Design Thinking and Customer Success - Issue #6
Design Thinking touches our lives everyday without us even realising that this concept even exists. This article is based on my coherent ramblings illustrating various design thinking success stories.
Design Thinking helps companies win customer hearts
Human-centric design principles may seem obtuse at first, but once you start to understand (and/or start practicing!) design thinking (abbreviated as DT from hereon), you start to admire the small yet extremely relevant features they usher us within our day-to-day lives. As you might have gauged from my previous blogs, DT builds upon participatory action research and tries to include users in problem solving. From simple things like booking your holiday destination[1][2]
, to swiping right to find your love match[3]
, to searching for your favorite food[9]
, you will be amazed at how this seemingly simple concept has revolutionized our lives. I want to take a moment here, and thank all design researchers out there, they have genuinely made our lives easy.
I want to walk you through a normal day in your life to highlight the various products you might interact with on a regular basis, and show how DT has been silently transforming and ameliorating our lifestyles.
From the time you wake up to the time you sleep, you are interacting with products which have been developed using DT principles. As you leave your bed (oh yes! I am hinting at your mattress here[4]
) to the time you pick up your toothbrush, you have already interacted unconsciously with multiple products on your way. Let’s start with the mattress you just got up from - a few years back thinking about buying a mattress would make you sweat, but not today: with extensive user research companies like Casper are combining the softness of memory foam with open-cell latex, and providing bed-in-a-box alternatives, so that you can sleep without sweating( quite literally!). Casper back when it started had sales around $1M in its first month, and now is valued at over $1.1B. Was it just luck which made the company prosper? Or creating products from consumer research actually fuels long-term growth. Let’s focus on another morning ritual, brushing. With the introduction of electric toothbrushes in the market, brushing teeth has never been easier (if you haven’t tried one yet, I strongly recommend you to). The initial idea behind creating electric toothbrush was to create a sophisticated data-tracking tool(IoT device), however designers convinced companies that adding more features on the already guilt-loaded toothbrush would create a not-so-pleasing experience. Of course the idea of having an activity tracker for the gums seems amazing, but how many of you have actually opened your electric toothbrush app to see these stats? Researchers like Colin and Hecht[6]
tried to shift the paradigm from adding unnecessary features, to something which a user wants - easy charging, and ordering replacement heads - the features one would actually use (and would solve our problems) in the longer run. From 2011 to now in 2020, the growth of electric toothbrushes in USA has been over 20% with the number of consumers in 2011 increasing from the then value of 104 million. Happy gums equal happy customers, and happy customers define sustained growth.
The Internet of Things industry is at a crossroads. The “smart home revolution” that has been marketed to death hasn’t come to fruition for various complex reasons. One of them is that consumers are skeptical of living in a home laden with sensors, data tracking, and surveillance–and the onus is on companies, Colin and Hecht say, to come up with more user-friendly solutions. - FastCompany
Let’s talk about something more appealing than brushing our teeth, shall we? Let’s take a topic which everyone is interested in - money. When I say money, what are the things you associate money with? You might think of a bank or maybe stock trading. Even though its a common misconception that banking industry is very slow to adopt new processes, you will be surprised by some of the game changing DT based programs launched in this industry. For example - Bank of America[7]
in early 2000’s was looking for user growth and tasked IDEO with this challenge. After embedding themselves with the users, and conducting observations, IDEO proposed a new strategy - “Keep the Change” - where purchases made with debit cards would be rounded up to the nearest dollar, and these rounded up cents will be transferred to the customer’s savings account. After testing this theory with over 1600 participants, and seeing positive results, this new service was released. Today more than 12.3 million customers have enrolled into this program, and this is no small feat! Closely observing user behavior, and interpreting their workarounds, enabled the team to come to this successful outcome. On a similar note, let me give you an example of Robinhood[8]
, the simplistic yet powerful stock trading app. With its simplistic design, palpable color palate, and powerful features such as micro-interactions to help visualize time-shift stock prices, highly personalized push notifications based on user’s watchlist etc, influenced by research team, the ‘millennial’ app today boasts over 10 million accounts, with a hefty evaluation of $7.6 Billion.
