How ClearObject Uses Design Thinking to Drive IoT Innovation

Feb 3, 2021 | Blog

At ClearObject, design thinking is at the heart of what the company does. By taking an iterative, non-linear approach to important questions, design thinking can lead to transformative products and services that create value and delight customers.

ClearObject offers multiple packages for organizations seeking to innovate, evaluate, and leverage disruptive technology like Artificial Intelligence and IoT to create unique solutions that can change the way your business delivers.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a process used in product development that takes a human-centered approach to problem-solving. This human centricity keeps teams focused on feasibility, impact, and applicability throughout the product design process.

Design thinking encourages engineers to remain attuned to the people that things are being created for. That approach leads to better products, services, and internal processes.

It starts with looking at a business problem and asking: What’s the human need behind this?

There are many benefits to taking a design thinking approach, including:

  • A Focus on the Problem. By putting end-users at the center of the design process, design thinking keeps the needs of the user as the focus. The goal is to create products and services that meet user needs, not the other way around.
  • Faster Pace. Design thinking gets more people involved to generate more ideas. It allows for faster staging and testing of ideas, letting organizations pursue deeper where there is traction and move on from ideas where there is not.
  • User Empathy. The design thinking process is rooted in empathy. The process focuses on understanding and identifying with the needs, challenges, and wants of the people using the product or service.
  • Happier Users. With a user-centric approach, the outcome is happier users. By listening to what users need and want, understanding their approaches and expectations, design thinking breaks down the wall between companies and users or customers.
  • More Revenue. A recent McKinsey & Co. study showed that a human-centric design approach makes a difference on the bottom line. The study looked at corporate actions where design was a more deliberate part of the business, finding that such an approach led to 32 percent more revenue and 56 percent more return to shareholders.

Design thinking uses a multi-phased approach. While these phases are structured linearly, often the process involves jumping from phase to phase as concepts are ideated. The phases are:

  • Question Framing. Defines the driving question that will inspire solutions
  • Seeking Inspiration. Learns what people need
  • Generating Ideas. Moves past obvious ideas towards transformative, breakthrough concepts
  • Making It Real. Builds prototypes to see ideas in action
  • Testing. Gains feedback and helps improve ideas
  • Sharing. Builds a human story to illustrate and inspire

ClearObject Focuses on Design Thinking

At ClearObject, the team uses a development process infused with design thinking. Their goal is to bridge the gap between customers and their preferred platform using customized solutions and continuous assessment and improvement.

The ClearObject team creates digital products that complement what your team already produces. Doing so differentiates your company’s products and services by using data to improve performance, enable better decision making, and enhance the user experience, which in turn increases the value of those products and services.

ClearObject solutions teams include designers, developers, engineers, architects, and product managers. Their processes are designed to:

  • Understand project outcomes and end-user needs
  • Maximize efficiency
  • Incentivize use
  • Accelerate ROI on data collection processes or new data products
  • Allow wide-scale adoption

ClearObject’s design thinking offerings are built for where your organization is in its development process. The ClearObject team’s work covers the full gamut of design, from product conception to architectural layout. Offerings include:

  • IoT 101. A 1-hour class, IoT 101 is a starter course to educate on IoT and how it is relevant to different industries and business areas. The class will occasionally focus on specific topics related to IoT, such as product security or data monetization.
  • Ideation Consulting. This personalized, half-day session brings together their solution consultants and design leaders with your team members to discuss your business case. You will leave the session with a high-level roadmap
  • Design Thinking Workshop. This multi-day engagement guides your team through exercises to validate and develop a user-centric solution. ClearObject will use that work to create a prototype for your team.

ClearObject works across any industry, including agriculture, automotive, distribution, energy, food services, housing development, manufacturing, and operations. To learn more about our design thinking offers, contact ClearObject today and follow on Twitter and Facebook.