Design thinking's immersion phase goes beyond understanding customer needs. By having innovators physically mirror the customer's experience, it forces them to confront and dismantle their own unexamined biases, leading to a fundamental reframing of the problem itself.
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Customers, like founders, have a gap between their stated beliefs and actual behaviors. Instead of relying on discovery interviews, watch them work. Observing their actions reveals their true operating philosophy—what they genuinely value—which is a more reliable guide for product development than what they say.
Standard "discovery interviews" are often a form of "playing founder." It's arrogant to believe a few 30-minute conversations can yield the deep insights needed to build a game-changing product. True understanding comes from immersing yourself in the customer's work, not just casually interviewing them.
Structured analysis works when you can theorize potential causes and test them. However, for problems where the causes are "unknown unknowns," design thinking is superior. It starts with user empathy and observation to build a theory from the ground up, rather than imposing one prematurely.
Customers describe an idealized version of their world in interviews. To understand their true problems and workflows, you must be physically present. This uncovers the crucial gap between their perception and day-to-day reality.
Brainstorming cannot reveal the true friction in your customer experience. Following JetBlue's example, leaders must regularly become their own customers. This practice uncovers how high-level decisions inadvertently create flaws in the customer journey that are invisible from the boardroom.
To truly understand customers, go to their natural environment—their home or shop. Observing their context reveals far more than sterile office interviews. This practice, internally branded "Listen or Die," ensures the entire team stays connected to the user's reality.
Effective product development starts with internal alignment. Using exercises like Instagram's "Stories Mad Libs" creates a shared, candid understanding of the product's current state. This "organizational therapy" is a prerequisite for overcoming team biases and conducting successful user research.
Experienced designers find design thinking too linear, but this structure is a feature for managers. It provides "guardrails" to change ingrained habits, overcome the fear of mistakes, and instill the confidence needed to navigate the ambiguity of innovation.
To truly understand a B2B customer's pain, interviews are not enough. The best founders immerse themselves completely by 'going native'—taking a temporary job at a target company to experience their problems firsthand. This uncovers authentic needs that surface-level research misses.
Businesses often fail to spot points of friction in their own customer journey because they are too familiar with their processes. This "familiarity bias" makes them blind to the confusing experience a new customer faces. The key is to actively step outside this autopilot mode and see the experience with fresh eyes.
