Design Thinking in Digital Transformation
Published on : Thursday 09-04-2020
Design thinking is about people, process and technology, which is driven by consumer demands, process or business viability and technology feasibility, says Titli Chatterjee.
Disruptive technologies, changing customer dynamics and the shift from legacy have led to complex challenges requiring nimble solutions and driving an agile environment. To discover these new opportunities and address the complexity of digital transformation a lot many enterprises have turned away from traditional interpretive thinking to design thinking. Design thinking is a method that helps to examine the various parameters of a problem and then devising a customer-centric solution that would address the issue. (Design thinking: apply Sense, Infer, Act.)
Design thinking is emerging as a major constituent in digital transformation helping an organisation identify the root cause of a problem, which further leads to innovative solutions and addressing the specific pain points. Thus, for any industry the biggest driving force of successful digital transformation pertains to the changing business models and addressing the variations in real-time. Perhaps the digital transformation journey is a combinatorial aspect redefining people, processes, products, business models and policies forming the essence of the journey. With the changing customer scenario and convergence of the physical and digital worlds organisations are paving their way from “Digitalisation” to adopting a roadmap in transforming enterprises, industries, designing smart cities and delivering a digital experience through newer products and
platforms
Design Thinking – A newer pattern to transformation
While organisations are trying to keep up with the technology flux, addressing the data deluge remains a challenge. Data is increasing exponentially, and this data explosion creates a gap between the design and the prototype and the ambiguities in terms of technology decisions and building a Proof of Concept. Complex design challenges need to be solved in order to embrace the paradigm shift. To carve out a digital transformation ecosystem, organisations must invest in the right way to scale up their existing IT infrastructure landscapes driving efficiency and interoperability.
According to research conducted by IDC, the data explosion would be humongous reaching to 175 Zettabytes by 2025, which will be stored across various data centres. However, technological advances alone would not overcome this data dilemma it has to be the right amalgamation of empathising with the customer’s pain point, delivering optimal solution and a scope for new ideas allowing continuous improvement. As the digital transformation journey starts with adoption of advanced technology and digitalisation, it often tends to leave several gaps that needs to be addressed such as technological challenges, timeframe for the adoption and maturity of a product, procedures involved, etc., which can be solved by Design Thinking.
Though there is a bundle of intelligent technologies, it is extremely important to adopt according to its capability of solving the most critical business problem and that which would drive value for an organisation. Design thinking directs the optimal use of a technology to tackle a particular business problem. The design thinking is about people, process and technology, which is driven by consumer demands, process or business viability and technology feasibility. As the demands of the consumers change through the emergence of digital adoption, organisations should focus
on the core aspects of the above framework – Sense, Infer and Act. The Design Thinking framework helps to bring together all the digital/advanced technologies in redefining customer experience. The iterative process empowers the enterprise and business ecosystem together to innovate the best solution.
Over the period with the availability of these intelligent technologies and data lakes, organisations would need a creative framework to address a critical business problem through technological innovations. To be in the race of competition, businesses would have to adopt creativity, identify the problem and include design to define a ground-breaking value proposition. Alignment to solving a business problem would also require pioneers to focus on the use cases and how it can be executed to progress gradually from one stage of the digital transformation to the next.
Thus, it is crucial for any organisation to determine the source of the opportunity and the gap between an innovative idea and its positioning in the market. Design thinking is one such that will bridge this gap effectively, accelerating organisational efficiency and empathising the digital transformation journey.
Titli Chatterjee has been leading the ER&D/Industry 4.0 research initiatives of NASSCOM, having experience in research and consulting in the areas of emerging technologies and engineering services. In her current role as Manager – Research Titli is closely working with industry leaders, startups and other stakeholders to highlight how technology can be a game changer on the industrial front, and developing a roadmap in disruptive technologies for Indian IT-BPM industry.
