Design Thinking Handbook

1. Design Thinking Handbook - Put it in practice!
After finishing the overview course on Design Thinking, use this handbook to apply your learnings to your customers and your
products. Encourage others on your team to participate.
Customer Empathy
Visit these wikis for more information
Amazon Market Research: https://w.amazon.com/bin/view/MarketResearch/
Conducting User Research: https://w.amazon.com/index.php/User_Research
Practice interview skills with a friend or co-worker before talking to actual customers.
Interview tips:
 Know your goals: The more focused you are on what you want to get out of the interview, the more likely you are
to walk away with focused learnings.
 Prepare open-ended questions. Begin with “what,” “how,” “who,” “where,” or “when.” Don’t ask leading
questions. Go for specific examples such as “tell me about…”
 Listen, don’t talk. Keep your questions short and unbiased. It encourages them to go beyond the short answer
and expand into detail which will often be the source of rich insight.
 Listen for pain points. Pay attention to non-verbals and/or emotion in the customer voice (ie: excitement,
disappointment, frustration) and drill down to learn more. Ask “Why?” often.
 Try repeating back what the person said to confirm understanding and elicit more insight. "So what I understand
you're saying is [this]. ...is that right?" or “It sounds like X is very important to you, while Y is not. How accurate is
that?”
 Be thankful! Thank them for their time and reinforce one point that you learned to make them feel valued.

3. Insight Generation
Rephrase your themes as a short statement. Make sure they convey the sense of a new perspective or possibility. Consider
inviting someone outside your team to read your insight statements and see how they resonate.

4. Journey Mapping
What does YOUR customer journey map look like? How do your customers interact with your product, service, or feature?

5. How Might We….?
If you’re working with a group, everyone can come up with potential HMW statements. More is better! Spend 30 minutes
brainstorming as many HMW’s as possible. Reinforce divergence’. There’s no one right answer. Make sure your HMW
questions are broad enough to allow for a great variety of creative answers, and remember to stay customer-centric.
Tips for coming up with HMW questions: How might we…
 …amplify what’s good?
 …remove what’s bad?
 …take it to an extreme?
 …question an assumption?
 …create and analogy?
 …focus on a single element?
 …leverage resources?
SUPPLIES: Stickies and pens
When you’re done, cluster similar ideas and group them by themes and patterns. The goal of concept selection is not to PICK
the best concept. It is to DEVELOP the best concept. So, COMBINE and REFINE your concepts to create the best one. Also,
discussing WHY the ideas were picked may spur further refinement or uncover new idea/solutions.

6. Brainstorming Solutions
Brainstorming Best Practices
1. Do ‘brainwriting’ first. Take the first few minutes to silently jot down individual ideas. Then share them aloud with the
group in a systematic way.
2. K.I.S.S. Write headlines of six words or less, and illustrate if possible. Nothing gets an idea across faster than a rough
sketch on a wall.
3. Welcome wacky ideas. Wild ideas often give rise to creative leaps. Imagine there are no constraints.
4. Stay focused on the topic. Keep the discussion focused on your HMW question.
5. Defer judgement. You never know where a good idea is going to come from. Ban criticism.
6. Build on the ideas of others. This takes practice. Instead of “but,” try saying “yes, and...” All brains are equal.
7. Go for quantity. Aim for as many new ideas as possible.
SUPPLIES: something to write with, something to write on, and your brain, your voice, and your imagination!
Revisit your challenge. Look closely at every aspect of your concept. List all the constraints and barriers that stand in your
way and consider how to evolve your idea within those constraints.

7. PRO(TOTYPING) TIPS:
1. Visualize the experience over time. Break down the customer experience into a beginning, a middle, and an end.
2. Ask questions your team needs to answer to understand how your idea might work in practice. “How will customers
hear about this? What will their first experience be like?”
3. Try a variety of approaches. This allows for exploration and unlocks creativity to arrive more quickly at successful
solutions.
4. Keep a running log of questions that come up while you build prototypes. Revisit and answer them as you develop your
idea further.
5. Don't aim for perfection! Continually build, test, and refine your work. Save resources for the solution you know is the
right one.
6. Start with something simple and evolve it until you have a working model you can test with customers in the real world.
Gather feedback every step of the way.

9. APPENDIX
Sample templates from the Design Thinking eLearning course