Posts in Product design

Top 13 Best Design Thinking Tools Of 2024

Customer experience Design Thinking Product design
Workshop

The year 2024 heralds a new era where design thinking transcends traditional boundaries, offering groundbreaking methodologies to approach challenges, foster creativity, and drive unparalleled growth.

Design Thinking Tools, integral for traversing the vast landscape of design thinking, cater to each stage of the process — from empathizing with users to defining problems, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.

This guide to the Top 15 Design Thinking Tools for 2024 is crafted to empower professionals and organizations, offering insights into tools that enhance creativity and use customer experience data to inform design choices.

Integrating design thinking tools into business strategies is crucial. In an era dominated by customer experience, these tools provide a systematic way to identify and address user needs, ensuring products and services are innovative and truly meet customer desires. By applying design thinking tools throughout the design process, businesses can turn abstract ideas into tangible solutions that connect with their target audience, enhancing the customer experience.

Whether you’re a designer, product manager, or entrepreneur, mastering the right design thinking tools is key to success. These tools bridge theory and practice, helping teams collaborate effectively, make decisions based on customer data, and create innovative, user-focused solutions.

Stay tuned as we reveal the top design thinking tools of 2024, set to redefine creativity, efficiency, and impact in the digital age.

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Customer Research: How much do you think you know your customers?

Product design Service design
Customer Research: How much do you think you know your customers?

We were designing a product for a particular customer segment when one of the technical “experts” decided to take one design direction because he knew better.

He said, “I have been doing this for many years, and I “know” what customers want.”

Forget the fact that he wasn’t a designer; he still thought he “knew better.”

Why?
Design is such a subjective topic. Everyone has a point of view. It’s not like you are engineering the system of an autonomous car, right? THAT for sure needs expertise. But design? Everyone can do design. Or so they think.

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Boost your sales with a research-backed method for innovation

Consumer Behavior Product design
The market research method that will drive innovation and boost your sales

“If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” – Henry ford

Sometimes, when we think about innovation, creating new products or services, we think about what is familiar to us.

You might think I wish to create something that I want or something that I am passionate about. While your passion is crucial to keep your engine going, it might not necessarily be what your customers want.

There are two primary schools of thoughts when creating new products:

1] Ideation: Ideate, brainstorm, test as many ideas as you can, and fail fast.
2] Needs and challenges: Find out about your customers’ needs and then serve them.

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7 Reasons to conduct usability testing

Customer experience Product design Service design
7 Reasons to conduct usability testing

In one of my previous posts, 6 Dimensions to measure usability, I explained what is usability and why it’s important to measure. 

But… 

More often than not, the budget wouldn’t allow it or the project timeline is just too tight. 

Usability testing then is put in a second priority. Worse, it could be forgotten.

… and so, I have decided to share with you 7 reasons you should conduct usability testing.

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6 Dimensions to measure usability

Customer experience Product design Service design 1 Comment
6 Dimensions to measure usability

Usability is one of the user experience design disciplines. Other disciplines include visual design, information architecture, and interaction design. 

Ignore it, and good luck having users “use” your product, whether that is a website, a mobile app, a system, or a device. 

What is usability?

In simple words, usability is how easy it is to use an interactive device, system, or website. 

When you decide to design a product, you are trying to solve your customer’s problem. You want to provide your customer with a functional product that is easy to use, and therefore useful.

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3 Product design principles that work for every customer

Customer experience Product design Service design
3 Product design principles that work for every customer

Emotions drive our decisions. 

They shape our pains, our joyful moments. If they are good, we keep using the same products or services, and if they are not, we simply stop and walk away.

There is no doubt that customer (or “user”) research is an essential activity to design products and services that truly meet your customer needs. 

We want to understand the challenges that our customers face in order to design products and services that deem helpful to them. 

If we don’t understand what jobs they are trying to do, what challenges they are facing, and what contributes to a better day for them, then what are we doing?

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Do you get frustrated when you can’t open a jar?

Consumer Behavior Product design Service design 1 Comment
Do you get frustrated when you can't open a jar?

Don’t be that jar. 

I bet every designer out there is familiar with the value proposition canvas, on which you basically match how the product or service you are designing, is going to help your customers do the jobs they currently do. It helps you map how you are going to relieve their pains, and how you are going to alleviate their gains. 

It looks something like this.

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Discover how color psychology can increase your conversions

Consumer Behavior Consumer Marketing Product design
Discover how color psychology can increase your conversions

Know your customer. 

In different terms, when it comes to product design or marketing, one key element to your success is knowing your customer. 

Some call it in the broader level of a customer segment, where basically you know specific statistics about your customer, such as age, demographics, etc. 

Those who take a deeper look to empathize with their customers create personas or avatars. A customer avatar is an imaginary representation of your target customer in a specific segment. The avatar or the persona is Amy who in her mid-20s and loves to go swimming every day after work. She is self-aware and motivated to remain healthy because her Grandma died from such and such disease. 

Knowing your customers can help you in so many decisions, from what to say and what not to say, what language to use, where to find them and how to trigger them. 

One of those decisions is color.

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