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Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks



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Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks

It’s no secret that innovation is a driving force for businesses today. Every company in every industry knows they must innovate or be left by the side of the road. But, without a defined framework for innovation, many companies can’t take advantage of this opportunity.

Simply put, Design Thinking helps companies quickly identify, build and test their way to success. It can be applied throughout an organization, from product management and strategy to customer service and user experience.

What’s stopping you?

Some organizations do things simply because “that’s the way they’ve always been done.” Whether a business faces hurdles with inflexible management, a change-resistant culture, or merely the fear of something new, innovation takes a team effort. Getting everyone on board is essential for success. Design Thinking needs all hands on deck to create innovation that makes a difference.

Deliver the right experience at the right time

You don’t need flip-flops in a snowstorm. Design Thinking helps you understand your customers’ needs and then helps you create an experience that delivers exactly what they want—when they want it. Creating an environment of innovation helps your business design the best ways to interact with your customers.

The five key principles of Design Thinking allow you to create ideas and test them even before they reach your customers. These are the steps that drive business building opportunities in products, customer service or problem-solving throughout an organization:

1. Empathize

Empathizing with your client or customer is where the magic begins. Does your customer want it in red but you only offer yellow? Is the user experience confusing potential buyers and sending them scurrying to your competition? Have you engaged in a meaningful two-way conversation that helps you understand everything they need?

Empathy can be as simple as changing the functionality of a drop-down menu. It can also be as complex as distilling local, regional and cultural differences in markets around the globe. Listening is key. For a recent project, we collected over 3,000 quantitative survey results to drive our innovation. Being consistently empathetic in Design Thinking helps your organization start smart and finish stronger.

2. Define

Based on everything you’ve learned by empathetically listening to your customers’ current issues, you can define and reframe a problem based on their practical and emotional needs. It’s the ideal time to gather all the information you have and determine the exact problem you’re facing.

What did you learn when you spoke to clients and customers? What patterns are you noticing? Who can you bring together to help you address the problem? Embracing diverse opinions can help you get a wide view of potential solutions, but the real opportunity comes when you can create a platform for diverse ideation the next step in Design Thinking. It works. By defining new ways to innovate and enhance our global translation service, we were able to save $4.6 million.

3. Ideate

Yes, there are bad ideas. But, those are the ones Design Thinking helps weed out early. Have individuals and teams work both together and independently to innovate and create new approaches, but make sure you draw from the strengths of each person or group. Customer service can share issues with UX teams. Marketing and Sales have a distinct perspective that might benefit IT.

Make sure you get all the obvious ideas out of your heads early. Then, let the ideas flow fast and furious. Ideation’s ultimate goal is a solution. But, remember, you may be able to test several potential solutions in the prototype phase. One result of our Design Thinking let us save us nearly $4 million with the accelerated release of one of our customized mapping products.

4. Prototype

Creating a usable prototype of anything—a physical product, new software, an enhanced mobile app or refined online checkout system brings your best ideas to life. You can learn a great deal from very simple prototypes, so don’t obsess at making it “perfect.” Clients, customers or anyone who will interact with your prototype will give you specific feedback during the Design Thinking testing phase. The ability to test ideas with clients sooner helped us reduce our development and prototyping time by up to 50 percent.

5. Test

Will it fly or will it flop? You’re about to find out. Testing lets you receive feedback about your prototype in a “real” context with your ultimate users. It also offers the chance to refine your solutions and make them better. The most important part of testing is your ears. Listen to everything said about your prototype, as well as the questions they may have. It’s another chance to be empathetic and let your user become a partner in the process.

Develop a “fail fast” system test early and often while challenging your new approaches from every angle. Gather insights together as a team, learn from your mistakes then repeat the process. Instead of a slow roll-out, our “fail fast” system helps us release products on or ahead of schedule, even to 12 markets simultaneously. was rated a “superior experience” ahead of two other solutions, including our key competitor.

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TommyCarey
Innovation makes the world turn Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks Not really, but that's what people like to say lol.

There have been plenty of times when me and my partner have sat down to brainstorm on ideas of how to innovate something to do with our current projects. Usually it's tough to get something going because other people have already thought of it and added it to their website. But there are those few "AHA!" moments where we hit digital gold and put the work into action almost immediately. I'm not saying that these innovations have made us millions, but over time they've helped us create a nice passive income Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks

Even if you're just adding a new feature to something, that can be innovative. Look at the iPhone... They don't innovate much, but they are considered cutting edge because of the few additional features they add to each new iPhone launch lol Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks It's actually pretty sad to see the lines of people waiting for the new iPhones. I'm sure Apple is thinking "Let's just add some small features which will take us a week to program, and then we'll launch a new iPhone because we know millions of people will buy it." I wish I had that type of following lmao Innovating better products or services is not as hard as it looks

I completely agree with you on the testing of your new innovation, feature, add on, etc. If you aren't testing before you launch, you'll just piss off a ton of people and they will spread bad press about your flop lol. Bring in teams of alpha and beta testers in order to see if everything is working correctly. The testers will let you know if they find anything wrong with what you're working on. Alpha and Beta testers are a great way to get people in that see things much differently than you do. You may be focused on the code and how it works but one of the testers may see that something doesn't flow right with the design and you'll think "Oh Shit, he's right!".


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Lynne
Thank you Anwebservices, I have never come across the term Design Thinking until now and I can see how useful this process can be. I am going to apply this process to some of the problems I am facing right now with my business and see how it makes a difference.

I totally agree with you, there are some really simple ways to make something better and more appealing than it previously was, like you say even something like changing a drop down menu can make all the difference.

I have one website that has good traffic, excellent social network stats and a good following, the problem is that I can't quite get it to make money to its full potential like I know it can.

It has been getting better recently but I know that there is so much more that I can do!



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Cristian
I hate the expression "let's not reinvented the wheel". Unfortunately a lot of people in the digital business think like this. They just stick to stuff that already works out of fear of going with something new that will fail.

Problem is, if you go copying something and you don't develop a unique attitude to your business, you will do "mediocre" at best and the profits will also be mediocre. If you go on the innovation route, sure, you may fail, but you could also be hugely successful, way more successful than copying some other business model.



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