It’s no news to see educators, nurses, or typical 9–5 workers having a side hustle to earn extra cash in this economy. There are so many opportunities abound to generate multiple streams of income — we are surrounded by so many problems, creating opportunities for those who can develop innovative solutions.
As a full-time worker or a gig worker, you need to view your side hustle as a worthy venture that allows you to nurture your passion and interests while generating additional revenue efficiently. You need to focus your effort, time, and money on your side hustle to make it viable and ensure viable cashflow.
Various tools can help your side hustle, and one of the most consistent and reliable tools is Design Thinking. Design thinking is not an exclusive concept for designers as great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it for years.
What’s unique about Design Thinking is that this work process can systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems creatively and innovatively in our schools, businesses, projects, and lives. It is no wonder that some of the world’s leading brands, like Google, Nike, Apple, and Samsung, have adopted the Design Thinking approach. It’s also a popular program at leading universities including Stanford and Harvard. At the U School, where I teach, we leverage the design process to develop curriculum and educational opportunities for our students. But you may be wondering what design thinking is and why is it so popular? Let’s dive right in.
What Is Design Thinking?
Design Thinking is the cognitive, strategic, and practical process by which design concepts come to life. It is associated with prescriptions for the innovation of products and services within business and social contexts. It is an iterative process used to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems to find other solutions that might not be apparent or seem like the obvious solution; essentially, it provides a solution-based approach to solving problems.
In simple terms, Design Thinking is the approach of creating innovative solutions by thinking from the perspective of a user or customer taking into consideration the feasibility of the solution and the viability of the business.
Design Thinking is useful in tackling ill-defined or unknown problems by reframing the issue in a human-centric way, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.
Why Is Design Thinking Relevant?
Design Thinking is an excellent way for full-time workers or side hustlers to further explore and transform their passion, interests, or ideas into a viable income source.
Every year millions of products and services crop up in the United States, but how many of them survive the test of time? Most of these solutions are brilliant, but sometimes the element of “need or desire” isn’t probed further during the creation process. Once you’re able to find the desirability, feasibility, and viability of your side hustle, the chances are you will earn enough additional income to make it worthwhile.
According to Tom Kelley, the revolutionary firm IDEO CEO- in his award-winning bestseller ‘Change By Design, he explains that Design Thinking taps capacities or solutions we all have but overlook due to traditional problem-solving practices. The Design Thinking process relies on our ability to be intuitive about human needs, recognizes patterns to construct ideas that have emotional meaning and functionality.
Design Thinking makes organizations run faster and more efficiently. Instead of researching a problem for an extended period without devising an outcome, design thinking facilitates prototypes and testing to see their effectiveness. It helps us to express ourselves in media other than words or symbols. So the question is, how do you do this using the design thinking process?
Design Thinking Phases or stages
There are five modes or stages of the Design Thinking process in use today:
EMPATHIZE — with your users. Observe consumers and their behavior patterns in the appropriate context. Interview and engage with consumers, immerse yourself as a customer, and go with the flow. One way or another, we’ve been a customer at a point in time to relate to customers’ needs and understand their perspective.
DEFINE — your user’s needs, their problems, and your insights. Having walked in the shoes of a consumer, we are in an excellent position to identify and pinpoint these unresolved issues so that we can try to solve all of them for a better outcome.
IDEATE — by challenging assumptions and creating ideas for innovative solutions. At this point, the genius in you gets a light bulb moment. As a side hustler, this provides the opportunity to brainstorm and come up with million-dollar theories and ideas to torpedo you into the race.
PROTOTYPE — start creating solutions by turning your ideas into a physical model. Tangible or not, your thoughts must manifest to see how they function in simulations or real-life situations. In this stage, you act on assumptions to see which one works, fails, and the improvements needed.
TEST — solutions. There are more tests to be done before launching a product. Whereas with a prototype, you’re acting on the assumption that you are right, you work on the pretext that you are wrong when testing. With testing, you reframe solutions and improve upon them instead of just making sure your current solutions don’t fail.
Design Thinking is participatory, and it works best when harnessing a multitude of ideas and viewpoints. The Arts and Business Councils for Greater Philadelphia, Creative Exchange Program impart methods and tools useful for business leaders and side hustlers alike. Some Design Thinking tools include the — “I like, I wish, what if” tool and the Rose, Bud, Thorn exercise.
The “I Like, I Wish, What If” Exercise.
For solo hustlers and leaders, feedback is an essential part of any project. The “I like, I wish, what if” exercise efficiently collects feedback by encouraging participants to share their thoughts by flipping negative criticism into positive, constructive feedback.
