Improve Your Business with Design Thinking

Design thinking has already been a part of giant corporations’ strategies. Apple, Airbnb, Google, Nike, and other leaders implement the tactic for every product launch and report analysis. It’s one of the most effective approaches to business nowadays since customers have become more knowledgeable.

They can research now and want to choose the best of the best, which is logical. So, to make your products and services stand out from the crowd, you should focus on what your potential clients want.

So, design thinking is all about innovation, adjustment, and customer experience. The process contains several steps and can bring your business incredible benefits.

Not sure yet? Continue reading, and by the end of the article, you’ll want to implement a new UX design process into your company!

The 5 Steps of Design Thinking

There are 5 stages to design thinking:

1. Expressing empathy.
   Analyze the common problems clients have with your service, website, products, etc. Empathize with them, put yourself in their shoes. Maybe an outline of the main problem will come to your mind.
2. Identifying the problem.
   First of all, if sales are poor but you don’t know what the issue is, you need to find at least one. It may be an SEO vs paid ads problem or automated or live customer support. Find out what your potential or current customers don’t like that they choose competitors over you.
3. Looking for solutions.
   Think like your customer and get ideas on potential solutions for the main problem. Take one at time to make sure the adjustment works. However, if one solution can resolve several concerns, that would be amazing.
4. Creating a prototype.
   As you identify problems and find solutions, create a prototype of a new strategy, approach, system, etc.
5. Testing the solution.
   Put it to the test. You can offer your customers to become a part of a test group for a benefit or just implement the new strategy and see how it changes the way people react to your business. Digital analysis tools will be crucial at this point.

So, design thinking is people-oriented, creative problem-solving. A UX agency should be able to explain it to you much better. Whether there’s a problem with cybersecurity or your customer support team needs adjustment, this approach will help detect the issue and fix it as soon as possible.

The 7 Benefits Design Thinking Brings to Your Business

Now, to the benefits. There are plenty, but we’ve identified the top 7 ones that will make a difference for your business:

• Identifying the right issues.
  Pinpointing the issues your customers have is both the essence of design thinking and one of the biggest benefits. When you know what they need, want, like, don’t like, you have all the power to create the customer experience of their dreams. It’s like an honest relationship where partners always share their concerns.
• Inspiring to innovate.
  Innovation brings progress and convenience to any service. Design thinking will give your teams inspiration to research, seek new ways to surprise potential customers and accommodate them better on the website of your company. This also applies to brainstorming for new projects.
• Holding better meetings.
  It’s a common thought that meetings are a waste of time. And often it is. You can talk about many things for hours and everyone will leave a room not having a definitive summary in their heads. Preparing meeting topics and approaches with the help of design thinking will help a lot.
• Faster product launches and delivery.
  While thinking from the perspective of a customer, you’ll see that waiting can be very strenuous. Finding solutions to make deliveries affordable yet fast and product launch more interesting and engaging, your business will skyrocket, leaving the competition far behind.
• Matching expectations.
  When a person wants something, usually, they have some expectations. A company that meets as many as possible will be the final choice. By understanding your target audience fully, you’ll be able to deliver the best user and customer experience. This will lead to more 5-star ratings and more revenue!
• Gaining trust from clients.
  Building loyal relationships with your clients due to the UX design process is a must-do if you want them to stay. Thus, you’ll always have orders, brand attention, UGC (user-generated content), etc. As a result, your advertisement bills will be lower as you’ll have a team of loyal supporters that will help.
• Higher ROI (return on investment).
  Quick delivery, friendly communication, full understanding, etc. will eventually result in the increase of ROI. You’ll invest less and gain more, which is a vital process for any business. And it won’t be based on saving resources or cutting salaries. Your company will prosper.

You can spend thousands of dollars on advertisements, but if your business isn’t hitting the spot of the potential clients, it doesn’t make sense. But learning design thinking will also take some time. To help implement the strategy into your company’s life, consider cooperating with a UX design agency. There, a team of experts in that type of thinking will analyze what your clients need and show you how to cater to them.

Implement Design Thinking in All Teams Working for You ASAP

Not only the marketing, sales, and design teams need this approach. You should implement it in every stage and team of the company. Thus, every meeting will be ten times more effective, customers will come to you without much effort from your side, and you’ll have perfect contact with them.

Creating a product or service doesn’t have to be only about money and scale. First of all, you should optimize your approaches to the people you target. Then, every other tactic, campaign, and funnel will go smoothly. Take design thinking as the basis for all the other processes in your business, and you’ll see improvements in a relatively short time.

And if you’re not ready to do it all on your own, cooperate with a UX design agency. Turn to professionals in design thinking before implementing it fully into the work of your company.