Synthesise

Then your design team will analyse and synthesise the findings and make sense of all the data and information you collected. At this stage you are trying to answer the question: What is the right problem to solve?

This process of abductive reasoning helps us to infer meaning and redefine problems to generate new solutions.

What steps can you take to ensure that we are redefining problems and creating new insights into the problems of a development challenge?

Synthesise

Use the tools and resources in this guidebook to accomplish the goals below. Once your design team has achieved these objectives, you will be in a strong position to advance to the next phase in your design process. Use the reflection tools in the Design Work Journal to evaluate whether your design team is ready to move to the next phase.

Get aligned around your qualitative data as a team by reviewing what you learned from your design research

Discuss the most relevant and surprising observations you gathered as a team

Identify patterns and themes that emerge across the qualitative data

Build new insights that help you see new opportunities to solve problems and meet stakeholders’ needs

Connect your themes and insights to specific people you met during your design research

Get inspired by the details of specific peoples’ lives by reviewing the stories of the individuals who are most connected to the themes emerging from your synthesis

Articulate the needs, challenges, motivations and goals of the specific people as they relates to your project

Reframe challenges and needs into opportunities to generate solutions for the stakeholders

Overview of Synthesise phase

Mindsets of Synthesise phase

Elevate the lived experiences of stakeholders to be as important as technical expertise
Share power and decision-making with community members
Look carefully to understand potential problems and opportunities
Stay optimistic that you can solve the problem
Hold back on solving the problem until your team has learned from stakeholders
Put aside biases and assumptions about what you think the problem is listen to the stakeholder

Overview of Synthesise phase

The tools in the Synthesise Phase of the challenge are focused on developing a point of view about the needs of your stakeholder.

During this stage of the challenge, designers narrow from lots of information to a statement that is inspiring and specific.

This phase of the design challenge will include: analyzing your design research activities (interviews and shadow).
Inferring an interesting insight to build a Point of View statement and personas, and then writing How Might We questions.

Objectives of Synthesise phase

The goal of this phase is to identify the needs of your stakeholders based on what you heard and saw about their experiences, motivations and emotions.

At the end of this phase, all team members should be clear on several new Point of View statements that they will use to inform their design work. The team will also generate How Might We questions that they will use to generate solutions.