Design Thinking Case Study: Empathise, Define & Ideate

Project X

I once attended a meeting with an entrepreneur and managers who were responding to a competitor’s new application launch. Their goal was to introduce a new product to prevent loss of market share. They had a rough idea of the product, its look, and cost.

Their marketing director proposed emulating competitors but at a lower price. Others suggested creating a user-friendly system, changing information collection methods, and simplifying integration with third parties. However, the technical manager worried about the extended coding hours required.

The product in question was a communication software that managed multiple channels. Despite its initial creation years ago, the software’s usability was inferior to that of the competitor’s, particularly their well-received mobile app.

The company, more versed in traditional projects, was unfamiliar with Agile projects or launching a minimum viable product (MVP). The unknown outcome of an MVP launch on their user base caused uneasiness.

Repeated meetings failed to clearly define the product. However, as the competitor gained ground, consensus within the company grew: “We need a fully functioning product, not a half-finished one.”

Although the unknown initially caused hesitation, the situation became a learning opportunity to discern what would provide real value to their users. This led to the decision to employ Design Thinking to create a simplified yet effective product, focusing on essential features that would genuinely benefit the end user.

Stage 1 – Empathize

During the Empathizing Phase, we aim to comprehend our customers by collecting business-related information using tools such as interviews and surveys. Empathy in design thinking means deeply understanding the problems faced by the people you’re designing for.

We prioritized diverse opinions, ensuring decisions weren’t solely influenced by the Highest Paid Person’s Opinion (HiPPO). Managers, the founder, and other stakeholders contributed to the decision-making process.

In a day-long meeting, we identified 30 stakeholders (employees, managers, and customers) for direct contact and selected a target audience of 4000 customers (10% of the recurring customer base). We aimed for diversity in gender, industry, and location.

We arranged remote interviews, guided by a script, following these rules:

Employ the “5 Whys” technique.

Understand the “What, How, Why” behind behaviors.

Ensure interviewees use a webcam for better understanding through body language.

Record all interviews for future reference.

Our questions focused on identifying features to be enhanced or eliminated to improve our product.

For the larger user group, we created a Google form with multiple-choice and open-ended questions, encouraging interaction. One question involved trying the new version of the product. We used remote tools like Skype, Zoom, Google Forms, and a digital Kanban Board to organize and track the process.

Initial interview results were encouraging, with interviewees providing valuable feedback. However, the initial questionnaire responses were disappointing with only a small percentage of completion.

When about to seek alternative user involvement strategies, a sales manager suggested approaching those with expiring renewals and offering incentives for their feedback. This resulted in over 70% response rate.

By iterating questions and conducting additional interviews, we were able to more accurately define our user base.

Stage 2 – Define

During the Defining Stage, we process the Empathize phase’s data to craft User Personas and User Journeys. Our aim was to identify our ideal customers, their problems and solutions, and the needs and fears we needed to address.

Design thinking sees the define phase as synthesizing your observations into core identified problems. Our database, enriched with Company X employees’ insights, weaknesses, strengths, and other previously overlooked issues, provided sufficient material for this.

We then generated User Personas, engaging the entire extended team in brainstorming sessions held remotely. For each persona, we profiled their biography, tech savviness, social media use, brand preferences, needs, and ideated their Customer Journey.

Armed with defined client User Personas and survey and interview data, we transformed vague problem statements, such as “We need a product that will increase our sales by 10%,” into more specific solutions addressing real user needs.

With our user personas set, we began creating a “User Story Map”, cataloging user processes into themes. We defined activities, stories, and tasks for each persona, anticipating their journey. Testing our ideas against these stories enabled us to quickly discern if we were meeting core user needs. This swift iteration was vital in a competitive market landscape.

This phase of the project concluded with us having a solid understanding of what our users found useful, the needs and fears we needed to address in their journey, and a readiness to test our solutions swiftly to keep pace with our competition.

Stage 3 – Ideate

The Ideation Phase in design thinking is all about generating tangible ideas from abstract concepts. This phase encourages all possible ideas—nothing is silly or wrong.

