Benefits of Design Thinking for Beginner Graphic Designers

What exactly is the definition of design thinking?
Many beginner graphic designers are immediately antipathetic to these two words. But the fact is they are required to learn and practice design thinking in their career. I will explain to all of you how design thinking will help you become a better graphic designer.
Design is solving problems experienced by users and helping users to simplify their work. The design has a very important role in the development of a product. The better the design of the product, the more people are interested in using the product. So that these products are increasingly in demand by users, there are a series of processes and experiments needed to create an almost perfect design.
Examples? Amazon and eBay who help sellers to sell their products all over the world. Paypal helps people shop or receive payments from any country without having to have a bank account from the country concerned.

Design thinking is a strategic process created to solve user problems through products, services or other supporting media. In the process, the designer works to gather as much information as possible, give ideas, and finally tests the product. However, the design thinking process does not have to be carried out sequentially.
Currently, the design thinking method is fulfilling the needs of the market, because repetition of the process is required to achieve the best product. Users are looking for better quality products than already exist today.
Design thinking requires the designer to be open to better understanding the user more deeply, to accepting input, and to creating solutions to problems that users have.
Designer’s mistakes are forcing users to use products or features that they sometimes do not need. Design thinking can also be used to create new features from an application or to make products that are not yet on the market
We will discuss the five stages of design thinking, namely: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

1. Empathize

We must understand and empathize with the problem to be solved. In this case, it must be done seriously. It could also be that at this stage we work together with experts to get more accurate information. We can also make observations. This is important to minimize self-assumptions and increase our understanding of the needs and desires of users who have problems.

2. Define

The information that we have gathered in the empathize phase is then analyzed to find the root cause of the targeted users. The designer and his team will determine the key elements of the product that will be used to increase its effectiveness. Various features, functions and other product components must also be determined in this phase. This process is important because the designer must determine what difficulties the product will solve.

3. Ideate

The third stage is the stage that produces the best ideas. All ideas will be collected to solve the problems that have been set during the define stage. It’s important to get as many bright ideas and solutions as possible at the beginning of this phase. The final stage in this phase is testing these ideas to find the best way to solve the problem or create the elements needed to anticipate problems that will occur in the future.

4. Prototype

Design sketches produced at the ideation stage are then developed into a high fidelity design. At this stage, the designer starts to have a very important role, but not all responsibilities will be held by the designer. All members involved can help the designer to produce a good design.

5. Test

Tests are often considered the final phase of the design thinking process, but it must be remembered that this work does not have to be carried out sequentially. Tests can be done at any time in the design thinking process, from the empathic stage to the prototype process. This might be very difficult for novice designers who are not familiar with testing, but the purpose of the design will help designers to work effectively.
Conducting testing and evaluation of the product with users will result in changes and improvements to the product. Testing produces a better understanding of the users and the product. If there is still a failure at one stage, you can return to the stage where the failure can be fixed.