Watch: Module 3 – Design Thinking Diamond Method (17:25)
Design Thinking has emerged as an essential set of tools, methods, principles and mindsets to use for the effectual thinking entrepreneurial search activities (on the right side of the figure). Or as my friend, design thinking expert Matteo Vignoli, calls it “Dancing with Ambiguity”. There’s a lot to cover on this topic. We’ll continue to dig deeper into Design Thinking later during this program with these future videos being especially helpful:
Watch: Module 5 – User Centricity (29:39)
Watch: SCE 3 of 4 What is Design Thinking? Part 1 (10:26)
Watch: SCE 4 of 4 What is Design Thinking? Part 2 (19:42)
One reason why Design Thinking is such an effective tool for unleashing creativity and discovering non-obvious insights is the use of visualization techniques to allow teams of people to draw connections, spot patterns, and develop insights from large amounts of confusing information. Imagine interviewing hundreds of different potential customers. How could anyone remember all that information unless we found new ways of capturing, visualizing, rearranging and working with the information? This is why Design Thinking sessions almost always include working with large numbers of post-it notes. Most of the Tools suggested in this book are based on the creation and manipulation of post-it notes by teams of individuals working in a shared creative space. The photo here shows a Design Thinking course we taught at the DMZ, notice how messy their space is with coffee, candy, water, food, a timer and lots and lots of post-it notes.
[I would like to be able to suggest an alternative digital visualization tool (instead of post-its) to use during COVID-19. The best tool I’ve discovered is Jamboard which works as a plug-in to Zoom. If you find something that works well let me know and I’ll share it with the class.]
The basic Design Thinking method starts with a “Design Challenge Question” (DCQ) and uses an iterative series of divergent-convergent thinking pairs (in the shape of a diamond) as illustrated in the figure. Some authors also call this diamond a “Loop” or “Iteration” (the various design thinking methods are reviewed in detail in ECLD Module #5: User Centricity). First you expand the number of choices using divergent thinking tools like research, observation, interviewing, brainstorming and mind mapping. You use visualization techniques to capture all this information in post-it notes, photos and other documents and artifacts. You’re seeking quantity at this stage – at least 20+ post-it notes for even a simple design challenge.
In the second half of the pair, you want to manipulate these post-it notes and use visualization techniques to look for patterns, identify insights, and select priorities. Convergent thinking tools include cluster & separate, 2×2 matrices, customer journey map, weighted average and dotmocracy. The convergent process is complete when you can essentialize the insights gained into something that can start the next divergent-convergent pair or “diamond”. There are a wide variety of potential tools to choose from depending on the design challenge under consideration and we’ll continue to cover these in future chapters, video modules and video tools.
In each iteration, you move from left to right using a number of divergent thinking tools that help you broaden your understanding of the challenge, customer persona, problem or solution. You are seeking to discover deeper issues involving problems or needs and using a wide range of tools to generate data. During this phase you use various effectuation principles such as the lemonade principle, crazy quilt and surprise seeking as well as various entrepreneurial skills and attitudes such as curiosity, alertness, empathy and proactivity (as well as grit and resiliency when this turns out to be frustrating, confusing or difficult!).
Once you have collected a lot of data in the divergent phase, you move to the convergent phase where you interact with your post-it notes to search for patterns, seek to eliminate, condense, and/or select from among these alternatives. It is often a good idea to start with a blank canvas such as shown here, label the axes or different fields, and then start moving your Post-It notes to see if you find anything interesting.
This pair of divergent-convergent thinking sessions ends when you can essentialize all the information into a single canvas, statement or question (which I normally call your DCQ). This could also be called a Point of View (from Stanford dSchool), a Purpose, a Hypothesis Statement, a Customer Need, a Value Proposition or Business Model. Your DCQ can be in the form of a sentence, a napkin pitch, specification (from D4G), Customer Profile Canvas (from VPD), Value Proposition Canvas (from VPD), Lean Canvas or Business Model Canvas.
