Steal the playbook #1: Design thinking for creatives
Non-linear iterative problem-solving that results in authentic, useful, and transformative creative outcomes? Sign us up and let us loose.
Stealing the playbook is all about shamelessly begging, borrowing and actively stealing practices, formats, and workflows from other industries, gleaning from them for our creative development.Â
Why? Because we know that expansive creative work is fuelled by good context. In each of our steal the playbook deep-dives, we’ll look at how the good contexts of other ‘everyday worlds’ can make our creative practices more robust, more expansive, more efficient, and more damn enjoyable.Â
Let’s spend less time reinventing wheels, and more time taking wheel designs for ourselves, using what’s useful and leaving behind what isn’t.
Buckle in, and steal these playbooks for yourself - we’ve made them digestible and ready for immediate application.
What’s your go-to move when you’re brewing a new project or tinkering with a new idea?Â
Some ideas need to percolate. They need time, space, and air. They may be long-term projects that will grow as you do, fuelled by ongoing discovery, experimentation, and refinement.
Others are short-term projects. They’re an innate response to an opportunity you see right in front of you. Maybe they’re drawing on skills you want to put to work right away, delivering for an audience you feel an urgency to connect with, or simply need to generate actual cash outcomes so you can keep sustaining your creative work.
There’s nothing morally better or worse about a long-term vs. a short-term project. There can be a danger, however, in getting caught between two posts, unclear on what it is you’re looking to achieve, the problem you’re solving for, and the purpose of the whole damn exercise.
That’s where this week’s steal the playbook comes in: introducing design thinking. This may be a fancy phrase you’ve heard before, or one you’ve assigned abstract value to. Design thinking, however, is a defined, user-centred approach to problem-solving that’s non-linear, iterative, and shaped to deliver outcomes with real-world (useful!) results. Plenty of creative thinkers and makers are familiar with design thinking already, but for those of us who aren’t used to considering that we can choose HOW we think, rather than just WHAT we think about, in our creative processes, we’re putting our money on design thinking as a useful tool to incorporate into your practice.
Gimme the tl;dr of where design thinking came from + what it isÂ
Design thinking’s roots stretch back to the 1960s, where Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon captured one of the first uses of the term in his 1969 book ‘The Sciences of the Artificial’, discussing design as a way of thinking.
More structure was added to the term throughout the 1980s and 1990s, but it wasn’t until design firm IDEO, led by founder David Kelley, evolved design thinking into the structure that’s widely used, adopted and recognised today. At IDEO, design thinking was formalised into a process with five distinct phases. They put the method to use as a way to foster innovation and tackle complex problems across all kinds of industries.Â
Fast forward to today, and design thinking is used in multiple disciplines and industries, including business innovation, education, healthcare, design (duh), and product development.
What’s so powerful about design thinking as a development framework is the way it plonks the user (read: the human, the customer, the audience member) in the centre of the problem-solving equation. Rather than companies designing solutions they’re then hunting for a market for (and a problem to solve), design thinking means that our human needs are prioritised throughout an innovative, iterative process.Â
The five phases that commonly make up a design thinking process are Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Sounding all a little techy and a tad far away from your musings in the studio? Stick with us. In reality, this is just the kind of method that can put some much-needed parameters on your creative experimentation, collapsing time between ‘thought’ and ‘result’. We love a good time-collapse hack.Â
A fan-girl moment for the word ‘iterative’
Let’s pause for a moment to fan-girl over the power of iteration.
Working in an iterative manner means we’re moving away from a linear process to a non-linear process. It’s freeing, supportive, and oriented towards genuine discovery.Â
Linear workflows can result in pressure. You’ve got one shot to get it right as you move from problem towards solution. If it doesn’t work, well, cue the drama: ‘all my work is wasted! Months of my life, down the drain! Nobody’s ever going to want what I have to offer!’Â
Non-linear workflows? They’re kinder to us as creatives and much gentler on our humanity. Instead of setting ourselves up for the pressures of a one-shot wonder in our creative work, we can use the power of a dynamic workflow to loop and spiral as we need to, based on real-world feedback and deeper insights about what our customers truly need. We try, we fail, we learn, we refine. And guess what? We’re right on track at every one of those touchpoints when we’re working iteratively.
