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Design Thinking

As an engineer, I believe the whole concept of design thinking is valuable to take with us for our day to day lives because it feels like a crucial and ethical tool in a problem solvers arsenal – When presented with a problem, everyone thinks about a solution, but having in mind the process that generates the solution is, in my opinion, just as valuable as the solution itself. Design thinking mainly emphasizes understanding who has the problem and who the solution is for, which makes this approach generate way more valuable solutions to same problems. It’s a great structuring for creativity and energy, by promoting mindfulness and innovation while mixing empathy with engineering.

Speculative Design

What is there to dislike about broadening horizons and thinking outside the box? Stretching our imagination by dissolving the limitations of our world while keeping a loose frame of reference in reality sounds like a great way to not just have fun, but also challenge and exercise our imagination and our capabilities as designers and engineers, and I think it’s a great tool to approach problem-solving in an unorthodox way – for strange, unpredicted problems, we need out-of-the-box unpredictable solutions.

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Empathizing

Understanding the user is crucial for not only a good relationship with the outcome and effect of the developed product, but also with the motivations behind the development of said product. Knowing who your user is, understanding what they need and want (and reasoning on the why of those needs and wants), putting yourself in their shoes and sharing their perspective...all of that is of great help to produce the product with the outcome that is most valuable to the main beneficiary of said product, and so I think that learning how to empathize is great to better the outcome of our personal and professional projects. Plus, I liked the way we looked logically and concisely at such an instinctive, biological and human thing such as empathy...really made me think and interiorize the concept.

Taxonomy vs Typology

Taxonomy and typology in and off themselves are great tools for a designer and engineer to know: Taxonomy provides a structured, hierarchical way to break down complex systems, making problem-solving more efficient. Typology helps in categorizing items based on common characteristics, aiding in design exploration and innovation. Both approaches improve clarity and enhance creativity in organizing ideas and solutions - Knowing how they differ can further improve clarity and let us get a better grip on knowing how to use them both (separately or not) to aid us in problem solving and provoke innovation.

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Defining

Defining a problem can be a little frustrating in this day an age, give the fact that it seems that very solution to every problem already exists, and the ones that don't exist are the ones that answer the problems with the hardest questions. The thing is: the defining step of design - when we really ask "what do we need to solve", that is, in my opinion, THE MOST important step in the whole process. "know your enemy and you need not fear in a hundred battles" (Sun Tzu). Innovation is really hard, and having a protocol for developing the task at hand for it to be better understood, makes things a little easier in my opinion.

Insights

Having this Insight on what Insights are is fascinating. Insights became less of a gut feeling and more of a tool to help us designers and engineers to focus our train of thought to solve the problems that need solving by attacking the crux of the matter. "[USER] needs [SOMETHING] because of [INSIGHT]", when you look at it like that, it almost makes more sense to know the why of the need than the need itself. And having the process described in the class to understand and develop insights is relevant to our careers as problem solvers.

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Understanding how branding and brand identity works is crucial for effective and efficient branding. The way a piece of visual material can convey a message, and a powerful one at that: the entire background, motivation and values behind a group of people...and the polar opposite - the way a seemingly meaningless text or logo, through context and history, can become ingrained in our heads with certain ideas like quality or luxury...

Branding is key for a successful business - in day and age, where there are tons upon tons of companies doing really similar things, being noticed first or best will make a difference - If there's a blue marble in a pile of yellow ones, that blue marble will get the attention and the remembrance of people who look at the pile, despite all the marbles being made out of the same glass. Understanding how to brand yourself to target and audience, as well as how to brand, what are the components of a good, recognizable brand and logo, how can you portray a certain idea, group of values and feeling in a visually recognizable way is really useful, and knowing the power of branding in the modern day is crucial.

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Pitching an idea is somewhat elementary in any entrepreneur's arsenal, after all, selling ideas and making people understand why a certain idea has value (even if it doesn't) is very beneficial, even if just for monetary purposes. But what make a good pitch? is it selling a business idea? Well, for me, knowing how to TALK is the important factor - knowing how to convey an idea or concept, in it's full extent, making people believe, understand, want, buy, sell, interact...instigating action from the listeners, not just attention... Anyway, we don't always have the time to actually fully convince and almost manipulate a crowd, and maybe we don't even have the exposure to do so either, so knowing the principalities that make a good elevator pitch and how to properly convey an idea and it's value with limited time and exposure is very valuable to someone that has an idea to sell and/or disseminate. Nowadays, people have little time to listen, more so with influential people (no matter the kind of influence), people have less and less time to pay attention to what we try to say, and they genuinely might miss out on the opportunity to invest in us, be it their timely, monetary or political support we seek, if we don't know how to throw our idea at them in a way that sticks, they are not going to grab it by themselves - knowing how to pitch is a must, and understanding what makes a pitch a good pitch - what you should do, like the strategic division of the whole pitch in hook, core and closure, and the way you should prepare, like planning and rehearsing your pitch, conveying it with passion and intelligence... Knowing all of this is something that can help us not only in our potential businesses, but also in life in general, because what is the difference between us humans and other animals but the capability of complex, coherent speech? Well, if it must be our most redeeming quality, we might as well learn how to use it!

