Design Thinking
# How Design Thinking Can Be Used to Address Violence Against Women
What is Design Thinking #
Design Thinking refers to a process of thinking and solving problems. The process is systematic and human-centred. The process lets one come up with novel ideas, breakthroughs, and innovations to solve problems or improve situations. Design Thinking (“DT”) is oriented to human needs and emphasises users’ needs or user-driven perception of those needs. It is also a practical approach to solve problems (often known as “hands-on”, or “show, not tell” approach). Finally, DT uses metaphor based ideas – this means as we solve problems using design thinking approach, we think in metaphors. Thinking is metaphors is like thinking about events and people using references to other objects. For example, a string that connects two matchsticks would indicate a bridge (the string refers to the bridge, and the matchsticks refer to the poles that span the bridge).
Design Thinking consists of four questions, five steps, and a few conceptual tools. Professor Jeanne Liedtka at the University of Virginia explains DT in terms of the following four questions (Figure 1): “What is?”, “What if?”, “What wows?”, and “What works?”
Figure 1. Questions Asked in Design Thinking (from Jeanne Liedtka )
Note that as the lines in this figure move from left to right (from question to the dollar sign), the waves diverge initially and then converge. This indicates that for each question, the thinking first diverges to include as many possibilities as can be thought of, then the ideas converge to one (at the least) or a few solutions or ideas that then move to the next step (and the process is repeated with what if, what wows, and what works). Basically, “what is?” is a question that enables one to answer the scope of the problem often from deep ethnographic perspective (that is, the team of design thinkers actually go and live with the users whose problems they are trying to solve and live within the situations to study them), but also taking into considerations other data, for instance, on the basis of models and known theories. Thus, what is known as “data triangulation” where a diverse range of data are used to define and characterise the problem, are used to form the basis or starting point of design thinking. The “what if?” encourages the design thinking team to think in terms of blue sky solutions (generate ideas either to solve problems or ask questions about the issues), once more through divergent and convergent thinkings (ask or generate plenty of ideas and then narrow down to a few ideas). The “what wows?” and “what works?” questions are based on actual actions and concrete steps that one should take in order to address a problem or issue, by building prototypes of the proposed solution and testing and refining the solutions in small steps.
The four questions are answered by following the five steps (Figure 2)
Figure 2. Five steps of Design Thinking. Note the diverging and converging lines at each stage (source: From Kashif Zaman )
Again, as described before, the first step in this process (where DT usually begins) is to develop a sense of empathy or user centric view of the problem or view the problem from a user’s perspective. This is usually done using a systematic ethnographic process of generating deep empathy. If we were to find a solution to say girl child abuse say for example (where the girl child is beaten, or spanked or harshly talked to and we were interested not only to understand the problem but also find a solution to it from our understanding), the place to begin would be to first identify a family that is known for abusing the girl child and spend time with the parents and the child and observe what was going on or the pattern of communication in the family and situations, and learn from the experience of both the family and the child. This calls for a ethnographic “research” to generate insights into the problem. The second step is to define the boundaries of the problem and identify the boundary conditions and restrictions that we must work within and define precisely the nature of the problem and the desired solutions that we’d like to work with. This step is the step of definition (second from left in the figure). The process then moves on and after we have “narrow”-ed down the scope of the problem and the solution, we start the process of ideation. Ideation refers to a stage of idea generation (as you can see it is divergent thinking) and then based on a few perhaps feasible to execute ideas, we narrow down to “prototyping” and testing our solutions.
Finally, almost anyone can exercise design thinking using a few conceptual tools. These are: visualisation (this essentially means visual thinking or thinking or plotting and using maps and figures and data graphically), journey mapping (an ethnographic approach where users are asked to map out how they traverse through a “landscape” of the problem that we are interested to learn about), and use of metaphors to develop prototypes very rapidly and test them. Metaphors are “artefacts” or objects that represent other concepts or ideas. For example, a small doll can be used to represent a human being, or a string can be used to represent a bridge, and so on. For example, in the following figure (Figure 3), these Lego ™ based figures and the “bridge” represents how people can collaborate and traverse challenging landscapes (Figure 3)
Figure 3. A Lego blocks based metaphor construction. Here the Lego figurines traversing a lego block based bridge represents how collaborations can enable people to collaborate and achieve difficult tasks such as building a bridge to traverse a landscape.
