Design Your Thinking by Pavan Soni
Name: Design Your Thinking
Author(s): Soni, Pavan
Published: 2020
The Core Problem: In a world of increasing ambiguity and complexity, how can organisations and individuals move beyond rigid, linear problem-solving methods to a more adaptive, human-centred approach that fosters genuine creativity and innovation?
The Bottom Line
- What it is: Design Your Thinking is a primer on the principles and practices of design thinking, presented as a structured, repeatable methodology for creative problem-solving.
- Why it matters: It matters because traditional business processes are ill-suited for the ambiguous challenges of today’s world.
- What you’ll get: From this Note, you will get a clear understanding of when to use design thinking, a detailed breakdown of its five stages (Inspire, Empathise & Define, Ideate, Prototype & Test, Scale), and a set of practical frameworks and mindsets for cultivating innovation.
Time Commitment:
Disclaimer: This content is intended for educational, commentary, and review purposes only. All opinions expressed are my own and are not affiliated with the author or publisher of the book. Any copyrighted material, including quoted excerpts, is used under the principles of fair use for criticism and analysis. For further information or to support the author, please refer to the links mentioned at the beginning of this page.
The Strategist’s Briefing
“Design your thinking”, as one may infer from the name, is a book that helps the modern day knowledge worker understand what design thinking is all about.
Design thinking is more relevant in the world we live in today because many of the problems we face at local and international levels are multi-disciplinary, amorphous and often without precedence.
The premise of the book is that, unlike popular opinion, design thinking can be engineered and inculcated through deliberate practice and is not only a creative endeavour left to the artsy types.
The author, Pavan Soni, is a multifaceted professional who describes himself as an “Innovation Evangelist” and a “teacher by passion”.
Soni takes us through a journey where he first defines the right context where a design thinking approach will be applicable and then shares the 5 stages of design thinking, dedicating a chapter to each and also illustrating the point through multiple real-life business examples. The author concludes the book by talking about how at an organisational as well as personal level we can inculcate design thinking. The book is peppered with handy frameworks that can be applied to business problems.
Soni frames design thinking as an engineered and learnable discipline, not just an artistic endeavour. It is positioned as a necessary response to a world where problems are increasingly complex and multi-faceted. This Note applies the Strategist’s Lens to Soni’s framework, treating design thinking not as a buzzword, but as a disciplined methodology for navigating ambiguity, fostering customer empathy, and systematically de-risking innovation.
Core Frameworks Deconstructed
Citation: All text highlighted in yellow in this section is cited from – Soni, Pavan. Design Your Thinking: The Mindsets, Toolsets and Skill Sets for Creative Problem-solving. Kindle Edition.
Better than stage-gate
Businesses have traditionally relied on the stage-gate method for new product development and innovation.
This method is well suited for environments of low ambiguity or when continuous improvement is needed to something rather than a complete overhaul, but when ambiguity (either of what the right problem is, or what the right solution is) increases then this method becomes sub-optimal.
- Stage-gate processes start with an idea, while according to the author they should start with a problem to solve.
- Concept testing happens very late in the game when a lot of resources have already gone into the process. this can lead to sunk cost fallacy.
- Stage-gate necessitates a business case even before a rudimentary market analysis has been done.
- Stage-gate is linear and there is no way to do iterative development, something that will be needed to optimize truly revolutionary ideas.
Design thinking can address stage-gate method’s problems
According to Soni it is a method much better suited to the chaotic and ambiguous business environments of today and introduces “… discipline to the otherwise chaotic process of creativity …”.
It must also be said that design thinking is not just a rehash of existing ideas, the author contrasts it against other popular methods.
- Lean thinking: Where the goal is iterative improvement to existing, established solution to well-defined problems.
- Critical thinking: Which is about defining an ambiguous problem properly through root cause analysis, and then solving it through existing, established methods.
- Lateral thinking: Applies to situations where the problem is well known but the solution is not. Here the goal is to go beyond the existing knowledge base and find inspiration in other areas.
- Design thinking: Where both the problem is ill-defined and so is the range of potential solutions.
Design thinking, at the same time, is not a panacea. And its use in the following settings should be avoided (or at least very carefully considered before using): Fundamental research, disruptive innovation and pure improvisation.
Design thinking is particularly relevant today
First of all, products and services today are more like experiences.
