|
Approaches |
Design
Thinking |
Futures
Thinking |
|
Defining goals
and outputs |
Designing
products, services, and experiences for today’s world |
Strategic thinking
about opportunities you may have in the coming years to help develop
a more effective long-term
organizational strategy |
|
Empathising with customers |
Putting
yourself in today's customer's shoes |
Putting yourself in tomorrow's
customer's shoes |
|
Looking to
the edges as a source of inspiration |
Looking at
lead and lag users to expose user needs and analogous systems to
show opportunity areas |
Looking at
tiny signals of change observed in today’s world and extrapolating
what they might grow to in 10 to 15 years |
|
Relying on
personas,
simulation games and
beta-testing of
prototypes to bring abstract concepts to life |
Helps make
user needs and product ideas tangible which, in turn, helps
potential users react to prototypes and provide useful feedback. |
Anticipating
abstract scenarios for what life might be like in the future
tangible by putting some
prototypes in front of business
stakeholders |
|
Looking
back to look forward |
Being
guided heavily by stories from the users that provide data points
about the past |
Connecting
the data points to
understand users on a deeper level
by seeing how their realities and behaviors have evolved and to
uncover trajectories of how they might continue to evolve |
|
Collecting
and clustering signals |
Looking
to “tail” users and analogous systems for insights and inspiration |
Seeing how
else we might look at what is happening at the edges of our
organizational context to better understand potential opportunity
areas |
|
Forecasting two curves |
Thinking
about how insights from
extreme users can translate to more mainstream user groups |
Using a
structured approach to envision how seeds of change from today’s
edges might make their way into the mainstream and how, conversely,
the elements from today’s mainstream might fall to obsolescence |
|
Divergent and convergent thinking |
Ultimately
converges to a concrete concept that is tested, finalized, and
brought to market |
Developing a
series of scenarios, which are meant to illustrate multiple options
for what the future might be without defining an exact prediction.
|
|
Revealing
unexpected possibilities |
Generating
a lot of observations, insights, and ideas throughout the divergent
stages of the process. |
Creating a
framework to help make sense of these diverse elements and uncover
new opportunity areas |
|
Playing
simulation games |
Gaining
deeper customer insight and developing creative solutions to meet
diverse customer wants and needs |
Anticipating future
customer wants and needs as well as challenges
to be dealt with to meet those wants and needs |