As I explain in the video (ECLD Module #3 – The Basic Design Thinking Diamond Process) you now need to review the process and document your learning before moving on. There are 5 basic questions to analyze and document about your Loop/Iteration. (Hint: answer each of these questions in your assignments)
- Did you use
good visualization techniques? Did you generate enough divergent perspectives and evaluate a number of potentially relevant patterns? (hint: show pictures) - Did you discover something interesting, exciting, surprising, new or insightful? (hint: use a section called “What I Learned”)
- Did you make progress? Are you closer to resolving your design challenge? Did you make any important decisions or pivots? (hint: include a section called “So What”)
- Is your revised DCQ a good starting point for the next Diamond/Loop? (hint: add a section called “Next Steps”)
- Which specific principles, skills or attitudes did I practise during this Iteration – (hint: use ECLD Tool #11 – Self-Reflection)
The Scientific Method
Design Thinking, Lean Startup, Effectuation and all these new agile entrepreneurial search-based discovery methods are deeply rooted in the scientific method. That’s why they work so well. It really doesn’t matter what the entrepreneur believes or wishes to be true. It really doesn’t matter what the business plan predicts. Visions, dreams and hopes are irrelevant. The only thing that matters is testing the entrepreneur’s hypothesis goals against reality and then learning and reacting with agility. The lean method does this quickly with fast iterations to generate competitive advantage (e.g. drive traffic, click-throughs, optimize pricing, “growth hacking”).
The scientific method revolutionized the world, overthrowing centuries of religious authority, dogma and superstition (based on faith) and allowing humans to discover for themselves how things work (based on reason): that the world revolves around the sun, that germs (not demons or the evil eye) cause disease, and how to harness the power of steam, oil, wind and the atom. What the scientific method did for discovering the laws of reality and sparking the renaissance, it can also do for discovering the laws of the market and figuring out what works for you on your path to personal empowerment and happiness. Spark your own personal renaissance and enlightenment!
Beware of Following Step-by-Step Tools & Methods – The Need for Principles, Attitudes and Mindsets
In “Design Thinking-Based Entrepreneurship Education: How to Incorporate Design Thinking Principles into an Entrepreneurship Course” we review the literature on design thinking and summarize how it applies to the domain of entrepreneurship. We won the best paper award for this article at the European Entrepreneurship Education conference in 2016.
Most students first learn design thinking through the use of specific tools and step-by-step methods found in a textbook. Unfortunately, this tends to reinforce inappropriate planning-based thinking. Blindly following the steps and filling in various tools and canvases rarely leads to significant insights and progress. While beginners like to use the methods and tools alone, without the use of the higher-level design principles, attitudes and mindsets, they normally only achieve beginners’ results.
Every year I rewrite this workbook to try to help students overcome the weaknesses uncovered in the previous year. One of the biggest and most consistent weaknesses I see are student assignments that simply follow the step-by-step tools and never make any actual progress toward resolving their design challenges. In some cases, it is clear that students are simply going through the motions and doing the absolute minimum required to pass the course. But in other cases, their deeply ingrained step-by-step planning mindset is so entrenched that they just can’t seem to go beyond the tools and methods to use the principles and mindsets.
That’s why this year I’m increasing the emphasis on “conscious practice” and application of the entrepreneurial principles, skills and attitudes throughout all phases and assignments as well as all aspects of your daily life. Don’t just interview 3-5 people, as required by the assignment. Practise active listening skills and an empathetic attitude while conducting these interviews and then write a short self-reflection (ECLD Tool #11) to help you integrate and habituate the skill or attitude. Don’t just go to a networking event, as required by the assignment. Practise curiosity, proactivity, surprise-seeking, radical candor and the crazy quilt principle while attending the event.
This requires the ability to think at two levels simultaneously. At one level (System 1) you are paying attention to the conversation and deciding what to say next. But at a higher meta-level (System 2), you should be analyzing the direction of the conversation, your engagement, what principles you are currently applying and what attitudes you are demonstrating or want to apply. Strengthening your higher-level executive functioning meta-level thinking (System 2) takes practice and concerted effort (our brains are lazy as we’ll discuss in the Pilot-in-the-Plane chapter). These assignments and workbook are designed to help you do that so you’ll see this self-reflective component woven into the remaining assignments.
As shown in the pyramid diagram from our research publication, these higher-level thinking functions (like principles and mindsets) are needed to guide your decisions about which tools and methods to use, when to switch, and how to properly apply them. It’s important to be able to figure out when to apply the abstract principles to specific actions. Designers and coaches have certain principles, patterns of behavior and mindsets that are more important than simply following the methods, tools and processes described in the textbooks. They consciously create and follow certain 
principles (sometimes known as rules, heuristics, rules-of-thumb and expert scripts). Over time, with practice and conscious application to different challenges, these principles and rules become deeply ingrained and habituated to create an entrepreneurial mindset and attitudes such as empathy, grit, resiliency, adaptability, internal locus of control, self-efficacy, tolerance for ambiguity and creative confidence.