Customer’s don’t just want a thing, they want an experience. And this calls for design thinking.
Multifaceted Problems
Which means increasing level of ambiguity, which then means that linear processes like stage-gate will not work.
Digitisation of experience
When we interact with businesses, we are increasingly interacting with machines (as intermediaries) more than we do directly with people.
Machine interaction can be cold and turn people away, hence design thinking brings in the empathy to ease people (customers) into this digital transformation.
B2C…ization
Since no company today can survive without thinking about the end customer.
So, even if you are a B2B company, you stand a chance to win if you partner with your customer (a business) to think about their customers (humans), and you do not bring this mindset then you will risk long term longevity of your enterprise.
Thinking about end customers needs empathy, and that is something design thinking does.
Customer is king
And increasingly restless too. If you spend forever to create your product by less agile product development processes then you may miss the bus. Since design thinking needs rapid prototyping, it reduces time to market.
Rate of change is increasing
Markets, customer preferences and business models are changing fast.
Concept 1: When to Use Design Thinking
Principle: Design thinking is not a panacea. It is a specific methodology best suited for problems where both the problem itself and the potential solutions are ill-defined and ambiguous.
Application: It is superior to traditional “stage-gate” processes in high-ambiguity environments because it starts with the problem (not the idea), tests concepts early, and allows for iterative development. It differs from lean thinking (improving existing solutions) and critical thinking (solving defined problems with known methods).
Strategist’s Note: Design thinking is particularly relevant today because products are becoming experiences, problems are more multi-faceted, and customer expectations are constantly changing at an accelerating pace.
How to “Design Think”
Some basic tips
Think before you design
You need to be empathetic to the customer (the one whose problem you want to solve, and not necessarily the one who pays) and focus on them as the subject of the exercise (and not the object that you mind naturally tends to gravitate towards as the obvious solution).
Don’t it alone
Gone are the days of designing a product in a lab and presenting it to the customer as the answer to all his problems. We are now living in an age where products are as much created “for” the customer as they are created “with” the customer. With design thinking “problem is co-discovered with the customer before it is co-solved with the customer”. And this is a good thing.
Go beyond the product
Design thinking is about the customer and not the product. The product is just one of the things that the customer uses but their experience is dictated by a host of other things, like the sights and smells in your store, how your website resolves their doubts, the behaviour of customer facing teams (before, during and after the sale) etc. All benefit from design thinking.
Visuals and kinaesthesia
According to the author one can truly embrace design thinking by making sure that plans do not remain on paper for too long and are instead converted into prototypes, however crude. “Engaging in physical creation is critical for the evolution of ideas”. And go beyond putting words on paper (or a screen), make sure to visualize your thinking by writing, doodling, sketching. It will help you bring a problem to life much more effectively, generate more ideas.
Fail fast
No one ever comes up with a 100% right solution in the first try. Design thinking gives you permission to fail and even enables you to “fail forward”, that is, make sure that you glean important lessons even from failure.
And when one fails early, they are actually ensuring long term strength by getting to know sooner than later the weak points to compensate for.
Broad before you go narrow
Design thinking needs one to generate as many ideas as possible before even thinking about shortlisting the solutions. What you do need to ensure that the ideas being generated are within the bounds of the objective statement. To generate a good number of ideas learn to park your judgement, work in diverse settings and be rigid about the outcome but flexible about the approach.
Compartmentalise
Design thinking promotes creativity, but unbridled creativity is chaos.
To bring method to the madness learn to instinctively introduce temporal and cognitive seperators between the three phases of problem exploration, solution generation and solution validation.
Every problem is a symptom
And that the real problem is deep and will take time to unearth. Speaking to customers is helpful, but many a times the customer herself does not know the problem, she only knows the symptom – so, it makes sense to ask probing questions and not assume anything. Another way to do this is to reframe the problem in a way that it triggers different lines of thought than usual.
Stage 1: Inspire
The goal setting phase
Have a clear vision
Of what you want from your design thinking exercise. Getting the design brief, which is “a set of mental constraints that gives the project team a framework from which to begin, benchmarks by which they can measure progress, and a set of objectives to be realized”.
Dream big
Nothing is off limits, create a stretch goal of what you want to achieve through the design thinking exercise. Have audacious goals that challenge you, inspire you, even scare you a little bit. Do not use this time to think linearly, use it to think exponentially. Widen the aperture of your thinking.