Our fully remote team adopted a Lean approach for efficient creation and review of materials. Initially, we opted for simple paper sketches, sharing images among team members. The most intriguing designs were then refined using digital tools like Balsamiq or Axure.

Each sketch informed us with user feedback and potential solutions, enabling further tests with users wherever possible. This iterative process quickly helped us understand our users better—their needs, fears, and what they found useful.

Ideation isn’t just about brainstorming; it’s an in-depth process involving Sketching, Brainwriting, and a plethora of other creative techniques. It’s all about transforming definitions into real solutions, helping us address user needs and fears effectively during the customer journey.

Part A

Question 1.A

Work Required: You are expected to analyse the design thinking method used by the company. Your answer must highlight at least two strengths and two weaknesses of each stage mentioned in the case.

Your answer should be structured, and each component must be explained in detail. You must also provide a clear justification to highlight their relevance. When providing your response, please ensure to address the following aspects: quality of sentencing and grammar, usage of clear structure, relevance of your explanation and justifications.

Question 2.A

Work Required: You are expected to propose one problem statement based on the case and your own understanding of the situation.

Your answer should be structured, and each element of the problem statement must be explained in detail. You must also justify how each trait of the problem statement are respected. When providing your response, please ensure to address the following aspects: quality of sentencing and grammar, usage of clear structure, relevance of your justifications.

Part B

Question 1.B

Work Required: You are expected to conduct a presentation to introduce one solution the company could implement to improve their ideation based on your written problem statement.

Your presentation should include a comprehensive overview of the ideation stage, with detailed explanation. You must also provide clear idea of solution to be implemented with strong justifications. When providing your response, please ensure to address the following aspects: quality of speech, usage of clear language and verbiage, effective usage of visual support, the presentation catered to senior management, relevance of justifications.

Experts Answer on Above Design Thinking Case Study

Analysis of the design thinking method

The case analysis indicates three design thinking stages including empathise, define and ideate.
Stage 1 – Empathise
The two strengths are diverse stakeholder involvement and use of multiple research techniques. It is evaluated that company X identified 30 stakeholders with emphasis on diversity in gender, industry and location. It significantly helped in reducing reliance on the HiPPO and provided the team with multiple perspectives. With respect to multiple research techniques, the company combined interviews, surveys, 5 Whys and the recorded interviews. This has produced both qualitative and quantitative information which is what customers wanted.
With respect to weaknesses, the first major weakness is poor initial questionnaire response as the questionnaire received only a small completion rate. The second weakness is the reactive introduction of incentives and the changes were introduced only after it is realised about the poor participation.
Stage 2: Define
The core strength in the define stage is the development of detailed user personas and user story mapping while the weaknesses are the extensive business focussed approach and secondly it is the remote collaboration that complicated the synthesis. The define stage was overall considered as efficient because it converted research into personas, journeys and user stories.
Stage 3 – Ideate
The strengths in the ideate stage are rapid prototyping and iteration and positive incorporation of user feedback into idea development. However the weaknesses are the failure to clearly demonstrate a final prioritisation mechanism and technical feasibility remains an issue. Ideation stage therefore remains iterative and low cost and the process could have been stronger if ideas were formally evaluated against customer value and business viability.

Proposed problem statement

The problem statement proposed is the ineffectiveness of the existing communication software of Company X which does not provide user friendly experience for customers. It is therefore important for the company to prioritise the essential features that are valued significantly by the customers. This problem statement is highly justified because it is user centred, specific, evidence based, action oriented, balanced and finally it is not a solution.

Recommended solution – collaborative Rapid prototyping workshop

It is recommended to company X to perform introduction of structured rapid prototyping workshop whereby the cross functional team can convert the validated user stories into several low fidelity product concepts. The solution can improve the ideation by validating the user stories in step one, followed by including generate alternatives in step 2. The third step includes building low cost prototypes which is followed by testing with customers and finally in step 5 it is important to prioritise the ideas.

Want Detailed Answers with References?

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