TRVZ and Design thinking, stages of business methods of design thinking and TRIZ, methodology tools

TRVZ and Design thinking, stages of business methods of design thinking and TRIZ, methodology tools

As business interest grows in TPMS, there is growing attention to whether TPMS for business is related to other creativity-based methodologies. Design thinking is usually the first method with which the TRVZ is compared.

In this article, I want to analyze in detail:

– are these two methods similar,

– can they complement each other to solve problems,

– What are their differences.

I write a lot about TRVZ. You can read on Habra what business TRVZ is and what tasks this methodology solves here: What is TRVZ?

And it is worth writing a little more about the philosophy and purpose of design thinking in order to compare the two methods.

It is important to start with the fact that the word “design” used in the phrase “design-thinking” has a different context in Russian and English. When we say “designer”, we imagine a person who draws well and has a creative imagination. In the English language, the word “designer” is rather used in the sense of designer, developer, constructor. First of all, architects are called designers – people who can not only draw a good project, but also have an idea, for example, of what materials to build a building so that it is suitable for use. It is not enough to draw a beautiful balcony, you need to understand the materials from which it will be made.

If we are talking about the initial version of the word “designer”, then in the Russian version it is closer to the word “design engineer”. When we remember the great inventors of the Soviet era, we say: aircraft designer, tank designer, spacecraft designer. The brilliant designer Korolev had knowledge of aesthetics and ergonomics, but to a greater extent he had a huge layer of knowledge about materials and constructions.

In the English language, the word “designer” does not exist in this sense. All brilliant inventors: Edison or Zvorykin, an American of Russian origin – the inventor of the television, were engineers. There is also the phrase Engineering Design – engineering design. It is done by people who work directly with products.

I spend so much time on the background of the term because it is important to understand that the philosophy of design thinking is based not only on the fact that a designer is a creative person who knows how to draw well and invent new things. This is first of all a person who has a large layer of knowledge in a certain field.

The most famous popularizer of design thinking in Russia is Tim Brown, CEO and CEO of IDEO, a world leader in design. But the first to describe the philosophy of design thinking in his book “Creative Engineering” in 1959 was John E. Arnold, an American professor of mechanical engineering and business administration at Stanford University. It is noteworthy that around the same time in the USSR, Heinrich Altshuller began to popularize TRVZ and together with Raphael Shapiro published the article “On the Psychology of Inventive Creativity.” It is considered the starting point for the development of TRVZ.

John E. Arnold wrote in 1959 that the approach to design should become more human-centered. Now we call it customer-oriented. That is, a product created for a person should be not only useful, but also convenient. A person should enjoy using this product.

Once it all started with the fact that a simple useful function was needed. For example, in ancient times, you could sit on logs or logs. Now we have thousands of variations of armchairs and chairs: office, home, with orthopedic back support, etc. And we can choose for ourselves the option that suits us not only with its useful function, but also suits us in terms of design.

Sometimes a useful function becomes secondary altogether, giving way to the function of “owning a user-pleasing” product. This is what happened with trips on ships.

Before the Second World War, it was possible to get from Europe to America only by ship. Large ships acted as carriers. But with the development of the aviation industry, transporting people over long distances became almost undemanding.

Now there are huge cruise ships on which tickets are bought for a lot of money, not to get from point A to point B, but to enjoy the trip.

John E. Arnold formulated three main principles for creating new products:

1. The consumer’s desirability of the product;

2. Technical implementation;

3. Economic availability of the product to a wide range of consumers.

A practical design thinking methodology was built on the basis of these three concepts. What is it in the modern world?

Today there are many schools of design thinking: Massachusetts, Berlin, Australian, Stanford. They all use different techniques and different sets of tools. But all use the main idea of ​​design thinking: making many iterations between the main stages.

Let’s break down the classic process of the Stanford School of Design Thinking. It consists of five stages:

1. Empathy – understanding what the person for whom the product is made wants. How will it feel when you receive it.

2. Focusing – identifying the main problem or problems of the client, taking into account the stage of empathy. It is important that here it is not a transition to solving the problem, but still an analysis.