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Empathizing in the Design Thinking Framework focuses on understanding users at a deep, human level, setting aside assumptions to genuinely connect with users, uncovering not just what they need but why they need it, being the pivotal point of design thinking in general - making things for people. This focus on empathy drives the success of the entire design process by ensuring solutions are rooted in real user experiences and challenges, not just in technical functionality or aesthetics.

For designers and engineers, empathizing means immersing themselves in the user’s environment, observing and engaging with how people interact with products, and listening to their frustrations, motivations, and aspirations - basically, scouting for what would make the solution more effective and functional. Techniques such as interviews, shadowing, and journey mapping are invaluable here, as they provide insights into users' perspectives that quantitative data alone cannot reveal, and y engaging users directly we can gain a nuanced understanding of the emotional and practical contexts in which products are used, which can uncover subtle but very impactful needs. For example, observing how users handle an app in a real setting can reveal overlooked issues, like accessibility challenges or confusing navigation paths.

Empathy also leads to more thoughtful Prototyping and Testing. By keeping real user pain points front and center, designers and engineers create prototypes that address these needs directly, resulting in more focused testing.

This early focus on empathy reduces the likelihood of developing features that don’t align with user priorities, thus minimizing rework and increasing efficiency.

Incorporating the Information Architecture and Wireframes with empathy in mind also improves the design's effectiveness - when we structure information based on users’ mental models, it creates a more intuitive product, for example: if research reveals that users prefer a specific task flow or access point, this can guide IA decisions, leading to a design that feels natural and easy to navigate, thus Wireframes being able to then reflect a user-first layout that aligns with how people think and interact, setting a strong foundation for the later stages of development.

The Empathize phase ultimately transforms the role of us designers and engineers from a problem solver into a user advocate, and by focusing on empathy, they are better equipped to create solutions that are not only functional, but also solutions that resonate with the users, strengthening user trust and satisfaction, qualities that are really valuable in a world where user experience is central and crucial to a product's success.

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Learning about usability and sensory experience can greatly enhance our ability to design user-centered systems and interfaces. Usability focuses on creating systems that are functional, easy to understand, and satisfying to use, and by mastering usability principles, we can design solutions that are intuitive and efficient, reducing our users frustration and enhancing productivity, and this is especially useful in engineering and design, where user satisfaction often determines success.

Ensuring users can see available options and system status helps reduce confusion and mistakes and clear responses to user actions make systems feel responsive and reliable, while maintaining uniformity across design elements ensures predictability and ease of use. Logical placement of controls and actions minimizes cognitive load, and preventing incorrect actions ensures safety and usability. Also, simplifying decision-making by presenting clear choices enhances user confidence.

All these principles allow us to design systems that align with user expectations and behaviors.

Understanding the sensorial processing levels can also help us design for the user:

visceral ( instinctive reactions , e.g. appealing visuals creates, immediate engagement.)

behavioral(Focusing on control and feedback helps users learn and effectively interact with the system.)

reflexive (Encouraging conscious reflection can influence long-term user satisfaction and loyalty)

Finally, the cycle of perception, action, interpretation, and comparison helps us analyze the users interactions step by step. This enables us to identify pain points and improve overall design efficiency.

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The visual experience of a product

The idea that the whole visual experience of your product will end up conveying a subliminal message, and how we can use that to our advantage is fascinating, having the ability to convey a certain feeling with something so necessary and unique as the interface of an app or the visual appearance of a product itself. It's fun that we can cluster and fit visual elements like Tetris to make the user/client visualize what we want, not on a physical level, but on a psychological level. Having guides and templates will help us keep the visual footprint of out product confined to an idea and feeling, and will accelerate the process of development, but will also make things less creative, although maintaining a certain level of creativity.

Micro Interactions

Micro interactions are a way of interacting with the user visually and functionally, in a straightforward way, with a certainty of a simple direct user interaction flow, using colors, shapes, movements, animations, motions, and other visual elements. They are good for accomplishing a single simple task and controlling ongoing processes, and they have to have a way of being triggered and give feedback to the user, for them to understand that the interaction is happening. Understanding what visual elements can be replaced with micro interactions, why and what good can come of it, as well as the whole idea behind micro interactions is vary valuable for us designers and engineers.