The Rose, Bud, Thorn Exercise.
Another method is the Rose, Bud, Thorn approach. In SriiiConsulting’s Business 101 / Side Hustle Accelerator Program participants use this process to identify what works (Rose), what doesn’t (Thorn), and what can be improved (Bud), to self-reflect on current projects, and pivot to new opportunities and create positive changes.
We start with Rose. With the Rose, you may wish to ask questions on your successes and achievements or the positives. you can ask questions like:
– How have you been successful?
– What is the highlight of your day?
– What makes you most proud?
– Describe efforts that blossomed?
– What did you like?
These questions help you focus on the positives and help you realize your achievements and accomplishments at the end of the day.
On the other hand, the thorns identify the challenges so you can work out how to overcome them. Ask yourself or team:
– What was most stressful?
– What went wrong during your day?
– What are the causes of these difficulties?
– What impeded your efforts?
– Did you experience any pain points in the process?
Lastly, let’s identify the buds in your side hustle or business. These are the areas of growth, emerging possibilities, and future opportunities. Ask yourself:
– What are you looking forward to tomorrow?
– Describe opportunities that energize you?
– What options need growth and nurturing?
– Describe opportunities for learning that excite you?
Practical Use of Rose, Bud Thorn For Side Hustlers
The Rose, Bud, Thorn model hones in on achievements, opportunities, and obstacles. This versatile tool can process the day’s event, a learning experience, or even function as a pivoting tool. As a gig worker, you can use this methodology to frame discussions on the fly — a technique for identifying positive, negative, or potential breakthroughs.
This Design Thinking process is easy to implement and applies to various situations that require problem-solving. As shown with the Rose, Bud, and Thorn, the exercise’s simplicity makes it a high-powered methodology for pinpointing gaps in your product/service offering, marketing or business efforts
Let’s take a look at a practical example of how the Rose, Bud, Thorn approach would work in a real-life situation. For instance, you’re an educator, and you’ve started an e-learning side hustle.
Rose — What is working? Start by writing down what is working with the implementation of your idea or solution. Maybe the curriculum you designed has been excellent due to the ease of use. Perhaps you’ve got your merchandise at an affordable price or through a third party at a discount rate. Just write down what’s working; it could be anything.
Bud– What are the opportunities? As you go through your people, process, and platform, some options will rise to the top. Perhaps the platform offers discounts, ad, or text messaging capabilities that could help better target your prospects, multi-channel, and so on. It could be all of the above and more.
Thorn — What’s broken? As you analyze your prospects, you may identify things that are missing, frustrating, or failing. Perhaps you don’t have enough data on potential customers to make some decisions. Write them down.
In the case of business (e.g., e-commerce), this process looks like this:
Discovery — the research and data needed to plan
Strategy — the marketing effort
Implementation — the tools and resources you need to start the marketing initiative
Execution — the resources, goals, measurement, and feasibility of the initiative
Optimization — the means of improving your initiative in real-time or next-time.
As you move this process, themes will materialize, helping you see where the roadblock is so that you can decide how to push through it successfully.
Purpose of Rose, Bud, Thorn Exercise
The Rose, Bud, Thorn Exercise helps you to acknowledge your side hustle’s strengths and weaknesses, so you can put measures in place to do more of what’s going well and fixing what is not working. It also inspires creativity and deep reflection — discussing buds can encourage new, innovative ideas to come to the fore. Side hustlers can gain insight from members, customers or clients, and other resource persons.
And finally, it helps you to systemize research data. The Rose, Thorn, and Bud tool provide an opportunity to analyze a set of data or help scope a problem by revealing focus areas, allowing you to plan the next steps. You can frame the next stage of your side hustle by documenting observations and opinions on sticky notes as positive, negative, or having potential.
Who Should Use Rose, Bud, Thorn?
Designers, Project Managers, Developers, and many other professionals are known to be users of this exercise. However, many people are using the Rose, Bud, Thorn Design Thinking Exercise due to its effectiveness and simplicity.From professionals, entrepreneurs to gig workers. No matter the mode of employment, Design Thinking is useful for professional development. This exercise highlights achievements, shortcomings, potentials, education innovation, and promotes collaboration in users to achieve success holistically.
Design Thinking, if used correctly, fashions the mindset for building a robust and innovative side hustle. To keep you from running in circles in terms of your business approach, look no further than the Design Thinking method, particularly the Rose, Bud Thorn exercise.