Gather diverse perspectives
Everyone toeing the same line will hinder creativity, by having participation from people with diverse backgrounds in the design team you can ensure that a large variety of ideas are brought to the table.
Stage 2: Empathise and define
The problem definition phase
In order to have a robust solution, it is important to first understand the problem. and there is no better way to deeply understand a problem than empathy.
Traditional means of market research that involve questionnaires, surveys, even personal interviews are not enough to build empathy.
They just give you a surface level glimpse of the symptoms, while the iceberg of causes remains hidden from view. Techniques that immerse you into the customer’s life, like ethnographic research, build empathy. If you want to understand your customer and her problems, then you have to live like your customer and face her problems.
You can engineer empathy
Being present and mindful: listening with intent, observing with purpose and deferring judgement. More structured ways are: mind mapping, stakeholder map, customer journey map and empathy map.
Gathering diverse perspectives
Not just from different kinds of customers but also from customer facing teams, internal teams, and even partners/vendors can help understand and define a problem much more sharply.
Leveraging technology
One can gather real-time or near real-time data on a large scale (the “what”), that can then be filtered through human evaluation to get to insights (the “why”). Technologies like AI/ML models that can train on big data (and almost every company today is generating big data) can be a very powerful complement to human researchers who will know what to make of data, but will not have the cognitive ability to parse through large amounts of it. So, man and machine can be brought together for superior problem definition.
It is not only important to define a problem in terms of “what needs to be done”, but also in terms of “within what limits”. And defining the constraints of your problem can lead to a lasting solution, or a solution that just solves one problem to create another.
Impact, constraint, equifinality
Use these three as yardsticks to gauge whether you have rightly defined the problem. The problem, if solved, should be able to impact a large number of customers. The constraints defined on the problem should be such that the solution does not create another problem you’re not okay with creating. And, the answer or the approach to the problem should not be mentioned in the problem statement itself.
Stage 3: Ideate
The solution generation phase
Invite serendipity
By exploring the same problem across disciplines and avoiding the trap of being too analytical or data oriented as it can kill creative solutions early in the process. This is also sometimes called “analogous thinking” or “analogous design”.
There’s nothing wrong with imitating or getting inspired from existing ideas that have worked well, as long as you are not just blindly copying without context.
Use hybrid brainstorming
Which is basically is when people first independently think about a problem and possible solutions, write down or sketch those ideas before coming to the larger group for showcasing and discussion. Once everyone has got a chance to showcase their ideas is when the forum opens up for further discussion. Another technique called “plussing“, where you are only allowed to critique an idea by offering a better idea or adding to an existing idea.
According to the author, the ideal team size for ideation is two people as it prevents the idea plateauing that an individual faces while also avoiding the fear of evaluation and free riding that groups of 3 or more will have. Of course, once the ideation is complete, the couple can bring their ideas to the larger group.
Break the pattern of “safe” or conventional thinking
By challenging assumptions, looking across the value chain, looking beyond current users, designing for extreme/edge use cases and thinking laterally.
In today’s hyper connected world, one should not forget the power of crowdsourcing ideas/solutions.
Stage 4: Prototype and test
The “let’s see if this works” phase
It is important to prototype early and often to guide decision making. the earlier you are in the processes the faster, rougher and cheaper should be our prototypes.
The author talks about achieving a “… goldilocks quality …” with your prototypes where the prototype is neither too low in quality (that prospects don’t even get the idea of what its about), not too high (so that it takes lots of money/time to build).
If the problem is too complex to prototype a solution at once, then break it down into smaller components and build prototype solutions for the parts.
Once the parts solutions are working well enough then you can bring them together and see if the combined solution works for the entire problem (or not).
Also, if you are reasonably confident that a solution exists to a part of the problem and will work, then no need to prototype that. What you do need to prototype is the part of the problem that is most critical to solve to achieve success and whose solution you are not entirely sure will work (or even exists). The author calls this “… doing the last experiment first …”.
Dogfooding: One of the best ways to check if a prototype has a chance is to first use it in your own life. Companies will adopt their own technologies and products first to rigorously test and improve them before releasing them to the public.
For services and other intangible concepts you can also use storyboards and scenarios. Scenarios can be brought to life using AR and VR. Whether its physical objects or services, its best to bring them alive through a story.