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knowing how data works is invaluable to our job as digital problem solvers. We should understand the way one of our jobs - as analysts and researchers - is to understand data and to make it visible so others can understand said data without having the same background as we did (or making it easier and faster to understand), including the user that will make something out of it, so the whole point of data visualization is to make the use of a body of data possible by making it understandable by those who don't understand the raw data behind the visualization.

Not only is it important for us to understand to visualize the data, but also how to and how complex can we be and how much raw data can we let bleed to the visualization we're working on - how much data we can visualize in different ways but in the same schematic, for a more complex understanding of said data. The types of visualizations that there are is also something really cool: graphs, maps, the periodic table, timelines, tables, and mixes of some or all of them (as complex as we can or should get)...There are a lot of ways we can represent a set of data visually, giving us freedom as to how to the why we are representing the information. Well, lets talk about the why: understanding why data visualization is important, and also how the way you represent data visually is important (much like the way you speak often overpowers the words you say) - everybody can benefit from data visualization because of invention, analytics, dissemination and observation - we are preparing a set of information to be used as a base for innovation and invention, as a corpus for analytics an the conclusions you can make of the data, to share information with people of different backgrounds, and observation of the data to understand how it works and how you can learn from it.

It's fun to understand that we can purposely omit or even distort information for it's understanding - it would suffice to say that the ends justify the means: much like how an underground metro map doesn't follow the geographical map of the same area - the reader benefits from the simplification of the visualization with omitted information about everything that is above: because the world above doesn't really matter to someone that's on a metro line, it only matters if the stops are sequentially in order and what lines to take to get to what points. The very information being non visual and hard data, means the visualization that we make of said data can be malleable- we have a certain (relatively extensive) freedom as to how we can represent data, giving it meaning, making it visually appealing and aesthetic, making it easy to read - to understand the data behind the representation. Again: knwoing the importance of visuals and the visualization of data, as well as the visual appeal and how we can use easthetics and visuals to our advantage is a must know in our field.

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ChatGPT Prompt

I need to analyse the following opinion text (it was supposed to have a bibliography and be less than 500 words).

[... copy of the angelised text ...)

Give me good articles to conterargue the topics defended in this text - based on known names of the area, like NNG, IDEO and others...

Data visualisation is undeniably a powerful tool and while the arguments presented emphasise the importance of data visualisation and its role in making raw data accessible, the way it was approached deserves a closer look as some assumptions and generalisations don’t fully capture the complexities of effective visualization. On top of that, the lack of bibliography to back up its statements raises questions about the credibility of the opinions presented.

Simplification, as praised by the metro map comparison, improves usability, but also risks distortion. Omitting critical data or distorting its context for apparent ease of use undermines trust in visualisations. Edward Tufte warns against "chartjunk" and distortions that forgo accuracy for simplicity.

The claim that “the ends justify the means” when designing raises serious ethical concerns. While simplifying data can make it more accessible, it should never come at the cost of transparency or accuracy. Organisations like Nielsen Norman Group and IDEO emphasise the importance of clarity in design. Misleading or overly aesthetic visuals grab attention in the short term but can create significant long-term problems, particularly in critical fields like healthcare and finance.

Additionally, while complex visualisations can offer deeper insights, they need to be designed with the user in mind. Stephen Few argues that simplicity reduces cognitive overload, making it easier for people to engage with the information. Overwhelming users with too much data in one graphic can have the opposite effect of what’s intended.

While data visualisation is indeed an essential tool, its success lies in balancing clarity, accuracy, usability, and ethical considerations. Mistakes in these areas can make visualisations deceptive or inaccessible, defeating their intended purpose.

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Bibliography

1. Edward Tufte

The Visual Display of Quantitative Information. Cheshire, CT: Graphics Press, 2001.

Tufte warns against "chartjunk" and stresses the importance of clarity and accuracy in data visualisation.

2. Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)

Nielsen, Jakob, "10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design," 1994. Updated regularly.

Discusses the principles of usability and the importance of clear, user-centred design. Accessible at: https://www.nngroup.com.

3. IDEO

IDEO, "Human-Centred Design Toolkit." IDEO.org, 2015.

Focuses on clarity, usability, and ethical considerations in design practices. Accessible at: https://www.ideo.com.

4. Stephen Few

Information Dashboard Design: Displaying Data for At-a-Glance Monitoring. Burlingame, CA: Analytics Press, 2013.

Highlights the importance of simplicity in design to reduce cognitive overload and improve usability.

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ChatGPT Prompt

I need to analyse the following opinion text (it was supposed to have a bibliography and be less than 500 words).

[... copy of the angelised text ...)

Give me good articles to conterargue the topics defended in this text - based on known names of the area, like NNG, IDEO and others...

Empathy is often regarded as the foundation of Design Thinking, yet its focus has caused debate. While the original statement argues that empathy guarantees solutions "are rooted in real user experiences and challenges," critics claim that focusing too much on qualitative approaches such as interviews and shadowing might result in biased or incomplete insights if not properly tested.

