association’s office on the choice of this seminar topic: “We wanted to make it clear to the participants that every problem can also represent an opportunity. First of all, it’s all about understanding a problem so that you can then put yourself in the customer’s shoes and develop products that meet their needs or are contemporary. Stonemasons are very creative people. We wanted to give them more creative techniques on how to approach a new product and make it easier for them to take the first step in the product discovery process, which focuses on the customer’s needs. It’s about trying something different – with the design thinking methodology, stonemasons can approach problems in an action-oriented way and not always in a reactionary way.” After the national association led the way, the district head of the Hesse State Association of Stonemasons and Stone Sculptors in Frankfurt also suggested organizing a seminar on design thinking, adds Sonja Mücke from LIV Hessen.
Read more in STEIN 10/2019.