How to Build the Design Thinking Components of Your Mindset
Most design thinkers agree that mindset is more important than the collection of tools and methods applied to any given design challenge. I can suggest dozens of different tools throughout this book, but without the right mindset or principles, you will not be fully effective. A mindset is a combination of deeply held beliefs and patterns of action that become subconscious habits over time. Unlike an abstract principle which must be consciously called to mind in order to apply it to a given situation (e.g. “I should apply the idea of radical collaboration or active listening to this conversation”), a mindset is something you do almost automatically, reflexively, without needing to think explicitly about it.
You might originally learn about these mindsets in a textbook and start to apply them as explicit principles, but over time these principles sink in as you apply them to a wide variety of your daily actions over a prolonged period. A mindset comes from experience and practice and habit-formation and changes your subconscious attitudes and beliefs so that eventually they become a part of who you are.
Mindsets don’t happen by accident – you must practise them to become good at them. It’s like playing the guitar. You may know the scales and theory (Head), but without practice you cannot become skilled enough to play great riffs as your fingers glide over the fretboard (Hand). It seems like great guitarists play their solos effortlessly and adaptively change to fit into the rest of the band and the vibe of the evening. Practice makes the difference between a skilled and unskilled guitarist.
I’d like to introduce you to three, out of several, important mindsets early on here in this workbook. Later in this program I’ll offer some tips on how to form good habits and mindsets (especially ECLD Module 11 – Eliminate Contradictions that Cause Unhappiness and Tool #10 – Self-Talk).
1) Curiosity, Alertness and Opportunity Spotting – Although most children are naturally curious, most adults are not. We are so inundated by information that most people start to tune it out over time. We become so caught up in the details of our own email, texts, and inner thoughts that we start to ignore much of the world around us during our daily routines and work. We become creatures of habit and stop noticing things (I describe this as your Elephant or System 1 auto-pilot in ECLD Module #9). A fundamental aspect of design thinking is to train ourselves to have a “beginner’s mind” in order to see things as if for the first time – to notice things that others may miss, to see things through the eyes of another, to spot opportunities to create value, launch a new business or enhance your life. The entrepreneurship literature would call it entrepreneurial attitudes and skills like alertness and opportunity spotting. The lean startup movement would say “Get out of the building!”
Unless you went to a Montessori or Reggio Emilia Approach school, the educational system can also beat the curiosity out of us over time. We are instructed to remember and regurgitate what the teacher is teaching. We’re not supposed to get distracted by things that interest us, or ask questions driven by our own curiosity. We’re told what to think about and what the right answers are, with our chairs nailed to the floor in neat rows. We’re also taught that there is only one right answer which the teacher knows and you have to learn through memorization to pass on standardized tests. This is called the “teacher-centric” method of teaching which is primarily comprised of lectures, textbooks and exams. In contrast, the student-centric method of learning used in entrepreneurship education puts the student’s curiosity at the center and the teacher is a “guide from the side” instead of the “sage on the stage” (described by Grant & Gedeon in “Teaching and Learning in the 21st Century University”).
You have to devote conscious practice in order to build a mindset, especially if you are trying to overcome a completely different mindset. You have to call it into your mind, as a principle and consciously say to yourself “OK I’m practising this mindset, attitude or skill right now”. It all starts with developing your curiosity – to notice, to see, to hack, to seek insights and to see something “as if for the first time” metaphorically speaking. Whatever your current level of curiosity may be, building it higher than it currently is does not come automatically without “conscious practice”. As I explain later in the book (ECLD Module 9), you need to turn on your System 2 Executive to apply a principle because your normal System 1 Elephant doesn’t do it on its own.
You may demonstrate curiosity in this assignment by going beyond the detailed step-by-step structure of this Workbook to follow your own curiosity, challenges and interests. This one-size-fits-all workbook provides generalized guidance that I think all of you will be interested in and benefit from. But who wants to live an average life? Let your curiosity lead you to discovering something new and important to yourself, regardless of what you turn in for the graded assignments.
