A Design Thinking Process; The Ideal Wallet

Design is the process of generating ideas and Design Thinking can be a way to begin the process. Empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test - this is a framework I followed to tackle a 1-hour design sprint during a tutorial. Here we were asked to design an ideal wallet for a partner.

I designed a sliding wallet with detachable compartments for my partner. I wanted to make it slim and suitable for only necessary cards; being a student, my partner felt that bulky ones were impractical and bothered their daily routine.

I was able to outline their needs through empathising which requires understanding their experiences and motivations. I understood my partner through asking meaningful questions that could enhance the way I design for the stakeholder. After gaining such an insight I was able to define the problem with a point-of-view stand; a slim and organisable wallet practical for students. The ideate phase involved generating alternative sketches to meet the users needs. I was able to learn what designs were more ideal to my partner and was informed that they did not want soft or non-grippy surfaces such as circular pouch wallets.

Then came iterating on the feedback to reflect and generate a new solution where I sketched the sliding wallet design. It was difficult to create a functioning paper prototype of the wallet. This was the most impractical part of the process I did not think worked well since certain interactive features can only be implied. However, such a prototype is sufficient to receive feedback on its design. This leads to the last phase evaluation that let me reflect on the issues of this design such as having more compartment space for coins, leading back to redefine and iterate the problem once again.

This design sprint did not allow too much time to refine my ideas too deeply, however it gave me a good idea on what design thinking is all about. It set up my brain to think about the basic purpose of a challenge, i.e. a wallet. It also lets me know what the limitations and freedoms are, letting creative and radical solutions to be considered.

“Understanding these five stages of Design Thinking will empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems that occur around us.” (Dam R. F., Teo Y. S. 2020)

In this process, I found empathising to be the most useful in unlocking solutions that serve a person's needs. This is crucial to achieve, especially for a human-centred design process. Empathising prepares an insightful understanding of a problem that needs to be solved while setting aside assumptions that the designer may have. This makes the products designed to be genuinely helpful to the user and sets the stage for the next phases. It is empathy that can make design meaningful.

First Image from Lieberman, R. (2014). How to use design thinking in the UX design process

Plattner H. Institute of Design at Stanford. Design Sprint Template

References:

Dam R. F., Teo Y. S. (2020, March) 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

Dam R. F., Teo Y. S. (2019) Design Thinking: Getting Started with Empathy

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