What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a user-centered approach that focuses on creating innovative solutions to everyday problems. The process typically consists of five phases: empathy, problem definition, idea development, prototyping, and testing.
The consequences of ignoring design thinking
While it is possible to have used design thinking unconsciously, unintended consequences can occur when it is not intentionally applied. Ford, for example, had to recall several cars due to a design flaw. The transmission buttons, including the engine's on/off button, were placed next to the multimedia player. This caused users to accidentally shut off the engine while driving.
How design thinking could have helped
If the designers had empathized with the users and defined their actual needs, this problem could have been prevented. Design thinking highlights the importance of understanding users and their problems to create effective solutions.
The five phases of design thinking
While design thinking can be outlined in five clear phases, the process is not strictly linear. Refining results and revisiting earlier phases are common and even expected.
1. Empathy
Understand your customers, users, or stakeholders by stepping into their shoes. Listen to their stories, observe their behavior, and have conversations to understand their needs, desires, and pain points.
Example: Use empathy maps to analyze what users say, think, do, and feel. More information about empathy maps is here to find.
2. Define
Define your users' issues and needs. In this phase, all information from the empathy phase is organized and analyzed so that the core of the problem can be identified. Asking the right questions is critical to identifying the most important issue. This phase is not about the solution, but only about the problems and requirements of the users.
Preview: Create personas with different problems and needs to keep the analysis people-oriented.
3. Developing ideas
Challenge assumptions and create ideas. This is the time when creativity can run wild, but always take into account the needs and problems of the users. Look for alternative approaches to the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem you defined in earlier phases.
Examples:
- brainstorming techniques
- sketches to visualize and bring your ideas to life
4. Prototype
Start creating solutions. It's important to gather user feedback as early as possible. Building fast and inexpensive prototypes is an excellent way to test your ideas in the real world. Think of mock-ups, storyboards, digital prototypes, physical (scale) models or whatever to simulate the user experience.
Preview: This can be done, for example paper prototyping are.
5. Test
Test your solutions. In this phase, feedback is collected by allowing users to experiment with the prototype. With this new information, it's important to review the design and find new ways to solve the problem. This can lead to an updated prototype or a redefinition of the core issues. Keep iterating until tests are completed to user satisfaction.
Preview: Let users touch and feel the prototype (but don't explain it!) and see if they understand the controls.
What does design thinking have to do with legal design?
Legal design is the application of design thinking in the legal world. It's about how legal information is communicated, legal services are provided, and legal processes are experienced by users. These users may be professionals, but often they are ordinary people who have to navigate the complex world of legal processes.
Legal design is about redesigning complex legal matters by providing simple, understandable and useful solutions. It puts the end user first and strives to make legal services and products more accessible, understandable and better in line with users' needs.
Examples of legal design:
1. Rewriting and designing legal documents, such as contracts and terms and conditions, so that they are understandable and accessible to a wider audience.
2. Developing user-friendly legal technology, such as online legal services, apps or platforms, that are intuitive and easy to use.
3. Improving legal processes, such as dispute resolution or negotiations, by improving the experience of those involved and enabling more effective communication.
The legal world is a traditional system and is based on the assumption that everyone wants or can read legal documents. It's easy to define the problem of users who aren't lawyers because these legal processes can be overwhelming, intimidating, and make people feel lost. But the user can also be a judge who lacks super-specific technical knowledge. Or the user is the lawyer who must keep everyone engaged for two hours of pleading. The first stages of design thinking can thus help formulate the correct parameters of the proposed solution.
In the next phase (s) of legal design thinking, it is time to come up with the possible solutions. This can be achieved by making information digestible using visuals, infographics, and plain language that everyone can understand. It can also involve designing intuitive and efficient processes for everyone.
In short: legal design isn't about designing beautiful documents. Design thinking in legal design goes beyond aesthetics. Legal design involves continuous experimentation, iteration, and refinement of solutions based on feedback and real-life testing. It's about embracing failure as an opportunity to learn and grow. Legal design promotes collaboration and interdisciplinary approaches, bringing together lawyers, designers, technologists and other stakeholders to create innovative solutions together.
Learn more about Design Thinking
Design consultancy Video's design kit: http://www.designkit.org/
Design Thinking pioneer Tim Brown's blog: https://designthinking.ideo.com/
To get a deeper insight into design thinking, there are a few insightful courses you can enroll for:
- Interaction Design Foundation's Design Thinking Course
- Generating Big Ideas with Design Thinking by Nielsen & Norman
- Foundations in Design Thinking by IDEO
- Creativity and Design Thinking by Stanford University
Finally: Dan Norman's 21st Century Design Course is recommended for people who want to broaden their horizons.
