https://v5.scaledagileframework.com/design-thinking/ # Details Traditional waterfall approaches to product development are sequential: requirements are defined; then, solutions are designed, built, and delivered to the market. The focus tends to be on the most apparent problems. Often, success is determined by implementing a solution that meets the requirements instead of the needs of the user, resulting in products and services with unusable or ignored features that frustrate users and fail to meet the business goals of the enterprise. Design thinking (Figure 1) represents a profoundly different approach to product and solution development, in which divergent and convergent techniques are applied to understand a problem, design a solution, and deliver that solution to the market. ![[Pasted image 20240313130454.png]] Design thinking also inspires new ways to measure the success of our efforts: Desirable – Do customers and users want the solution? Feasible – Can we deliver the right solution through a combination of build, buy, partner, or acquire endeavors/activities? Viable – Is the way we build and offer the solution creating more value than cost? For example, in a for-profit enterprise, are we profitable? Sustainable – Are we proactively managing our solution to account for its expected product-market lifecycle? Successive applications of design thinking advance the solution over its natural market lifecycle, as shown in Figure 2. ![[Pasted image 20240313130515.png]] # The Problem Space and the Solution Space In Figure 1, the core processes of design thinking appear visually as a 'double diamond'. This represents the focus on thoroughly exploring the problem space before creating solutions. The activities associated with exploring the problem are elaborated as follows: - Discover - The discover phase seeks to understand the problem by engaging in market and user research to identify unmet needs. This creates fresh perspectives that drive innovation. Unlike research that confirms or refutes a hypothesis, the inquiries associated with the discovery phase occur without preconceived notions about how users should work. Instead, it focuses on how users do work. An essential research technique is Gemba, also known as, "going to the place where the work is done." - Define - The define phase focuses on the information gathered during the discover phase, using convergent techniques to generate insights into the specific problems and/or unmet needs. These create opportunities for the enterprise and new product development. Results of this phase typically include personas and empathy maps (described further below) that focus the product team on the kinds of solutions the customer would view as desirable. Epics and Features capture the perceived changes needed for existing products and solutions. With a clear understanding of the target market and the problems it's facing, the enterprise can move towards designing a solution, the second diamond of design thinking. These are: - Develop - The develop phase uses journey mapping, story mapping, and prototyping to design potential solutions to problems quickly and cost-effectively. Each of these techniques is discussed more thoroughly later in this article. The develop phase also embraces SAFe Principle #3 - Assume variability; preserve options, using design techniques to preserve options in a responsible manner. - Deliver - The deliver phase produces artifacts that are suitable for creating the solution and vary based on context. They often start as prototypes that are expressed as a validated set of Features in the Program Backlog for ongoing delivery through the Continuous Delivery Pipeline. - Note that each diamond focuses on divergent thinking (understanding, exploring options) followed by convergent thinking (evaluating options and making choices). # Using Personas to Focus Design Bespoke solutions offer designers the advantage of speaking directly and frequently with a few targeted users, permitting them to participate in design meetings, PI Planning, System Demos, and other SAFe events. In several organizations, these people are considered part of the team, so creating a Persona to represent them isn’t typically needed, but may be helpful when the organization is highly distributed. In contrast, in an indirect customer market, which is common in B2C solutions, product teams need a way to maintain a connection with their target customer. So, they develop ‘personas’, fictional consumers and/or users derived from customer research. [2] They depict the different people who might use a product or solution in a similar way, providing insights into how real users would engage with a solution. User personas also support market segmentation strategy by offering a concrete design tool to reinforce that products and solutions are created for people. Personas drive product development and several SAFe practices, as shown in Figure 3. ![[Pasted image 20240313130913.png]] ## Figure 3. How Personas can drive key activities in SAFe In addition to user personas, buyer personas extend design thinking to include the individuals and organizations that authorize purchasing decisions. They help ensure that the design encompasses the whole product purchase experience, including after-sales service, support, and operations. # Establish Empathy Through Empathy Maps Customer-centric enterprises use empathy throughout the design process. Broadly speaking, empathetic design dismisses preconceived ideas and uses the customer’s perspective to inform solution development. Empathy maps[1] are a design thinking tool that promote customer identification by helping teams develop deep, shared understanding for others (Figure 4). They help teams imagine what a specific persona is thinking, feeling, hearing, and seeing as they use the product. The greater the degree of empathy that a team has for their customer, the more likely the team will be able to design a desirable solution. ![[Pasted image 20240313130833.png]] ## Figure 4. Empathy Map Canvas # Designing the Customer Experience through Journey Maps A customer journey map illustrates the experience as a user engages with a company’s Operational Value Stream, products, and services. As shown in Figure 5, journey maps are powerful design thinking tools for operational value streams. They allow teams to identify ways in which the specific deliverables of one or more Development Value Streams can be improved to create a better end-to-end experience. ![[Pasted image 20240313130214.png]] Figure 5. Operational Value Streams and Customer Journey Maps # Delivering Benefits Through Features While a journey map captures the high-level experience of the customer through the operational value stream, product Features manage the specific deliverables that fulfill a stakeholder need. Features are commonly described through a features and benefit matrix using short phrases that provide context and a hypothesis of the benefits that the user experiences. Design thinking practices promote changing the order in which we consider elements of the Feature-Benefit Hypothesis. They help Agile teams explore better and faster ways to deliver the desired benefits (Figure 6). Figure 6. The traditional ‘features and benefits’ matrix becomes a ‘benefits and features’ matrix ![[Pasted image 20240313130240.png]] # Designing User Workflows through Story Maps ![[Pasted image 20240313125917.png]] ![[Pasted image 20240313130002.png]] Story maps also clarify the relationships between quality and value: - Quality – Each Story in the backlog must be completed with quality - Value –  All the selected Stories in the Story Map must be completed to create value, because if a Story is missed, the user cannot complete their workflow # Learn More [1] Empathy Map Canvas. https://medium.com/the-xplane-collection/updated-empathy-map-canvas-46df22df3c8a [2] Cooper, Alan, Robert Reimann, David Cronin, and Christopher Noessel. About Face: The Essentials of Interaction Design 4th Edition. Wiley, 2014. [3] Patton, Jeff, and Peter Economy. User Story Mapping: Discover the Whole Story, Build the Right Product 1st Edition. O’Reilly Media, 2014. [4] Snyder, Carolyn. Paper Prototyping: The Fast and Easy Way to Design and Refine User Interfaces. Morgan Kaufmann, 2003. [5] Gothelf, Jeff, and Josh Seiden. Lean UX: Designing Great Products with Agile Teams. O’Reilly Media, 2016.   © Scaled Agile, Inc. Include this copyright notice with the copied content.