Applying Design Thinking in Graphic Design
Empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test — these are the five phases of the iterative, non-linear process called design thinking. While design thinking has traditionally been associated with product design, it can also be applied to graphic design to create more effective and meaningful designs. In this article, we will explore how design thinking can be integrated into graphic design, and how it can help designers create meaningful user-facing designs that truly resonate with their audience, not just outputs that are mere visualizations of project briefs from creative directors or managers.
Empathizing with one’s audience is at the core of design thinking’s first phase. Graphic designers need to adhere to this principle if they want their work to succeed. To better understand their audience’s demands and challenges, designers should conduct thorough research alongside assembling user personas based on audience and customer analysis. By connecting emotionally with them through attentive research-based processes, designers can craft visuals unique in addressing users’ and clients’ specific needs, ensuring maximum fulfillment of each creative brief.
The second phase of design thinking is defining the problem you are trying to solve. Effective design is all about having clarity of purpose and intentionality in ones approach. This is why taking time to define specific challenges and pain points is integral for successful outcomes in any project — be it creating a new brand image or enhancing website usability. Through utilizing user research gathered during empathy exercises designers can harness valuable perspectives that lead them towards purposeful solutions which are truly centered around user needs.
After defining comes ideation. This is where you start generating ideas for your design, the phase where creativity flourishes the most. Ideation commonly includes innovation, embracing unconventional thinking and letting your imagination soar. Brainstorming sessions, mood boards, or sketching to uncover new ideas that could potentially be used as a backbone to the final visual output.
The fourth phase of design thinking is prototyping. Bringing an idea into existence starts with prototyping as a crucial stage where you can test its many facets effectively. You can opt for sketches, wireframes, or mockups depending on what best suits your concepts requirements at this point. For print media, this is where sample prints are created to test the design out. The ultimate objective at this phase is assessing how well an idea functions under practical circumstances so that you can refine it with necessary modifications accordingly.
Testing is the last stage of design thinking. Here, you can get input on your design and make any necessary corrections for future iterations of the design, or for the next similar project that’s underway. For UI/UX and web designs, user testing, surveys, and other techniques in getting audience feedback are helpful. On the other hand, you can make sure that your design has met its objectives by measuring analytics, especially if it’s a graphic material published digitally, like a social media post for example. Testing and analyzing results pave the way to identifying which aspects to improve on and which ones to retain.
Design is all about putting the user and audience first. At its core, the design thinking process emphasizes creating user-centric or audience-centric solutions through hypothesis testing and prototypes. But it’s not a one-size-fits-all process with a set order of stages. Instead, it’s an iterative approach with constant brainstorming, discussions, and adjustments to reflect new insights into user behavior. Roughly translated to the context of graphic design, design thinking is a framework through which the crafting of visual materials can further be improved with audience-facing considerations and insights. Whether it’s a website, an interface, a social media post, or printed materials like flyers or brochures, the design should always be centered on the people who will be reading, viewing, and consuming them.