Keeping in an inventory of failed prototypes and experiments can be more useful than the successful ones as it can serve as a guiding light as to “what does not work”.
Stage 5: Scale
Adopt lean methodologies and six-sigma during scaling to lower variance and achieve replication.
Define what scale means to you
Does it mean revenue? Does it mean sales volume? Does it mean geography? Whatever it means, make sure it is the right metric and that you consistently stick with it.
Also, it is important to have some objective measure of scale to know whether the project is moving in the right direction, something like OKRs.
These objectives must be designed in such as way that common business sense is not sacrificed at the altar of innovation or customer centricity.
Concept 2: Five Stages of Design Thinking
Principle: Design thinking can be broken down into a five-stage process that provides discipline to creativity. The process is iterative and moves between divergent (broad) and convergent (narrow) thinking.
Application:
- 1. Inspire: The goal-setting phase. Define a clear vision and audacious goals. Gather a diverse team.
- 2. Empathize & Define: The problem-definition phase. Use ethnographic research and empathy maps to understand the customer’s true needs. Define the problem sharply.
- 3. Ideate: The solution-generation phase. Use divergent thinking, analogous inspiration, and hybrid brainstorming to generate a wide range of potential solutions.
- 4. Prototype & Test: The validation phase. Build low-fidelity prototypes early and often. Test the most critical assumptions first (“do the last experiment first”).
- 5. Scale: The implementation phase. Use lean and six-sigma methodologies to reduce variance and replicate the solution. Define clear metrics (OKRs) for success.
Strategist’s Note: The process is about co-discovering the problem with the customer before co-solving it. It’s a fundamental shift from designing for users to designing with them.
Cultivate the right culture
Organisational culture must be not only tolerant of failure but also celebrate it as long as the failure meant growth in learning (the author calls this “failing forward”).
An innovation evangelist is a person who is well connected within the organisation and deeply passionate about the topic or the organisation’s mission.
Such as person can spur innovation in the company and drive connections between innovators and people who can act as catalysts.
Design thinking is best done in a workshop format where the participants are inoculated from business-as-usual and are able to think freely.
Deeper workshops can be done over a five day period with each day dedicated to each design thinking stage. But if that is excessive the author recommends having a two day workshop.
But really, a design thinking mindset cannot be achieved through a workshop alone.
If it is to percolate as organisational culture then the leadership must deliberately place avenues for practicing design thinking and in a sense champion the cause by training employees in design thinking and holding events that celebrate it (successes and failures).
Further, the organisation’s physical space can be designed in the way to encourage serendipity, collaboration and blue-ocean thinking.
Particular to the Indian context, we must understand that improvisation is not the same thing as design thinking as it’s not often repeatable, and hence, not scalable.
Cultivate the right traits
The five traits that every design thinker needs to embody are: empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism and willingness to collaborate.
Being curious helps, once can develop curiosity by travelling and reading widely. Combining curiosity with active, purposeful observation is powerful. A lot of things are not said but gestured.
Listening with intent and suspending judgement are also important traits to cultivate. And so is having a tolerance for failure and viewing it with the right perspective.
One can get more tolerant towards failure by choosing a single or only a few areas in their life where they are willing to take disproportionate risk, while other areas of their life are largely stable.
“The key attributes of a design thinker or an expert problem-solver could be summarized into three core characteristics: a clear head, a deep heart and a thick skin. A clear head would help you think through a complex problem, a deep heart makes you more empathetic and a thick skin is necessary for failure tolerance.“
Having multiple affiliations (interests) are also helpful in cultivating the skills needed for design thinking.
This will allow you to become a “T-shaped person“, that is, someone who has expertise in a particular area while also being reasonably versed in a range of others so as to be empathetic towards them and draw on them in time of need. A T-shaped personality also makes us more appreciative of what other disciplines have to offer and less judgemental and stiff in accepting cross-domain solutions.
Reducing one’s levels of latent inhibitions can boost original/lateral thinking and reducing associative barriers.
According to the author, even if a person does not have a high IQ, if they have lower levels of latent inhibition then they can still be more creative, original and innovative in their thinking compared to someone with a higher IQ.
Concept 3: Cultivating Design Thinking Culture
Principle: Adopting design thinking is not just about following a process; it requires cultivating the right organisational culture and individual traits.
