Key Points

• Design thinking and Six Sigma are complementary disciplines to one another.
• Iterative prototyping through design thinking can enhance Six Sigma products.
• Combining insights from empathy with data-driven analytics has significantly better outcomes.

Do Six Sigma and design thinking work together? Six Sigma is one of the leading methodologies for businesses around the world when it comes to things like efficiency and quality. Design thinking seems almost opposed to the design work done for services and products in the Six Sigma way of life. However, the truth is these two get along quite well together when leveraged for maximum efficacy.

So, with that in mind, we’re taking a closer look at how these principles go together. We’ll explore the synergy they share, as well as where you can integrate design thinking with existing Six Sigma practices. If you’ve been looking for a more creative means of handling your projects, this might just be what the doctor ordered.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is an approach that emphasizes people over processes. This is done through a few different ways, but the key thing to keep in mind is that empathy rules the roost when it comes to design thinking. You can certainly apply analytical tools and the like to a design thinking project, but if you’re looking to solve problems, it needs to be rooted in the user expectations above all else.

We’ve talked in the past about things like the Voice of the Customer and how we can leverage that information to better deliver upon customer expectations. However, design thinking centers its solutions around the user first and foremost, considering their needs and wants before delving into the minutiae of the design process.

This is done with a few different core phases that allow teams to get creative in how they approach said solutions. These phases aren’t linear by design, as you are expected to return to them time and time again. However, learning how to apply creativity to these phases is going to make quite a difference when it comes time to deliver the end product.

The Phases of Design Thinking

Design thinking can be broken down into five distinct phases. As mentioned, these aren’t intended to be sequential, as you’ll be returning to them time and time again throughout the entire process. With that in mind, the phases are as follows:

• Empathize: This is where you’re seeking to understand the needs and wants of the user.
• Define: Defining the user’s problem is going to be crucial to crafting a lasting solution that meets or exceeds customer expectations.
• Ideate: This is the phase where you want to let your creativity shine through. Ideate is defined by team collaboration and mind mapping. There are other techniques you can leverage, but you want to get those creative juices flowing before arriving at the next phase.
• Prototype: A prototype doesn’t have to be a fully fledged deliverable. Instead, it can be a low-cost facsimile of what you hope to achieve with your final product. This phase is about getting out there with ideas, taking the time to look into multiple variations of solving the same problem.
• Test: What better way to see if something works than to test it? You can use internal or external teams for this. However, the important thing to keep in mind is that you’re looking to see if the solution is tenable in the first place. If the user is having issues, it’s time to go back to the drawing board and see where further refinements can take place.

Iteration is the key to success for any design thinking project, and something that should be readily embraced. You aren’t going to arrive at a tidy solution on the first pass. As such, it’s time to keep going back until you get something that sticks and work at it until it meets all the criteria a customer might have.

Six Sigma and Design Thinking: Injecting Creativity Into a Data-Driven World

Now that we’ve hammered out some of the finer details, it’s time to take a closer look at how you can integrate Six Sigma with design thinking principles. This isn’t a difficult process by any means, but it does signal that you’ll have to change up your line of thinking somewhat. An open mind and a willingness to experiment are going to yield far better results with this hybrid approach than trying to fit design thinking principles into a Six Sigma method of operation.

Six Sigma by design is highly adaptable, as we’ve seen with hybrid approaches like Lean Six Sigma or Agile Six Sigma. You want to take the elements that work from both approaches and combine them in a way that means you’re delivering the best possible product to your customers at the end of the day.

By taking a human-centric approach from the outset, you’re setting your organization up for loyal customers. Further, you’re taking those problems they set out as expectations to heart in the process.

Creative Solutions

When looking at any Six Sigma project, we typically start the process of DMAIC and move through the respective phases to arrive at an optimized process. However, you can start looking at the analytical toolset of Six Sigma to integrate some principles of design thinking when it comes to the process improvement cycle.

Consider for a moment the Improve phase of a DMAIC cycle. This is where you’re looking to reduce inefficiencies and make lasting changes to better serve your organization. However, this is where you can take elements of Ideate to heart when looking at how to improve things. Sure, you can look at the hard numbers time and time again, but breaking away from traditional methods of operation can yield surprising results.

Rapid Prototypes

We typically don’t think of Six Sigma as an iterative philosophy. Yes, continuous efforts are going on, but if a product isn’t working from the jump, something has gone wrong somewhere. This is where the intersection of Six Sigma and design thinking allows for some interesting results. You can make mistakes, get messy, and collect the data afterwards to see what works about the entire thing.

Embracing the concept of rapid prototypes is crucial to this hybrid approach. You’ll want to get out low and high-fidelity prototypes to see what sort of lasting solutions you can come up with. Further, this helps to reduce costs as you’ve got the means to get a possibly tenable solution in a low-fidelity prototype without having to spend a considerable amount of your resources to do so.

Data-Driven Decisions Grounded in Empathy

How do you turn something as intangible as human emotion into hard numbers? Well, that isn’t too difficult when you think about it. When you’re collecting data, this is where you can develop empirical metrics that measure user feedback during the Testing phase of design thinking. This has some benefits, as you’re getting a true accounting of the user’s impressions of the solution.

Further, by developing metrics based on this feedback, you’ve got everything you need to start analyzing what went wrong and where you can improve upon said ideas. This is where the intersection of Six Sigma and design thinking can be quite promising, as you’re still leveraging data while keeping people front and center to the design process.

Solving Ill-Defined Problems

There are numerous intangible qualities to user feedback that we find hard to adjust to. This is where Six Sigma and design thinking can truly make a difference, however. By framing those intangible qualities in design thinking’s way of doing things, you’re able to better ascertain what is meant by the user feedback.

Mentioning how something feels, for example, is a complex and relatively difficult concept to wrap your head around. After all, everyone’s perception of touch is going to differ. However, by prying deeper with design thinking’s toolset, you can arrive at a tenable solution using Six Sigma practices.

Other Useful Tools and Concepts

Looking for something else to go with your morning coffee? You might want to take a closer look at how to integrate sustainability targets into your Lean Six Sigma projects.

Additionally, you might benefit from learning how Kaizen is changing with the advent of technology. Kaizen is still here to stay, but you’ll likely want to keep up to date with the latest implementations.

Conclusion

Six Sigma and design thinking are a fantastic fit if you’re looking to change the way you approach problem-solving. Since most process optimization projects are essentially solving complex problems, getting outside of the box can yield fantastic results.

The image featured at the top of this post is ©Ground Picture/Shutterstock.com.