What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is all the rage in the startup & design world. According to IDEO, one of the leading thinkers of the space, “design thinking utilizes elements from the designer’s toolkit like empathy and experimentation to arrive at innovative solutions. By using design thinking, you make decisions based on what future customers really want instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct instead of evidence.” The movement pushes designers to understand problems to be solved and to reframe problems in human-centric ways. The process can be broken down into 6 main steps: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement. However, the process is also iterative, meaning that one does not simply go through the 6 steps once. Instead, designers should go through the cycle over and over, improving on one’s solutions until the solution fully solves the user’s problems. For more in-depth explanations of design thinking, you can refer to the following resources!
https://www.ideou.com/pages/design-thinking https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/5-stages-in-the-design-thinking-process https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Design_thinking https://designthinking.ideo.com/
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/design-thinking/
Why is Design Thinking Helpful for Side Hustlers?
Design thinking is not restricted to designers. It can be used as a framework to solve any sort of problem. For your side hustle, design thinking could be just the tool you need to help you improve your product and thereby increase your revenue. A successful implementation of design thinking will ideally help improve your user’s experience no matter what your hustle is. If you’re an Airbnb owner, using design thinking to improve your guests’ stay experience could help you get great reviews and become a superhost; if you’re an Uber driver or a Postmates delivery person, it could help you get a high rating and potentially consistent tips; if you’re a crafts-maker on Etsy, it could incentive your customers to leave positive comments on your product and make you a best seller. At the end of the day, a great customer experience will generally help you leave a strong impression in your user’s mind and potentially incentivize them to pay you for the hard work you put in. Even if there’s no direct financial reward, you can go to sleep with a smile, knowing that you probably made someone’s day with a positive experience!
Incorporating Design Thinking into Your Side Hustle
Iterative Development
The thing about designing is that it’s about re-designing. It’s cyclical and continuous. Fundamental to the design process is identifying problems and trying things to see if it solves those problems. This works really, really well for a lot of the type of side-hustles out there because they usually have a fairly regular churn of clientele. So there’re constant opportunities to make incremental improvements.
Strictly speaking, your AirBnB apartment or Lyft car may not be “prototypes” as they are active on-the-market products, but in practice, they can be different products each time you have a customer. Therefore, this lends to opportunities to new iterations of “Hassan’s 2-bed apartment” or “Monique’s Blue Toyota Camry.” Think of it as your guest room “version 2.0” and with every small adjustment, 2.1, 2.2, and so on until you reach a 3.0 and beyond.
The changes you implement can be big or small. A complete renovation of your floors to adding an air freshener to your car. Maybe you add a handwritten note of thanks with your Etsy sale or start picking up plastic utensils with your delivery. The key thing is to implement a specific change and keep on the lookout for any altered results. It can show up in your ratings, reviews, tips, or even in little gestures from your customers. Track changes and record them. It could be in a journal or in a spreadsheet tracking your ratings before and after the change. Judge the value of the change and adjust again accordingly.
The point is, treat your side-hustle as an evolving product.
Human-Centered Approach
If iteration is about finding solutions, the human (or user) centered approach to design thinking is finding the right problems. The right answers to the wrong questions won’t do you any good! For design-thinking the framework places the context of the problem around the real people who use your service.
Because designers know their way of solving those problems will be iterative they know they don’t have to solve all problems or even go looking for a problem that affects the most people possible. In fact, often times problems for one person may likely be faced by another. So, they go for depth over breadth, looking for the little details or specific needs, as long as they’re real, identifiable needs. This is great for side-hustlers because you don’t have the time or the resources to have a focus group or a nationwide study anyway. There’re a few different ways designers go about finding the problems real users face.
First is to become the user! Go out and try the services of your “competitors.” Try some that are rated great, and some not so great. Keep your eye out during those experiences for details big and small that contribute to an outstanding, pleasant, or terrible experience. Key thing is to record as much as possible. Leading design firm IDEO tape-recorded an entire hospital patient experience from a first-person perspective. By keeping an eye out for all the lessons on what is delightful and disappointing about the experience can help you see things you can only have seen as a user.
Another way is to get help from your customers or other customer stand-ins. Interviewing and observing are two major ways designers try to understand and empathize with users. What’s important is to not obstruct the regular way your users may interact with things. An interview doesn’t always need to be shaped as a rigid customer feedback session. If you’re a host, strike up a conversation if the opportunity lends itself. Don’t put them on the spot about what they liked or disliked. Focus more on who they are, why they became your customer, what they need. Build personas of your customers from which you can gauge what’s important to them. When possible, just let them be and simply observe. Do the customers interact with things the way you intended? Do they do something you hadn’t expected? Do they innovate and solve their own problems? Why?
Radical Collaboration
So you’re asking the right questions and have a process for getting the answers. But what might be possible answers? That’s where collaboration comes into play. For designers, they know the answers may come from anywhere and everywhere. They realize from watching and learning about their users that experts’ theories only get so far. One must be open-minded and willing to engage with others.
Even in competition, it’s about building upon each other, not breaking others down. This is especially the case with much of the gig economy. Sure, your neighboring AirBnBs are your competitors, but if there aren’t enough of you, users may question, why, is there something wrong?
Ideation and brainstorming in the design thinking framework encourages collaboration because creativity isn’t a zero-sum game. Better Uber drivers with surprisingly clean cars? It elevates the brand, get’s the collective driver community more users. Reach out and build a community of other side-hustlers that are relevant to you. Share your solutions as well as persistent problems. Tackle problems together and provide ideas from a range of experiences and backgrounds. Tap into a collective base of knowledge and gain insights you didn’t expect. You can find them either through online forums or even in communities encouraged by your mediator. Learn and share ravenously and your business can only get better.
Success Story
Uber driver Fredy Tello is a great example of a side hustler who focuses on his users’ needs and seeks to improve their user experience. As a driver, his goal is to make sure that he picks up and send his customers punctually and that while they are on his car, they have a comfortable time. Being a Marine veteran, he believes that “even when no one is watching, you should still operate with integrity.” To make sure his customers have a good time, his car includes amenities such as AC & USB ports, charging cables for all phone types, Poland Spring water, Life Saver mints, and a toddler car seat. To go above and beyond, he even makes sure that his van is handicapped accessible. All these amenities are designed to ensure that his clients will have a positive experience and a smile when they step out of his car. In his evaluations, an anonymous passenger wrote “Absolute gentleman. Highly recommend.” (https://nypost.com/2014/11/06/need-a-lift-meet-the-four-highest-rated-uber-drivers-in-nyc/)
