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iHub Research By Angela Crandall / May 19, 2012

Internal Design Thinking Trainings at iHub Research

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Bridget McGraw, a Design Thinking expert, is guiding the iHub Research team on how best to conduct design-thinking training for the iHub community.

The 'Energy Man' - One of the prototypes created by the iHub Research team during the Design Thinking workshops

One of the rationales behind design thinking is that product developers often forget to interact heavily with the users of products to find what users want from their products. A culture shift is required so that developers can appreciate the importance of gaining insights from end users during product development.

Design Thinking

The process of design thinking is a five-step approach (Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test), which consists of empathizing with the end users, defining the problem, ideating the concept followed by prototyping and then testing the product.

The iHub Research team has undergone training on the empathizing, defining, ideating and prototyping stages of design thinking. “Testing” will be covered on Tuesday. The team is looking forward to testing these concepts!

Outcomes

One of the major outcomes of this workshop has been the need to empathize with the end-user when coming up with products that will be launched into the market. Design thinking is ideal for developers so that they can increase the usability of their products. For more information on design thinking, please talk to any of the iHub Research team during our office hours.

Additional Useful Resources:

Stanford Design School

Hcdtoolkit.com

Author : Angela Crandall

Angela studies the uptake and increasing utility of ICTs in East Africa from a user’s perspective. Angela is currently a Research Manager at iHub and also co-lead of Waza Experience, an iHub community initiative aimed at prompting under-privileged children to explore innovation and entrepreneurship concepts grounded in real-world experience.