As a designer for almost twenty years now, and a digital writer for over a decade, it's time to merge design thinking and writing.
Most people don't know what Design Thinking really is. It's a set of processes that helps us think through needs and products to improve them.
Most people think it is the domain for designers. Quirky-thinking oddly dressed kids who keep asking why until you punch them in the face.
Experts rarely explain it properly, as it's very often touted by large corporate consultancies who promise the world and often under-deliver.
Making it exclusive or complex or the purview of specialists.
You don't need to be an expert in these methods to:
Rethink book covers from the right perspective
Understand what and how to write with more specificity
Have more fun creating content
Create stories and articles with more purpose and meaning
Any writer can apply these methods to flip the script and solve reader problems in order to grow their audience and value shared.
The core ideas are really simple
Focus on your customer's needs and learn from their behaviour.
For writers, this is even easier than you think. A core method for Design Thinking is creating a Persona. A fictional character that embodies research to create empathy and focus on helping a specific person.
As writers, we make up people all the time. In fact, the Story Core definition from Libby Hawker is a very practical way to go about it.
Story Core: a flawed person wants something and struggles against obstacles (or an antagonising force) and either succeeds or fails.
Your product or book or article aims to tip that toward success.
Specificity is the key to stronger writing
Nicolas Cole has said it a 100 times. Be specific.
I say, to do that, focus on a very specific person(a).
Bad Example: Boys who like fantasy books.
Good Example: Ben James is a young teen who lives in a broken home. His mother works two jobs to keep them fed and sheltered. Ben's father left when he was young, and he's adrift, not knowing how to be in the world.
How do you help Ben?
As a fiction writer, you could write stories with strong mentors that help young heroes approach difficult social and moral problems. You teach them about courage, duty, responsibility, family, and that they're good enough.
You model how good people behave by showing him in a story setting. He wants fun, but what he really needs is a role model to show him how to be.
Thinking of a specific person, even made up, radically focuses your work.
All Writers can leverage Design Thinking to Level Up
Design thinking methods are simple, but have a lot of depth. They take years to master. But the basics return benefits immediately.
And anyone can learn them and apply them. I've trained up enough instant Design Workshop facilitators to know it's possible.
Writing away in isolation, without thinking about your readers as customers who have problems or needs (practical and emotional), is the recipe for the same tired results most writers get.