Design thinking for the service-based business

Forget everything you thought you knew about what makes good business.

Well, OK, only if you thought cutthroat decision-making, a ruthless attitude, and a tendency to leave destruction in your wake was “good business.”

Because when we tell you to run your service-based business like a successful SaaS startup, we really mean you should practice a radical kind of empathy that the tech crowd calls “design thinking.”

It’s a fancy way of saying your product strategy should be rooted in understanding and follow a thoughtful, logical development process. A design thinking framework lets product teams place real, human empathy at the heart of any venture.

We’ve adapted the process for use by people who want to offer a service and not build a traditional product outright. It looks a little something like this:

Find a problem. Learn everything you can about the humans that live with it. Observe them. Connect with them. Tailor your solution so that it caters to them. Then learn the best ways to reach out—and do it.

Design thinking in 3 steps

PROBLEM DEFINITION:

Identify potential customers and really get to know them as humans. We’re talking needs, desires, what makes them tick

CUSTOMER RESEARCH:

Find your future patrons in their natural habitat and figure out their knottiest problems. What’s causing the issue? What’s the effect? How can you solve this?

SOLUTION TESTING:

Build a solution fast, test it with real people, and see how they respond. Adjust course based on feedback. Repeat forever.