The heart of all design questions is: “What problem is this trying to solve?” It’s something you can always go back to and, at any given moment, it can help you find the right solution. - Alex Bond, Robinhood
Changing gears a bit to focus on health and wellbeing; if you are a fan of running, you might have used Strava, or might own a pair of sports sneakers. DT is not only limited to aspects indoor activities but even companies like Nike[10]
and Strava[11]
are investing and enhancing their products by learning how to better serve their user needs.
Eating well in today’s date is not a dream. with extensive user research apps like Uber Eats[9]
, are changing food ordering to create piquant experiences (Yes uber uses a combination of Walkabout Program, Order Shadowing and Fireside chats to improve food ordering experience). Coffee making, which was once an obscure art, now has been changed with so many players in the market. I love Blue bottle[12]
, and recently learnt about their Design Sprint experience, where they interviewed coffee drinkers, to understand the persona of the online coffee buyer, and with more DT based exercises released their new website, and found sales growth to double. If you are a Starbucks[13]
fan, you might have seen starbucks, coming with new cool store designs and fitting into the ‘local’ user persona. Or McDonalds which has released an “Experience of the Future” program, to align itself with today’s new age-aware customers, who want features like instant ordering and fast delivery. One of my favorite finds during my research for this article was DOSA, SF[15]
. For those who don’t know DOSA, SF has multiple locations in the Bay Area, and serve a fresh take on traditional Indian cuisine. It’s amazing to see how they identified key moments of user interaction with the restaurant like entering, waiting in line, paying etc, and designed the whole experience around it by focussing on floor plan, signage, lightning to invite curiosity and get the customer more involved and eager. Opened back in 2004, today their footprint has increased to multiple locations, along with their packaged food launched in over 200 stores in just 24 months.
After immersing themselves in the world of delivery partners, UberEATS designers felt the pain of finding parking and locating entries to restaurants. We added a feature to the Driver App that provides step by step directions from restaurants to facilitate smoother pickups.
I can go on and on about more and more products which we interact on a daily basis, but instead I would provide you with a crafted list of 25 products, which I have come across during my research. I hope you like the references below.
Design Thinking Success Stories
Airbnb - A DT success story
Hyatt - Designing the front-desk with empathy, can take the pain out of the hotel check-in process
Tinder - Hear Tinder’s product designers talk about user-centric design for emotional experiences
GE HealthCare - How using DT, Dough and team created a better experience around diagnostic imaging procedures for kids
IoT toothbrush - How Two Industrial Design Titans Are Helping Brands Simplify Tech
Bank of America - Helps customers keep the change
Robinhood - How Robinhood Emphasizes Design to Make Stock Trading More Accessible
Strava - Strava designers use DT to enhance and learn about users
Bluebottle - Blue Bottle sprints with GV
Starbucks - Using design at their heart and acting local does wonders
McDonalds - Creating an ‘Experience of the Future with Design Thinking, resulting in 13 continuous quarters of growth
DOSA, SF - Creating a Fresh and Modern Take on the Indian Culinary Experience
WeWork - A design sprint (actually) saved wework a ton of money
INFARM - Developing b2b vertical farm units
UCSF - Design thinking brings innovation to health-care and medical education
Makassar City Planning - How using DT can help improve traffic congestion
Singapore Airport - Using DT and being rated the world’s best airport for years in a row
Lowes - Creating a better user experience with the website redesign
Olay - How can DT re-invent a brand
In today’s day and age, it’s the consumer who rules the market, its their happiness which dictate the success or failure of a product. No matter how long you have been in the industry, to survive today you need to focus on the needs of the user, understand their hidden desires which drive them unconsciously to do things, and tailor your product for it. Design Thinking is one of the ways to unlock these hidden gems.