NCET Biz Tips: Designing for Delight

Nico Valencia

You may have heard a couple of buzz worlds recently, “Design Thinking”, something you will definitely hear at Google, Apple, Stanford or Nike. But what is behind this concept of design thinking and how might you use it in your life? 

In a nutshell, design thinking is a way of focusing on the needs of humans and building things that will really help them lead a better life. You may not realize it, but you can see is impact all over the world, from kids having a better education, to patients in hospitals getting better sooner to that delightful experience you have whenever dealing with your favorite product or service.

It’s about having empathy for people. There is always someone out in the world who you can get to know better and understand their problems and their life, in order to really understand how you might be able to create a better experience for them.

The second part of it is this idea of building to think, using the design thinking process to have a hypothesis, build a prototype to test that hypothesis, and then experimenting your way iteratively until you get to that solution that is really going to satisfy the needs of that human, for whom you have deep empathy.  

As an innovation leader at Intuit, I use design thinking to solve the needs of our customers. For us, everything we do begins with people. We start by getting Deep Customer Empathy, spending time with people, gleaning insights, and really understanding their problems. The next step is to take those insights and Go Broad to Go Narrow, brainstorming many ideas that might solve their problem. Next, we narrow in on a solution before going broad again, discovering many ways we might execute that solution. We might go broad and narrow many times because we know the best way to get a good idea is to have lots of ideas. Lastly, we run Rapid Experiments with Customers, to learn what’s good about an idea and what might be its fatal flaws. Those three principles: Deep Customer Empathy, Go Broad to Go Narrow, and Rapid Experiments with Customers, describe how we work. We call it Design for Delight, or “D4D” for short.

We focus on delight because we believe that if we are able to create a magical experience for our customers, they’re going to succeed in whatever it is they’re doing. They are going to tell their friends and their family, and it will help other people learn about our products and improve their lives. That word of mouth is what leads to a lot of customers. Ultimately, if we have a lot of customers who love our awesome products, we will have a successful, growing company.

So, what I would encourage everyone to do is to learn and immerse themselves in the design thinking process, get so deep into it that you can really make it your own. Because, when you make it your own, that’s when you’ll be able to take it into all parts of your life. I can’t say enough about how you can use it to lead a richer, fuller life. 

Learn about Design Thinking at NCET’s Biz Café at the Reno-Sparks Convention Center on Sept 15 from 3 to 4 pm with networking from 2 to 3 pm. NCET is a member-supported nonprofit organization that produces educational and networking events to help people explore business and technology. More info here.

Nico Valencia is the Head of Innovation at Intuit (www.intuit.com). He is passionate about helping other unlock their creativity and watching them innovate in all aspects of their lives.