Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem solving. You see it being applied across all industries. Everything centres on the user, the customer, and his or her needs and feelings.  

At its very best, you closely observe users and identify problems they were not able to express, problems they didn’t even know they had

Deichmann, D. (Dirk)

Deichmann, Dirk

EUR Research Repository

ROTTERDAM SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT, ERASMUS UNIVERSITYThe business school that thinks and lives in the future Eco-transformation:  a global sustainability wake-up callKevin Titman talks with Eva Rood and Steve Kennedy Developing capabilities  through strategic  alliances By Korcan Kavusan Performance  evaluations and  control system  designBy Stephan Kramer Leadership  communication in times of crisisChris Murray talks with Daan Stam  How best to market  a crowdsourced product?By Christoph Fuchs  Design thinking:  making user happiness the metric for successBy Dirk Deichmann  Does remote working  really work?By Nick van der Meulen 1st Quarter 2017Management Knowledge         RSM DISCOVERYwww.rsm.nl/discovery Management KnowledgeRSM DISCOVERYDesign thinking: making user happiness the metric for successBy Dirk Deichmann18   |   1st Quarter 2017helpful they can be in improving the patient’s experience. Trials in design thinking by the Rotterdam Eye Hospital were deliber-ately iterative and agile, building on small successes. One of the problems many hospitals struggle with is keep-ing equipment within a sterile area. By observing how Schiphol Airport helps airplanes navigate their way to the right gate, the hospital innovators came up with an inexpensive way to solve this problem: mark lines on the floor to indicate where medical equip-ment needs to be kept. A recent initia-tive is a virtual tour of the children’s de-Although design thinking began as a customer-first approach, we are seeing it more and more among businesses. Consultancies are buying entire design firms. There have been some big ac-quisitions in recent years by McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group and PricewaterhouseCoopers in order to bring design thinking in-house, to reshape their own processes and then to consult with their customers in a dif-ferent, more in-depth way that puts the user first.Designers know that solutions are not always simple. They have to as-sess the diversity of stakeholders and conflicting needs. A designer will bring everybody to the table and try to map a bigger challenge by figuring out what the root cause of the issue is. I would say you can apply design thinking to everything but some would say that it’s when you have these grand challenges that design thinking really works best. A response to human emotionHealthcare is a large complex bureau-cracy with so many actors, but in the example we studied at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital the root issue is simple – the patient is afraid of going blind. It seems so logical once you know it and maybe the identification of that fear isn’t very difficult, but what can be dif-ficult is to always remind ourselves that whatever we design, change or rein-vent, it must address this problem. The designer’s job then, is to first identi-fy the root problem, then rank all the surrounding issues according to how “Apple is often used as an example of good design thinking. Their designers observe users at every step of their experience…”Design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem solving. You see it being applied across all industries. Everything centres on the user, the customer, and his or her needs and feelings. At its very best, you closely observe users and identify problems they were not able to express, problems they didn’t even know they had.  Making connections...In one trial at the Rotterdam Eye Hospital, Dutch artist Rob van Mierlo designed beautiful t-shirts. Children receive a t-shirt printed with a specific animal in advance of their stay and were asked to wear it on the day of the operation. Just as football fans wear the t-shirt of their club in the stadium, kids are encouraged to wear theirs to give them a feeling of community. The ophthalmologists consulting with the child wears a button badge with the same animal and other staff wear the same t-shirts. The match-ing badge and t-shirt give the staff a way to immediately connect with the children: ‘Look, you are wearing the same t-shirt as me!’1st Quarter 2017   |   19www.rsm.nl/discovery partment of the hospital. On this tour kids can see the examination rooms of the orthoptists and doctors, take a seat behind the welcome desk, and explore pieces of art positioned throughout the department.Good and bad design thinkingTraditionally when building a product or service offering, technical key per-formance indicators (KPIs) have driven the process. That’s understandable – deadlines have to be met, certain met-rics of success means the engineer keeps their job. It’s not that the engi-neer is being inflexible, it’s that some-where in the whole process the user has somehow slipped away. You end up with something that is easier for the company than for me, the customer. A prime example of this is the ex-perience of having a parcel delivered. I understand that a system like this is very complicated, but no matter which delivery service I choose I am told when my package might be delivered. I am never asked: ‘When will you be home?’ or ‘What time would work best for you to receive this package?’ The process is built around what is practical for the business. Even the irrelevant market-ing emails in my inbox remind me that the user is not always the most impor-tant person in the value chain. Apple is often used as an exam-ple of good design thinking. Their de-signers observe users at every step of their experience, starting with the most fundamental question ‘How enjoya-ble is it to open our product packag-ing?’ There’s a good reason why Apple doesn’t use that annoying unbreakable plastic packaging you need a machine to open.I am amazed by Amazon’s custom-er experience. They make it so easy to return a product. When I changed my mind about a Lonely Planet book my money was refunded and they told me to keep the book as well. They even de-sign the packaging to be re-used when returning goods. Amazon knows that returning something is a hassle so they do everything they can to take that has-sle out of the experience. Amazon uses a lot of algorithms to determine the best ways to improve their customer experience. Other companies will use customer sur-veys, conversations, and close obser-vation of a user, right down to their body language and facial expressions when using a product. Good design thinking means a good user experi-ence and measuring that experience is the most important metric for suc-cess. When user happiness is a KPI, everything changes. This article draws its inspiration from How Design Thinking Turned One Hospital into a Bright and Comforting Place, writ-ten by Dirk Deichmann and Roel van der Heijde and published online in Harvard Business Review, December 02 2016.Dirk Deichmann is Assistant Professor, Department of  Technology and Operations Management, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University.  EMAIL  ddeichmann@rsm.nl

Design thinking: making user happiness the metric for success

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