Creative Problem Solving with Design Thinking: A Primer
1 min readJan 26, 2021
To obtain knowledge one must experience it. Careful observation and reflection will get you there.
- Empathize with your users. Feel their pain points. Let go of your own assumptions, opinions and view points. You are not your user. I repeat, you are not your user.
- Question everything. Be curious. Inquisitive. Ask why. Then ask why again. Become a scientist. Investigate. Research and immerse yourself. Probe. Unearth.
- Generate ideas. Lots of them. Endlessly and tirelessly brainstorm. Be open to all possibilities. Be collaborative. Experiment and ideate. Every idea is a potential solution. Don’t hold back. Be inventive.
- Visually communicate. Make a hypothesis. Test your findings visually & interactively. Explain what you now know. Prototype. Demo. Tell the whole story. Paint the whole picture.
- Embrace feedback & failure. Never take feedback personal. It’s only another viewpoint you hadn’t considered yet. Don’t worry about failing. In fact fail often, and fail hard. Failing is what builds our creative confidence. Failing is growing.
- Your job is never over. Iterate, Iterate, Iterate. In our ever-changing digital world, no idea or solutions is ever finished. It is never the end. Continue to evolve. Refine. Scale.
