Design-led companies such as Apple, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, and SAP have outperformed their competitors on the S&P by an astonishing 211%. And this tells us, that when design principles are applied to strategy and processes in a business, the success rate for innovation dramatically improves. So let's look at how we can incorporate design principles into our business and gain some of the same benefits and value
What is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is a structured, human-centered approach to problem-solving that prioritizes empathy, experimentation, and iteration. Unlike traditional methods that focus on immediate fixes, it digs deeper into the real needs of customers and employees to create innovative, sustainable solutions.
Who Uses Design Thinking?
Fortune 500 companies (Apple, Google, Airbnb) use it to innovate products. Startups apply it to refine business models before scaling. Small businesses leverage it to compete smarter, not harder.
Key Benefits:
✔ Customer-Centric Solutions – Fix real pain points, not assumptions.
✔ Cost-Efficient Innovation – Test ideas before heavy investment.
✔ Employee Engagement – Involve staff in co-creating better workflows.
✔ Adaptability – Quickly refine strategies based on feedback.
Design principles are about creating a product or service for the user of that product or service. The design thinking stages that we apply to develop such a product or service are
- Empathy, empathize with our user and understand their feelings, challenges, and desired results they want to achieve with the use of our product or service
- Define, redefining the problem statement from the user perspecitve/s, so that when we define the solution, we SOLVE for the user problems and not the business problems
- Ideate, brainstorm ideas, don’t eliminate any thought at this stage, allow yourself and your team to be creative
- Prototype, create a no-cost/low-cost version of the solution so that you can test it before you heavily invest resources in building this solution that you would take to market or release to your users. Examples for services are storyboards, roleplay, basically anything you can do to help the testers imagine the solution better.
- And Test, also do a mini version of usability tests with actual users, to get the most relevant and accurate feedback
Now there are other versions of this process, all very valid and they have their uses. The Standford D. school of Design practices this 5 stages process, and it’s the same one Success By Design trained in, use, and teach.
So, what’s the big deal with Empathy!!! And How can we start to incorporate the principles into my business?
Empathy is about looking at a problem, product, or service from the user’s perspective. Now, this sounds quite easy and simple to start with but there are principles and exercises that we apply in the Design Thinking Process to ensure that we reduce the bias projected by people conducting the analysis (persons trying to solve the problem) onto the understanding of what the problem is.
A great to start the process at your company is to hire a Design Sprint lead to facilitate a few workshops in your company. The right facilitator, will encourage, guide, and support each workshop participant to allow them to be divergent and convergent in their thinking when it’s appropriate in the process. This is a service we offer at Success By Design
Here are some exercises to help you and your team reduce projecting bias when problem-solving:
- Adopt a beginner’s mindset – forget everything you know about the product, process, or business and don’t interject your knowledge or understanding, allow the process to guide you
- Ask the 5 whys – funny thing, everyone thinks they know the real why, the real what, the real why again allow the process to guide you. We find that the longer you have been dealing with a problem, the hard it is actually to have a fresh perspective
- Conduct interviews with users or customers with empathy and no judgment. When people share their experience of your product or service with you, it leaves them exposed, appreciate that it took bravery to speak up and thank them for sharing
Remember, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” – Albert Einstein
So how to know when you are not solving the problems in the best possible way. When you are not fully empathic in your product and process design?
- You keep having the same problems over and over again
- High productivity, yet strategic and business goals are not being achieved
- Lack of transparency, layer upon layer of processes, employees need a lot of time to get to know their way around
- Customers!! When customer retention is a problem, service and processes need to be redesigned
Real-World Examples for Small Businesses
1. Construction Company Problem: Clients often complain about delays and lack of communication.
Design Thinking Solution: Empathize: Interview clients to understand frustrations. Ideate: Create a simple SMS update system for real-time project tracking. Test: Pilot with 3 clients, refine based on feedback.
Result: Fewer complaints, faster approvals.
2. Cleaning Service Problem: High customer turnover due to inconsistent quality.
Design Thinking Solution: Observe: Shadow cleaners to spot workflow gaps. Prototype: Introduce a “Quality Checklist” app with photo verification. Iterate: Adjust based on cleaner and client input. Result: increased client retention, more 5-star reviews.
3. Law Firm Problem: Clients overwhelmed by complex legal jargon.
Design Thinking Solution: Empathize: Record clients’ questions during consultations. Ideate: Design plain-language explainer videos for common issues. Implement: Send videos post-consultation. Result: Fewer repeat calls, more customer referrals.
4. Business Consultant Problem: Clients struggle to implement advice.
Design Thinking Solution: Co-Create: Workshop solutions with clients, not just for them. Prototype: Offer a 2-week “mini trial” of strategies. Refine: Adjust based on real-time challenges. Result: Higher client success rates, longer contracts.
Why It Works for Small Businesses as well as Large Businesses?
Design Thinking turns constraints (limited budget, staff, time) into advantages by focusing on what truly matters to customers. Whether you’re fixing a construction timeline or a client onboarding process, it’s about smarter solutions—not just harder work. Need help applying it to your business? Book a free 30-minute call to brainstorm your first design thinking experiment and lets talk about how we can streamline your processes.
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“Action is a great restorer and builder of confidence. Inaction is not only the result but the cause, of fear.” ―Norman Vincent Peale