Application: Organizations must create a culture that is tolerant of failure (“failing forward”), champions innovation from the top, and provides physical and temporal space for creative work (e.g., workshops, collaborative spaces).
Strategist’s Note: Individuals should cultivate five key traits: empathy, integrative thinking, optimism, experimentalism, and a willingness to collaborate. Becoming a “T-shaped person”—having deep expertise in one area and broad knowledge in many others—is crucial for this.
High-Signal Quotations
Citation: All text in the following section is cited from – Soni, Pavan. Design Your Thinking: The Mindsets, Toolsets and Skill Sets for Creative Problem-solving. Kindle Edition.
- We do not learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.
- Can thinking be disciplined? Yes, very much, and this book is a humble attempt in that direction.
- design thinking process model, comprising these stages: inspire; empathize and define; ideate; prototype and test; and scale.
- Ironically, it turns out that the only way to contain the type-B error is to allow for more type-A errors, which is to say, ‘Fail faster to succeed sooner.’
- We need a model that is flexible, closer to the users, open to feedback on an ongoing basis, lowers type-B errors, contains the cost of type-A errors, does not swear by the business plans, and is fast. Design thinking can just be the approach.
- Design thinking could be viewed as a method that introduces discipline into the otherwise chaotic process of creativity.
- Design thinking, at its core, involves humans: their desires, emotions, pains, aspirations, behaviours, kinesthetics and other dimensions of being, and a problem that does not involve such elements is best not approached with design thinking. By this argument, there could possibly be three contexts in which design thinking might not be very effective: fundamental research, disruptive innovation and pure improvisation.
- People, rich and poor, are going beyond amassing stuff to seeking experiences, and that is visible among a wide cross section in India and in several other emerging economies.
- Firstly, do not just think of delivering a better product, but instead think more broadly in terms of offering a better experience. Secondly, you do not have to do everything by yourself; instead, tap into the ecosystem for complementary assets.
- ‘If you’re competitor-focused, you have to wait until there is a competitor doing something. Being customer-focused allows you to be more pioneering.’
MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive). If you cannot break a problem down into three or five mutually exclusive but collectively exhaustive, components, you have not sufficiently thought through the problem. - ‘The sparks come from ideas rubbing against each other rather than as bolts out of the blue.’
- Design thinking is a series of divergent and convergent stages. You apply divergent thinking while empathizing and convergent thinking while defining the problem; and once again divergent thinking when ideating and convergent thinking to pick the most promising ideas.
- ‘The Universe is made of stories, not of atoms.’
- Judgement is the unwanted side effect of expertise.
The Takeaways
“Design Your Thinking” is the first books I’ve read in a long time from an Indian author.
This book is a good primer on design thinking and gets one started on the right path.
The author has drawn from multiple sources to create this book and it shows with the range of examples and frameworks cited.
Unlike some other books I have read where the same point is spread over multiple chapters, here the author packs a lot of lessons in each chapter.
However, strictly speaking, the actual “points” in each chapter are a few and fairly simple to understand but the extensive examples given by the author to support and explain them makes for long-ish chapters, but the book remains easy reading throughout.
The writing is nice and crisp, not a lot of time is spent repeating the same point over and over.
Personally, I also liked the fact that the author gave a lot of examples from the Indian market, and being an Indian I was able to relate with immediately, quite refreshing.
Your 3-Point Action Plan
- Practice Ethnographic Empathy. Choose one “customer” in your life (a family member, a colleague, a client). For 30 minutes, simply observe them in their natural environment without asking questions. Take notes on their behaviors, challenges, and workarounds.
- Use Hybrid Brainstorming on a Problem. Take one problem you’re currently facing. Spend 10 minutes brainstorming solutions by yourself and write them down. Then, present your ideas to one other person and have them use the “plussing” technique—they can only critique your ideas by offering a better one or building on top of them.
- “Do the Last Experiment First.” For one of your projects, identify the single most critical assumption upon which the entire project’s success rests. Brainstorm one quick, low-cost way you could test that single assumption this week.
Design thinking is a powerful methodology for ambiguous problems. To explore the foundational mental models that underpin the critical thinking part of the equation, see the Field Note on Clear Thinking by Shane Parrish.
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Aviral Prakash
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