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As a product manager, my challenge is to create products our users (and their customers) love. That means finding the best solutions to the problems they face.

Our users know their business. Behind each feature request is a business opportunity not yet addressed, a moment to reach a customer or potential to scale operations.

But the challenge my team grappled with in the past, like many other product teams, was a stream of feature requests which often resulted in firefighting. We were maxed out with user requests and needed a smarter approach.

At Ocado Technology we constantly challenge ourselves to improve - finding new methodologies to deliver our work more effectively or building new solutions to solve problems.

So we applied Design Thinking to our projects and transitioned from a bloated product roadmap to fruitful plans and conversations. From request management to product-focus with Design Thinking. We did it by reframing our challenges in human-centric ways, focusing on our user’s needs. Here’s how.

^{_{What is Design Thinking methodology?}}

Interaction Design Foundation defines Design Thinking as “a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test”.

Design Thinking focuses on the most critical view to solving problems: the user.

_{^{Applying Design Thinking}}

We applied Design Thinking, working with our User Experience team to uncover the problems behind the solutions requested by our partners in a user-centred way. We wanted to more effectively support our partners’ supplier funded content strategy.

Our first step was to group the requests piling up in our backlog into themes. We grouped requests by what made them relevant to our partner’s business, not by features or topics.

Then, we agreed on prioritising them and setting up goals for the most central theme we should focus on next.

We followed a specific Design Thinking process: the Double Diamond.

This process, in a nutshell, covers four steps:

1. A research phase - for data collection and (user) observation. We conducted interviews with our partners about the theme above.

2. An insights phase - to analyse and synthesise. We found common patterns regarding problems, needs and gaps in the user journey.

3. An ideation phase - to define an experiment to test our hypotheses based on the previous step. We also reached our partners to get feedback for the proposed experiment before building it.

4. A prototype or delivery phase - to understand where we can deliver the minimum solution to validate our assumptions through data.

Our approach helped us understand the challenges our users faced when managing this type of content. The issue wasn’t about flashy banner formats; it was helping a small marketing team be more efficient and less prone to errors when delivering content to online customers.

On top of this, it was an excellent opportunity to collaborate with our Ocado Smart Platform (OSP) partners. And we did it without compromising our ultimate goal: to build solutions for our retail partners that support their business goals.

From that point on, we’ve been using Design Thinking to build a feedback loop with our users to validate solutions and to better understand the challenges they face. We’re also using the Design Thinking research phase to inform roadmap decisions, uncover pain points and discover new opportunities.

^{_{Five learnings from our Design Thinking journey}}

The Design Thinking process is exciting and revealing.

In my experience, there are five learnings you can apply to avoid pitfalls and make your project a success:

1. Recognise the complexities of the problem

Spend as much time as possible in the problem definition phase. You will end up with not one but several points worth fixing. The more you know about those problems, the better you, as a team, will be ready to assess which ones are the most impactful.

2. Target the right users

Targeting the right users is crucial for the discovery stage. When working with stakeholders, business representatives will be the first ones to show up at a meeting. That’s good to gather business insights. But to uncover specific problems for your product, you need to talk to the actual users of your product and avoid bias.

3. Apply Design Thinking in context

Use a Design Thinking process which is the best solution for the problem you want to solve. A Design Sprint might be helpful in some situations: user testing, co-creation design in others.

4. Learn from failures

Regardless of the methodology, be prepared for failure. Many things could go wrong: from a missing interviewee to the UX software service being down. The most important thing here is that you learn when things go wrong and come back stronger.

5. Collaborate to innovate

Involve your team in the user research activities. They are the ones building the product. It takes people that empathise with users to create products valued by customers. I also learned that a User Experience specialist is your best friend when navigating through the product discovery phase, the master workshop facilitation and user interaction processes. Don’t work in isolation and look for a (UX) “partner in crime”.

^{_{A new process doesn’t have to be daunting.}}

For us, a new process meant a unique opportunity to change our mindset, to work on problems instead of requests. We improved by reframing our challenges in human-centric ways and reflecting on users’ most essential needs.

So at this point, you might wonder, ‘What about the end customer’s needs?’ Bear with me. That’s a future blog.

In the meantime, I recommend that when you start a new initiative or project, ask yourself: are we solving the most critical problems?

Design Thinking might be your answer.

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How do you apply Design Thinking to develop user-focused products?