Non-Linear Thinking

Design Thinking as a Non-Linear Process

When you first get to know the Design Thinking process, it’s easy to think about it as a step-by-step guide where you start with the Empathy phase and work your way toward the Test phase in sequential order. After you have gained some experience in DT, you will realize that all five phases of the process interact, loop back and forth, and overlap with each other through your work. Designers continuously loop back and forth between phases of the process as they learn new insights about their users, define and re-define their understanding of the problem, develop new ideas, and prototype and test new solutions.

Living In Loops

Don’t be discouraged if you find yourself constantly looping back to different phases. In fact, if you aren’t looping back, it’s a warning sign that you are not undertaking the process effectively! One of your greatest challenges is to be open to adjusting throughout your work. Here are some common examples of how teams work on a project.

• You realize the audience you are designing for is too broad or too narrow. You decide to speak to more people to re-define your audience and the problem they have.
• While testing an idea with your users, you realize that they see it as a “nice to have”. You want them to see it as a “need to have” that makes a big impact on their lives. You need to understand their experience better and then redefine the problem, ideate, prototype, and test again.
• You realize a competitor created a similar solution to yours, but has been unsuccessful in bringing their solution to the market. Is there a different challenge that you should focus on? What can you learn from watching users interact with the competitor’s solution?
• You realize that creating a prototype of your solution is too complex, costly, and time consuming. This signals to you that your solution may not be worthwhile. You go back to the ideation phase to see if there are other solutions that are more sustainable.

Explore Case Studies

• Read the Amino Labs case study and focus on the loops that the company went through as they developed their ideas and products. What do you notice about their work and how it changed?
• Read the AIMSIO case study and focus on how they pivoted (changed course) as they developed their idea. How do you think they decided to change it?

Questions to Discuss

• Think of a time when you drastically changed course in something you were doing. What activity were you enaged in? How did you feel as you made a big change?
• Why do you think it's so hard for people to let go of their first, second, and third ideas?
• Can you think of an example of a well-known product, process, or service that has changed a lot since its first iteration? How has it changed? Why do you think it has changed?