 Image: precious design studio Design thinking and trend research have a lot in common. Want to know how they overlap and how they complement each other? Read my vision on how these domains organically merge. CHANGE AS AN OPPORTUNITY I recently presented about trend research at a design thinkers oriented event which made me think about how these two worlds collide. So I've put my thoughts into words in this blog for you. Let’s take a look at a definition of Design Thinking first, as it is interpreted often in various ways. I like to use the description of the Design Thinkers Group, which states: “Design thinking is a mindset to develop and deliver innovative ideas, change and solutions to complicated problems. It is an activity-based process with a strong emphasis on teamwork and co-creation.” The core of this definition is that Design Thinking is not a tool, it is a mindset and a way of tackling challenges and finding solutions.  Image: Pinterest via Raphael Thys When we turn to the trend research process, I can see a strong overlap in ways of working that both types of mindsets bring along. Design thinkers and trend researchers both like to embrace uncertainty and ambiguity. They love to see change as an opportunity instead of a threat. Both incorporate a high level of activity in their respective procedures which preferably are not executed individually but in collaboration with others. And last but not least, design thinking and trend research are focused on stimulating innovation. DOUBLE DIAMOND, DOUBLE WHAMMY When we zoom in on a common way to visualise the process of design thinking, The Double Diamond, I also see a lot of entry points for trend research.  Visual retrieved from Heller de Paula 's website In my book ‘How to Research Trends’ I describe three main goals of trend research, which easily overlap with the stages of The Double Diamond. The three trend goals in a nutshell are:
Do you already have a hunch on how these three main goals of trend research overlap with the design thinking process? Check The Double Diamond visual and explore possible overlaps.  To me detecting change relates to the research phase in The Double Diamond where you would use a divergent approach to explore with a very wide scope. I feel that understanding change is strongly linked to the insights phase in The Double Diamond, where you can add trend insights to general user insights and create interesting directions as a starting point for the next stages in the design thinking process. Which easily flows over into acting on change, where trend insights play a role during the ideation phase to ensure an innovative outcome. Does this resonate with your own thoughts when you compare trend research with design thinking? FUTURE PERSONAS For the past couple of years I’ve been training people in doing research within the design thinking process, mainly guiding them in the basics of doing qualitative field research. This often focuses on investigating end-users of a current product or service and mainly exposes current needs and wants of a target group.  Image: Design Thinkers Bootcamp I feel it is interesting to add trend research into the design thinking mix to uncover emerging needs and wants. This way you amplify your research input and gain insight into current as well as future needs of people. You can use the general design thinking tools to translate your trend findings into, for instance, future persona descriptions. These future persona cards show the motivations and drivers of frontrunners in a certain domain. This can partly overlap with motivations of lead users, but frontrunners don’t necessarily have to use your product or service. They might even be turning to other types of services because they feel your organisation is not offering what they need or they are inventing alternatives them themselves.  Image: Design Thinkers Bootcamp FUTURE JOURNEY MAPPING Same goes for a tool like the customer journey map, which is often used to describe the current journey of a customer. But what about a future journey? By using trend insights you could envision multiple future journeys of your target group and think about innovative ways to solve possible future problems or challenges during a journey. Using the journey tool in this way helps to envision the impact of a trend on people’s daily lives in the future. For the implementation phase you can even create roadmaps to get your service or offering up to par with these future journeys. CROSS-OVER To conclude, I feel that design thinking and trends have a lot to offer each other and are a powerful combination. So let’s experiment more in cross-overs between these two. If you have any suggestions, ideas or experience with this, please leave a comment or contact me. Happy to exchange views with you on this!
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