2) Bias to Action and Proactivity – Designers and entrepreneurs try stuff, they build things, they tinker, they hack, they experiment. Instead of only thinking and planning, they act. They have a proactive attitude and practise bootstrapping, hacking and guerilla skills. Instead of planning to predict and control the future, they create the future through their actions and collaborations. Designers embrace change and surprise and serendipity because they are not overly attached to any particular final goal or outcome. They focus on the journey instead of a hypothetical future destination. In the entrepreneurship field it can include concepts like Proactivity, Propensity for Action and Mobilizing Resources. Entrepreneurs and empowered individuals don’t wait for others to tell them what to do or think, they are proactive with a high Internal Locus of Control. They demonstrate Agency.
There is an important spin-off benefit to this kind of mindset. Since designers don’t fall in love with their ideas/end-points, they don’t let their egos get bound up in them. If an experiment (e.g. a business idea, website landing page or hypothesis goal) does not turn out the way they guessed, rather than being disappointed and discouraged, designers are delighted to be surprised and to learn something new. This builds resiliency, grit and tenacity! Designers are good at coping with failure because they don’t see a failed experiment as a personal failure. A failed experiment is just another opportunity to learn a new insight.
Consider the scientist trying to understand gravity. She climbs the Leaning Tower of Pisa to measure how much faster a heavy rock falls than a light one. Try as she might, however, the darned rocks always fall at the same rate. She was wrong. The weight of the rock doesn’t matter – gravity is constant. Using the scientific method, she has discovered the law of gravity! Her hypothesis was incorrect, but through the “failed” experimentation she has discovered the truth. Rather than being bummed out over her incorrect hypothesis, she is excited to discover the law of gravity.
3) Re-Framing and Resiliency – This is fundamental to how designers come up with good questions and get unstuck. Re-framing helps you eliminate unproductive beliefs that lead to wasted time and unhappiness and replace these with beliefs that get you working on the right design problems and better solutions.
Perhaps the most important re-frame is to change from a management planning-based mindset where goals are static future states that you must attain, to an entrepreneurial/effectual searching-based mindset where goals are merely hypotheses that you want to test. Instead of fixating on goals, fixate on the journey and leave yourself open to surprise. Instead of trying to predict the future, create the future through your actions!
Designers know that great designs take time and effort but if you stick with it, eventually you will find a solution that works. Experiments may fail, prototypes may be thrown away, you may need to iterate, and you may sometimes get frustrated or pivot, but it is precisely from these experiences that we learn the deepest insights and make the best decisions. Focus more on the process (the journey) and less on the goal (the destination). Don’t get frustrated and stalled out by the disappointing experiments; grow and learn from them and use the design thinking tools and methods to seek insights. This element of the growth mindset helps you build resiliency, grit, tenacity, perseverance and anti-fragility.
Happiness is a journey too, not a destination. Finding happiness is a process. Be aware of how the process guides you toward understanding your skills, interests, beliefs and values and how they change over time as you experiment and grow.
Use of Art to Keep Principles in Mind – The Explorer
I like to use the artistic image of an explorer to help me remember the various design thinking mindsets, effectuation principles and entrepreneurial attitudes. Explorers are curious and proactive. They work hard and have perseverance and tenacity. They don’t get upset or disappointed when they come across a mountain; they study it, name it and draw it on their maps. Then they go around it (or climb it!). They don’t quit when they find a river, they build a boat and explore it. They don’t go running off into the woods on their own, they bring a team with diverse skills. When they meet people along the way they trade with them, share stories, learn from them, and create win-win relationships (e.g. the Crazy Quilt Principle). They set goals and directions, but leave open the potential to adjust their course when needed. They roll with the punches. They continuously take measurements, map their progress, learn and grow in knowledge, skills and attitudes.
Explorers know it will rain and that the wind will often be in their faces. They can’t control the weather, but they can be prepared and control their emotional reaction to it. They can’t control the wind, but they can adjust their sails or tack (e.g. Pilot-in-the-Plane Principle).
See how that one single artistic image or role model can help you retain several different mindsets, principles and attitudes into a retainable inspiration? Who/What are your role models, literary characters, inspirations or favourite images?
You’ll be inspired by the story of David and Goliath to remember entrepreneurial principles in ECLD Module 6 – Hunting (the shortest and most entertaining video in the series).
