In this lecture, we are going to learn about one
of the technical lean startup with design thinking
which is a combination of lean startup and design thinking.
So, as we know that lean startup has this concept of
very major learned cycle and where you can quickly go
through the cycle as many times and as quickly as possible.
And then the design thinking has these five steps of empathize,
define, ideate, prototype, and test.
So Jeff Patton in his book, User Story Mapping,
defines how you can apply both of these techniques into
one and he calls that the lean start up with design thinking.
So let's see what this technique is.
So let's say you are entrepreneur who has an idea,
who want to launch a new product in the market or you are an entrepreneur which is,
you are in a big organization but has
an idea that can tremendously help the organization.
But there is a big uncertainty about the idea and
you have no data to prove whether this idea is going to
work or not work or there is uncertainty about the user needs.
So in this case,
once you have the big idea you should define what exactly is your problem,
user group or problem user or the target user group whom you want to
target and you should also define the problem you're trying to solve.
And then based on that you come up with,
what are the assumption about the user and about the solution you have.
So there are two lists shown here.
One for the user and one for the solution.
So you think about what are the assumptions we have made about
the user that the problems that they
have and what are assumptions that we have made about the solution.
And then from these assumptions,
you select few of the riskiest assumptions that you have.
So, from these assumptions you select,
okay, these are the riskiest assumption and by riskiest,
we mean the assumptions that have the more chances of being wrong.
And then if they are wrong,
can have the biggest impact on the idea.
So based on that criteria,
you select the riskiest assumption from this list and then you come up with like,
how can I validate these assumptions?
Because we don't want to build the whole application to find out
whether our solution is going to work or
not because any of you we're not sure about the idea.
So we want to try this quickly in inexpensive way.
So we come up with a prototype and then once
we have the prototype or whatever we want we
to test it out and we go to the actual users,
so we go where the users are.
We observe them or we interview them or we can
show them our prototype and have them use our prototype.
But the idea is to have a focus test around the problem
with our prototype to validate our assumptions or not.
And so once we have done this testing,
then again we are going to learn,
and more often than not,
we learn that what we assumed was incorrect.
And so it's really important to celebrate learning.
We should not be very pessimistic like,
all of our assumptions were incorrect,
but it should encourage us that we learn this very quickly and in an inexpensive way.
So you should celebrate your learning and
then think about your solutions and assumptions.
And then again you go back to the cycle.
So then you continue the cycle until you either develop
your solution or you invalidate your idea.
Now if you look at this model,
you see all the elements of design thinking.
You saw the define then you have the idea and prototype where you come up
with multiple options and then create few prototypes and then you empathize and test.
So you go to where the users are and you test
your ideas and then if you look from the lean startup point of view,
it has the ability to measure learn cycle.
So it has elements of both of them.
So again this technique which is a fusion of lean startup and
design thinking can be really effective in building the software that users will love.
Praveen MittalAdjunct Professor