Iterative work is at the heart of design thinking, which is oriented towards the relentless pursuit of improvement, NOT perfection.Â
Rather than settling for the first ‘good idea’ that rises to the surface, more possibilities are explored, they’re tested out in the real world, and they’re adapted, refined, and strengthened based on that genuine feedback.Â
Innovation and creativity get to work hand in hand, without the pressures of perfectionism breathing down their necks.Â
Design thinking in your creative project development
Ok, so, design thinking sounds cool - but what does it actually look like for someone who’s working in a creative field?Â
Are you sometimes guilty of falling in love with your first (read: newest, most shiny) idea?
Do you ever get stuck in productive procrastination because you have no idea whether your concept will resonate with your audience?
Design thinking is the solution at both ends of this spectrum.
For us, design thinking in action can look like:
Phase 1: Empathise
Here’s where we spend time understanding who you’re truly making work for. What do they need? What’s keeping them up at night? What makes them squeal with delight? This goes far beyond market research, and instead, is all about truly feeling what your potential customer feels. Empathy is a kick-ass tool we can use to understand them better, looking for signposts as to how that understanding can inform our creative direction.
Phase 2: Define
Now that you’re armed with this deep understanding of your audience, it’s time to define the real challenges they face. This is for the girlies who are quick to action when they decide they’ve got a fun, effective new solution: is the problem you think you’re solving actually a REAL problem? And if it is, is it the most important problem your work could solve for your people?Â
Phase 3: Ideate
This is where creativity and design thinking become the easiest of bedfellows. It’s time to pull out the sticky notes and brainstorm all kinds of solutions. We’re not sticking with the first thing that comes to mind here. We’re allowing all ideas the space they need to breathe, to introduce themselves, to throw something totally left-of-field on the table. Don’t censor yourself in this phase - merely capture what’s coming to mind as you consider the human you’re designing for and the problem you’re truly looking to solve. In this stage, the wilder the idea, the better.
Phase 4: Prototype
Prototypes! We love them! And we rarely use them! What’s with the disconnect? In this fourth phase of the design thinking process, it’s time to pick the idea you believe holds the most potential in solving this problem for your audience. As creatives, we also believe this idea should GENUINELY capture your creative attention. Otherwise, what’s the point? Look for the sweet spot, then create a simple version of this idea to show to your audience. It doesn’t need to be polished, but it does need to convey the essence of your concept (in other words, your solution to their problem).
Phase 5: Test
Ooh, what a growth opportunity this phase presents us with. It’s time to get feedback. What do your people love about your idea? What doesn’t work? What features were they desperate to see in it, and which ones can they actually do without? This feedback is creative gold. It’s where you can save yourself days, weeks, months, years in making sure your efforts are actually going to be matched in your outcomes. Gather as much feedback as you can, before folding it back into your design process. You may find that the feedback you receive helps you to define the problem you’re solving for more specifically (phase two) which means you’ll need to go through the subsequent phases again. Every time you do, you’re using iterative and innovative creative thinking to align the work you’re offering with the work your audience desperately wants to receive. Win-win.Â
Stealing the design thinking playbook for yourself
Design thinking takes some time to get used to, and to adapt. We’re recommending an ongoing flirtation with this iterative workflow, but since we love a quick win, here are three ways you can steal the playbook today and get started on making the most of this process approach in your own creative work.Â
Assess your existing projects/products/services. Rather than starting from scratch, design thinking can be applied to your existing work. Ask questions about who your work is serving, the problem it’s solving, and whether you have enough data about whether that problem truly exists. Can you set up a call with a few of your customers or people who represent your target audience? Pick their brains about what they’d love to see in that product or service, and run a quick version of the five-phase process, looking at how you can make changes that stem from design thinking to a product or service that already exists in the market.
Get to know different forms of prototypes. It’s so common for us to get stuck in what we know when it comes to building new work. ‘This is how I do it.’ ‘This is the next step.’ What if you treated prototypes like a fun little research project? How can you get more familiar with different forms of prototypes? Here’s a few examples to kick-start your deep-dive - fair warning, however, that prototypes quickly become addictive. They may become your next obsession, but at least it’s a useful one!
Thicken your skin. If the thought of asking for feedback on a new idea or a product/service that’s not totally, completely, 100% perfect terrifies you, you know what you gotta do. Ask for it anyway. You can build your comfort levels with the final phase of design thinking by learning how to ask for feedback, and how to adopt critical feedback into your ongoing practice. We promise it’s not going to kill you. In fact, as certain rap lyrics would decree, it’ll only make you stronger.
Here are three more places you can also learn more about design thinking:
Time to add the design thinking playbook to your repertoire. As a creative problem-solver, you’re just the kind of human who’s going to enjoy where it leads you the most!