IDEO’s "Empathy on the Edge" acknowledges that empathy helps designers connect with users, but it warns that empathy alone can lead to shallow solutions unless combined with iterative prototyping and quantitative analysis. For example, the opinion text suggests observing users "to uncover overlooked issues" such as accessibility challenges. However, without usability testing or empirical data, these findings may just reflect single incidents rather than larger patterns. Similarly, the Nielsen Norman Group (NNG) emphasises that, while empathy is valuable, it cannot replace the need for thorough and empirical research. The text claims that tools such as journey mapping provide "nuanced understanding," but NNG emphasises the significance of validating these insights to ensure they match actual user behaviour rather than designers' assumptions.

Finally, Lourens' "A Critique of Design Thinking" questions the notion that empathy "reduces the likelihood of developing features that don't align with user priorities." Overemphasis on emotional connections can sometimes lead to an overvaluation of specific input and feedback, at the expense of meeting practical needs or limitations.

Empathy is useful, but to create truly effective solutions, it must be balanced with data-driven methods and rigorous validation.

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Bibliography

1. DEO

Empathy on the Edge: Scaling and Sustaining Empathy to Create Social Value. IDEO.org, 2015.

Explores the importance of empathy in the design process and warns of its limitations without rigorous testing and analysis.

2. Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)

"Empathy in Design: Why It’s Overrated." Nielsen Norman Group. Updated regularly.

Critiques the overemphasis on empathy in design, highlighting the importance of usability testing and empirical validation. Accessible at: https://www.nngroup.com.

3. Esmari Lourens

A Critique of Design Thinking: An Interrogation into the Value and Implementation of Design Thinking. University of Pretoria, 2016.

Discusses the potential downsides of over-relying on empathy in Design Thinking, emphasizing the need for practical, data-driven approaches.

4. Cambridge University

"Under the Umbrella: Components of Empathy in Psychology and Design." Design Science Journal. Cambridge University Press, 2018.

Examines the challenges of applying empathy in design, advocating for clearer, operational definitions to ensure actionable insights.

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Devil: Empathizing and Taxonomy vs Tipology

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Devil: Empathizing and Taxonomy vs Tipology

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ChatGPT Prompt

I need to analyse the following opinion text (it was supposed to have a bibliography and be less than 500 words).

[... copy of the angelised text ...)

Give me good articles to conterargue the topics defended in this text - based on known names of the area, like NNG, IDEO and others...

While critics of empathy and user-centred design (UCD) point out its potential issues, the original angelised essay strongly defends their importance and usefulness in design. However, the lack of bibliographical support undermines its credibility, leaving its claims open to question.

One common criticism of UCD is its focus on current user needs which can limit innovation. By focusing on immediate preferences and existing behaviours, designers may overlook emerging technologies or future possibilities, leading to incremental ideas rather than innovative ones, resulting in designs that fail to account for broader societal implications.

Achieving true empathy is another challenge. Designers run the risk of projecting their own prejudices onto user needs, resulting in solutions that may not adequately address real difficulties. For example, the statement "putting yourself in their shoes and sharing their perspective...helps produce the outcome most valuable to the main beneficiary" is consistent with human-centred design principles. However, as Norman states, empathy is insufficient without established methodologies and a thorough understanding of the system in which users operate. Similarly, while the essay praises taxonomy and typology for organising ideas and encouraging innovation, it fails to acknowledge its limitations. Without correct application, these frameworks might result in too complex systems that degrade rather than improve usability. The Nielsen Norman Group highlights the need of balance and simplicity in avoiding such errors.

In conclusion, even though the essay attempts to defend empathy and UCD, its lack of proof and citation weakens its arguments, making them less persuasive to an informed audience.

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Bibliography

1. Norman, Don

Norman, Don. The Design of Everyday Things. Revised and Expanded Edition, Basic Books, 2013.

This book discusses the principles of human-centered design, including the limitations of empathy and the importance of systematic methodologies in design processes.

2. Nielsen Norman Group (NNG)

Nielsen Norman Group. “Taxonomies vs. Ontologies: What’s the Difference?” Available at: NNG Website.

This article explores the application of taxonomy and typology in design, emphasizing the need for simplicity and the risks of overcomplication.

3. IDEO

IDEO. Human-Centered Design Toolkit. 2nd Edition, IDEO.org, 2015.

This toolkit outlines best practices for implementing empathy in design while avoiding common pitfalls, such as bias and insufficient research.

4. Cooper, Alan, et al.

Cooper, Alan, et al. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design. 4th Edition, Wiley, 2014.

This book elaborates on balancing user-centered design with innovation, emphasizing the risks of focusing too narrowly on current user needs.