Some doors require printed instructions to operate, while others are so poorly designed that they lead people to do the exact opposite of what they need to in order to open them.

Source: Norman Doors: Don’t Know Whether to Push or Pull? Blame Design. – 99% Invisible

Creativity and problem solving are not individual endeavours, nor do they occur in isolation. Fortunately, companies are beginning to embrace new ways of fostering innovation. Instead of approaching a new product or service creation by defining a set of requirements, many companies are seeking first to understand the human needs behind the product or service, to develop an overall experience.

Source: How human-centric design thinking can power creative problem-solving – Marketing Magazine

There was a time when businesses could depend solely on the quality of their products to bring in new business. Success came from a company’s sole focus on delivering a dependable and highly functional product/service to the market. Today, that’s simply not the case. The majority of large brands have become marketing machines, competing against each other’s’ hype instead of being user-centric in the design of their products and services. Product differentiation has become a “me too” gimmick and is no longe

Source: Customer Experience Is the Future of Design | UX Magazine

Let’s explore the different ways in which a Solution-first culture makes your life much harder, and how Problems are what you are really after.

Source: Moving from Solutions to Problems – Folding Burritos

Empathy mapping is a way to characterise your target users in order to make effective design decisions. User journey mapping is a way to deconstruct a user’s experience with a product or service as a series of steps and themes. Put simply, these methods encourage your stakeholders to think about user needs effectively, identifying pain points and opportunities in a systematic and straightforward way.

Source: How to Run an Empathy & User Journey Mapping Workshop — Medium