Let’s call out the elephant in the room. We all have problems—in our companies, industries, and if we’re being honest, we can admit that we also have them in our personal lives.
A study carried out by the Harvard Business Review found that 85% of C-Suite executives have admitted that their companies struggle with problem diagnosis. In addition, 87% of the executives believe that unsolved issues have created significant burdens on their company (HBR).
Simply, the data suggests that businesses have problems, but they don’t know how to properly resolve them.
How do I Solve a Problem?
The best recipe for solving a problem is creativity and structure. In particular, there is one popular process that systematically generates successful solutions, while using creativity and structure. The process is formally known as design thinking.
What is Design Thinking?
In its most basic form, design thinking solves a problem by focusing on the user's perspective of the issue.
When companies can take off their technical hats and step into the user’s shoes, they begin looking at the problem through different lenses and start incorporating the human-centered design technique.
What is Human-Centered Design?
Human-centered design is a technique in which the customer is the center of every thought or development. Because everything revolves around the customer's needs, the process becomes more efficient and effective.
If your company is approaching a problem, reframe your mindset to reflect your typical customer and strip away your technical mindset.
How do I Use Design Thinking?
There are five main steps to successfully solve problems:
1) Empathize
Often, businesses spend the majority of their time in this step.
Relate to your customer by starting conversations that uncover their needs and wants.
In conversations with your customers, try to get answers to the following questions: What is their struggle? How is it affecting the way they view our brand? What emotions surfaced because of this issue?
Keep in mind, empathy is a learned skill that takes time. As you learn the three types of empathy, (cognitive, emotional, and compassionate empathy), you can develop a more rounded understanding of the problem.
2) Define
After collaborating with your audience, it’s time to define the issue. Do this by combining all the data points of the users’ different pain points.
Of the accumulated responses, fully define the problem in the simplest form.
3) Ideate
Brainstorm ways that solve exactly how the customer is struggling.
Consider approaching the brainstorming session with the overarching phrase, “How might we *fill in the blank* ”.
4) Prototype
Be ready to fail and try again. Prototypes are made to be changed.
Combine everything you have learned and build your solution.
Just a heads up — Be ready to adapt. Most likely, you will flip-flop back and forth between the prototype and testing phase. With multiple tries, you will have the perfect solution.
5) Test
Try out your new prototype. Again, focus on the user first and have customers give you feedback on the prototype.
Which Industries Benefit from Design Thinking?
Every industry can benefit from this process!
Whether you define your discipline as an engineer, marketer, financial planner, coder, etc., you constantly run into problems that require solutions.
When Should I Use Design Thinking?
Every employee should constantly be striving to innovate, reinvent, and develop their services, products, or brand.
With the framework of design thinking, your company’s innovation potential will grow in efficiency and effectiveness.
As you continue to innovate, consider feasibility, viability, and desirability for the sake of your audience.
How do I Find Time for Design Thinking?
Holder has your back.
Web3, especially, should be utilizing design thinking and user-focused design. The current ecosystem of web3 companies and projects often neglects this effective mindset.
Holder recognizes that customers drive innovation. Everything we create starts with a design-first and design-thinking approach. This affects how we serve our clients—whether it's on the strategic consulting side of things or in how we design ultimate end-user experiences with our customers’ customers and users.
If you want to see how design thinking should impact the web3 experiences you're building, get in touch.
- Of the special features offered, specifically, Holder will help you segment your audience into lists specialized that meet your needs.
- Conveniently, you can personalize and contact your audience through our SMS messaging (to send messages directly into their web3 wallet) or through email.
- If you are looking to analyze data, Holder has pooled a collection of on and off-chain data.
- As you strategically plan with design thinking, you can utilize Holder Forms to unite wallet addresses with first and zero-party data into a single source of truth.
- Finally, our strategic team will help you build a strategy, activate it, engage with your community, and measure your analytics.