3. The idea is generating different ideas to solve the root problem or problems.

4. Prototyping – from all found solutions, the most promising one is selected and its sample is created.

5. Prototype testing: in engineering, these are usually alpha and beta prototypes. An alpha prototype almost never works, but it shows what the product will look like. A beta prototype is a working prototype of a product.

And here, at the last stage, a problem almost always arises. Because the prototype is almost never tested. So, you need to go back to one of the stages, take another idea, prototype it again, test it. That is why prototyping methods such as Rapid Prototyping are popular, and in the IT sphere MVP (Minimal Viable Product) is a minimally viable product.

It turns out that in design thinking, when a client asks a problem, it must first be investigated to determine if it is really a problem that needs to be solved. An in-depth analysis is then required to identify the root causes of the problem, and only then begin to address the problem. But at this stage, you should not look for one single correct one, but create a whole fan of solutions. This is necessary so that each of them can then be prototyped and tested.

example: let’s say the company wants to release a phone for those who do sports. The designer creates a portrait of the future buyer. Let’s say this: a man from 18 to 30 years old, he is a swimmer, European, etc. That is, the designer uses the method of social segmentation of the client group. But what’s good for marketing isn’t always good for design. A product only for the above-described man will not be in great demand. So, there will still be work to be done on ideas and prototypes until a solution is found for the large mass of people who play sports.

There is no such approach in TRVZ: the first, fourth and fifth stages are simply absent in this method. TRVZ is based on the fact that first we see the problem, and then we look for the contradiction that caused it. And after we describe this contradiction, the task is already fully formulated. Unlike design thinking, where a lot of time-consuming tools are used at the stage of empathizing and defining the problem: in-depth interviews, a customer journey map, Personas – the construction of a persona who will have the product being developed, and a lot of other cognitive tools

At TRVZ, we immediately take specific tools to solve the problem and we begin the analysis that helps us form the IKR (Ideal Final Result), which most often leads to the solution of the task. We don’t need to prototype and test many versions and waste time and money on it.

It turns out that if you compare TRVZ and design thinking, they have two points of intersection: analysis and search for ideas. But if in design thinking, the tool “Five whys” is most often used for analysis, then in TRVZ the tool “Causal-conflict analysis” (RCA+) is used. AND (RCA+) works much more powerfully to structure and visualize a problem that cannot be solved at first glance.

In the methods of finding ideas, Design Thinking and TRVZ also do not coincide. Design thinking mainly uses brainstorming, reverse brainstorming and brainwriting. At TRVZ, we avoid the trial-and-error search format as much as possiblethat is, brainstorming, in favor of tools that quickly lead us to a specific solution to the problem.

The speed of finding solutions is very important in today’s world. Technologies and businesses do not stand still, so in order to remain competitive, companies must at least keep up with the leaders of their segment, and at most stay one step ahead. It takes about a year to learn Design Thinking. This time will be needed to understand all the processes and master all the tools. Then the method will need to be understood in practice, which is quite difficult given its features. And to learn the basic TRVZ, start implementing the method and get the first results, it will take five to seven days. After that, of course, it will be necessary to expand knowledge. But the time difference is still huge.

Thus, I believe that Design Thinking and TRVZ are completely different methods. Design thinking is a philosophical approach to design and construction. It consists of five stages, in which the search for an idea and solving tasks related to it are only one or two of them. TRVZ exists completely separately and serves to solve specific tasks.

But at the same time, I see that these two methodologies can not only overlap, but also create a well-functioning synergy to mutually reinforce each other.

TRVZ with its tools for identifying root contradictions and eliminating them is ideally integrated into the third stage of design thinking. This will help to avoid further endless prototyping and testing, and, accordingly, will save the company time and money.

The first two stages of design thinking, in turn, can strengthen TRVZ due to cognitive tools that help define the problem very precisely. After all, the relevance of the future solution depends on the accuracy of the problem definition.

About TRVZ in the article on Habra: What is TRVZ?

Telegram channel BUSINESS TRIZ

The original interview

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TRVZ and Design thinking, stages of business methods of design thinking and TRIZ, methodology tools, Oleksiy Blakhyh, Valery Sushkov

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