Basically, that is all there to it to get you started if you like to address a problem (a theme or a specific issues related to violence against women) using the design thinking methodology. Start with a question such as “How might we …”. For example, in our newsletter and our discussion group, we get to hear news items about different aspects of violence against women. In this particular issue of the newsletter (Debasis take note), the editor found that “… child abuse, religious oppression and social pressure for child marriage …” are pressing issues that can be addressed.
Like to Apply Design Thinking? #
Let’s take an issue such as “social pressure for child marriage”. Even though you may not know a lot about the theory and social circumstances, but feel or care strongly about this, and feel that for moral and ethical reasons (and also for biological and social reasons), parents of children must learn to protest against social pressure for child marriage nor would they allow child marriage". Let’s say we are interested to “do something about it”. Can Design Thinking help to find a pragmatic, hands-on approach? (Note that everything that I write here is not prescriptive but just strands of thought. Your approach can be different. It is one where you can use Design Thinking in the face of incomplete knowledge and in the process you may gain deeper understanding of the problem that you are trying to address and it is OK to change your course of action).
Set aside two to three hours and start with say a number of people (about six, and a mix of many different “stakeholders” who can provide insights and who can bring about change: include them in your team of design thinking). To learn more about child marriages one should review the official statistics and the literature to gain some understanding, but must go deeper and actually talk with the parents, and involve them in the process as they are the “users” of child marriage. The child needs to be in as a member of the “users” too, as are some potential “grooms”, and their parents. Build a team example of between six and eight people (usually no more than eight people) and start that empathy building process.Start with a “How might we …” question. For example, “How Might We Increase or Build Strength and Resilience in parents so that they will not allow child marriages or protest against child marriages?”
The next step is to answer a “what is?” question and use empathy and problem definition to define the issues better. Visit a marriage (not child marriage of course!) and experience for yourself the processes, hold discussions and learn from the brides and groom’s experiences. Discuss with a few parents and “map their journey” and map and plot their emotional states. Let them describe each step as to how they were coerced to accept child marriage or if you find advocates who have resisted child marriage, learn from their “journeys” at each steps as to what did they do and what were the emotional states as they moved through their various phases. Plot them all on a giant set of papers/boards, or lay out cards on the floor, and learn from the patterns. Work very rapidly through this process and allow for example 10 minutes blocks to go through various aspects of your data collection exercise. Listen intently, and allow each participant to express ideas without interruption and tap their feelings.
Move to the “What If?” phase rapidly. Start discussing ideal scenarios. What if we never had to deal with this problem? What is the future we all would like to see? This is the stage of generating ideas about how to address the problem based on what you learned. What do the parents want? How do they want the problem described? Is it possible to scaffold and ring fence the children in ways so that they do not have to face the problem of being approached for marriage? Who are the other stakeholders?
After this process, narrow down the choices to a few based on the ideas that you generate (we do not know at this stage what ideas might emerge in the group). Combine them with your observations, and then start developing conceptual prototypes. For prototype construction, use anything at hand; could be modelling clays, papers, post it notes, Lego blocks, indeed anything that can act as “props”. Use drawings and freehand diagrams liberally to present your ideas and build your prototypes. Surely, some of these prototypes that will emerge as a result of this process will be taken kindly than others. Narrow down the options based on your preferences as to how you’d like to see an end to the practice of child marriage. Do you like to build resilience among the parents so that they can stand up to the social pressures? What skills do they need? If they need to be assertive, then how can that be best achieved? If they need more information, how can that be delivered? Many of these ideas emerge from these exercises and prototypes are simple exploratory actions using props and built objects that you can test.
Take one or more prototypes (usually no more than two prototypes to work with), or better yet, bring all prototypes from the group of six to the table and connect them all. See what conceptual model and plan of action emerge. Use these to develop simple programmes to actually test them on the field. These tests are often referred to as “learning launches”. Learning launches indicate that these baby steps can lead to learning of lessons, and refinement or in some cases, perhaps abandonment of the programme in favour of something else.
At the end of these five steps, you will have a workable solution or deeper understanding of the problem. The precise steps do not need to be linear; instead, you can start with one set of tools and then go back and forth in search of the “ideal” solution or answer to the question you started with.
Where to from here? #
Now that you have the tool to play with, why don’t you go and try it yourself? If you are interested to learn more about it and gain practical understanding, you may want to take a mini-course here (80 minutes long video), here is the link, Design Thinking Crash Course
Design thinking is just an approach to a problem solving innovative solution generating frameworks. It can also be a way to organise people in workshops where violence against women can be organised and taught.