November 2017

Design led thinking

What is design led thinking? There are a variety of definitions, but the one I like was from Jennifer Kilian from McKinsey who stated

“Design Thinking is a methodology that we use to solve complex problems, and it is a way of using systemic reasoning and intuition to explore ideal future state. We do this with the end user or the customer in mind, first and foremost.”

In other words you look at everything from the perspective of the customer and their experience. One aim is to reduce 'friction' in the way in which the end user engages with the solution. This makes it a more pleasant experience and improves the likelihood of take-up. On average today, a smartphone user accesses their device over 150 times a day. If each of those interactions contains just a few seconds of 'friction' the inefficiency mounts up, the user gets more frustrated and the result is that they are less likely to use the app. If there is monetisation attached to that use this translates directly to lower revenues and likely higher attrition.

Good design led solutions in the mobile world can deliver multiples of adoption rates because users have a pleasant engagement with the app or service and in the very successful cases, generate a positive emotion about its use, which is a powerful thing to harness.

In May 2017 we met with James Buckhouse whilst visiting
Sequoia Capital. James is the founder of Sequoia's Creative Labs which was established to bring design led thinking into the forefront of product and service design. You will find a number of James' videos by searching on YouTube. they are highly recommended.

Sequoia have researched and evidenced the positive impact that design led approaches have on company performance and are great advocates of this approach.

There will be more on this topic soon!

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