Design Thinking

At the beginning of the Design Thinking process, you formulate a “design challenge” in the form of a “how-might-we-question”. This describes the problem and the search space for possible solutions from the user's perspective. You then research current findings from practice and research on your topic. Secondary analyses of comparable projects will also help you. This will help you identify gaps in your knowledge and define topics for more in-depth research. At the end of this first phase, you will develop a research plan together as a team to structure the design challenge's further processing.

In this phase of the Design Thinking process, you will use qualitative research methods from sociology, ethnology, anthropology, and other disciplines. You apply these creatively and thoughtfully. You explore the context of the design challenge and build up an understanding of the relevant people. You observe them closely, conduct interviews, and put yourself in the shoes of all interest groups. This Design Thinking phase aims to identify living environments, usage contexts, expectations, and experiences.

Secondary analyses such as demographic data from official reports or best practice examples complete your qualitative data collection. You recognize human behavior patterns, emotions, and needs and condense them into “insights”. The relevance of these insights far exceeds that of quantitative target group analyses. The learning effect is enormous - for the project and yourself.

In the following Design Thinking phase, you combine the researched results in the so-called “synthesis”. You prioritize the most promising findings and focus on a direction and user group for which you want to develop solutions. To do this, you define relevant social groups and fictitious individuals as “personas”. The reality and emotional world of each “persona” forms the basis on which you then develop ideas.

You consciously choose an emotional perspective that builds on your analysis. This helps you identify with the most important users. In this way, you not only develop empathy for these people but also an intrinsic (inner) motivation to improve their situation.

In the next step, you will generate ideas using various creativity techniques. We teach you various design methods (including brainstorming, body storming, and role-playing) and combine them. In this phase, we emphasize the balance between quiet individual work and dynamic teamwork. This allows you to contribute your ideas as both an introvert and an extrovert in the best possible way and to develop yourself further.

You then “cluster” (group) the ideas according to certain criteria and summarize them. This creates, for example, a cluster with ideas that are easy to implement, the so-called “quick wins”. It can also result in a cluster with “moonshots”, i.e., solutions that are difficult to imagine but visionary. We call clusters with particularly promising approaches in terms of strategy and resources “most promising”. You compare all ideas with the previously defined perspective. This ensures that they remain comprehensible and match the identified needs.

In Design Thinking prototyping, you will develop selected ideas further to make them presentable. With the help of different media and materials, you will transform them into a physical form made mostly from recycled materials such as plastic packaging and cardboard boxes. The prototypes bring your ideas to life in an impressive way.

You will also develop specific media with which potential users can interact, including videos, role-playing games, room installations, and paper and toy models. This makes it possible to experience the innovation proposals you have developed. These can be presentations of new products, services, business models, and forms of interaction and knowledge transfer. You will illustrate multi-layered solution proposals with various multimedia prototypes that provide a concrete idea of the result. There is no quicker or easier way to communicate your ideas to third parties.

At the HPI d-school, you test every prototype in iterative cycles with potential users, experts, and project partners. This distinguishes our approach from traditional development processes. Through physical and/or digital prototypes, you can check the core function, feasibility, and intuitive usability in a timely manner. You document and analyze the entire process to compare the new findings with your previously defined perspective.

During the test cycles, it becomes clear which ideas and prototypes are most relevant to people and organizations. You do this at a low cost and in a short time. After each test, you weigh up whether a (further) iterative loop is necessary. The more often we go through phases in the process again, the more precise and functional the prototype will be in the end.

The human team remains at the heart of this model as the core driver of creativity, empathy, and strategic direction. However, to overcome the hurdles posed by modern complexity, the human team is envisioned to be augmented by an AI-enhanced framework, which aims to amplify their capabilities and expand their scope of action and possibilities. This framework envisions an AI team composed of five distinct roles – analyst, user, creative partner, designer, and coach – each providing targeted support to address specific challenges within the innovation process. Rather than being a fixed set of tools, these roles represent functional areas where various AI tools and technologies can be employed to support and enhance the innovation efforts of the human team.

• AI as an analyst: Processing data and uncovering actionable insights
• AI as a user: Broadening perspectives and increasing understanding
• AI as a creative partner: Inspiring ideas and supporting continuous creative development
• AI as a designer: Bringing concepts to life through visualization and prototyping
• AI as a coach: Offering guidance and continuous feedback on content and processes 

The co-creative human AI framework is about more than integrating AI - it’s about enhancing human potential. By combining your team's expertise with AI's capabilities, you can tackle challenges with more confidence and agility.

Get in touch with us today to explore how we can help you implement this framework along with all the requirements and unlock the future of innovation. Below, you will find further materials such as our whitepapers as well as links to our workshops on the topic.

AI workshops