My top 5 design thinking tools

As I mentioned in my previous blog post, the role of design thinking in marketing, I am a big believer in the value of using design thinking to strengthen marketing decisions. Like with any toolbox, I have my favourite tools that I tend to use more frequently. In today’s blog, I am going to explore some of my favourite design thinking tools.

Problem statement

I really do love a problem statement, I think the process of defining it as a group can be quite telling in its own right. For example, my perception of a problem might be different to a colleagues and that is completely fine. It is these perceptions and views that give us the differentiation in ideas that we need. However, to truly understand a problem and be customer centric we need to all be aligned and have the same view (problem statement) when we start moving forward. This exercise is a good way to get that breadth of understanding, but pull everyone together in the same decision.

To me I can think of many times when a project could of benefitted from starting at this common ground and I am sure you can too. This starting with the problem and not jumping to the solution is one of the most powerful things about design thinking in my opinion and I would be lying if I didn’t say it took some practice on my part.

So what we are trying to achieve is to define a key problem facing our customers/a stakeholder group in one clear and simple sentence. Not only does this help build the common understanding of the problem, but it also gives you a direction and framework for ideation. This activity will result in a how might we statement, for example:

“How might we improve the booking process for our season ticket holders to make it easier so that we receive less customer complaints in the South East of England?”

Customer persona

A customer persona is a great way to pull together analytical and creative minds and form a view of the customer that everyone can identify with and keep in their mind when writing copy, designing services and even product developments. Creating a fictional character gives you a shared view of who your customer is and can help you to visualise their goals, desires and needs.

In my experience, customer persona development works best when you pull together multiple people from different teams and experiences together. This way you get the breadth of understanding of the current customer experience/frustrations and needs. Giving you the best opportunity of documenting typical customer experiences. You can build in an evidence approach to this, by using the data you have available to test any assumptions you are making.

A top tip is to test the new personas you have developed with multiple break-out groups. For example, you could look to create your persona suite by splitting it up so each group (of up to five) creates one persona and then they review each other’s. This way you can check that the persona has resonated with everyone, but also that there are no gaps in understanding that you need to focus on.

Customer journey

I was introduced to customer journeys very early on in my career and having facilitated many group discussions on customer journeys, I truly believe the bit we find the hardest is putting ourselves in our customer shoes. To truly understand the experiences and interactions they have and the challenges they face, without clouding this with our own challenges.

A good customer journey will map the actions they take, what they are thinking and feeling at each stage and the moments of truth (these are the make-or-break moments in the journey). It then shows underneath this the internal processes that make this happen and balances this against the customer expectations to identify opportunities to improve the customer experience.

The great thing about customer journeys is that I have seen the approach be adapted or tailored for the businesses using it, to ensure you get the most out of the experience.

Thought showers (sometimes referred to as brainstorms)

With all the tools available sometimes it is easy to overthink the staple tools, such as thought showers. These are a great way to get a quantity of ideas, bounce off each other and really start to think about what the potential solutions are.

I like, I wish, I wonder

I like, I wish, I wonder, what if - is a great way of building reflective feedback into any project and at any time of the project. For example, you don’t need to wait until the end of a marketing plan to do this, it could be a good activity to do when you’ve created new campaigns/creatives to check in and gain constructive feedback. Some people even add “I learned” as a way of capturing what the team has learnt throughout the project. This could be things they’ve learnt about their customers, business or skills they have gained.