23 July 2025
5 min
Continuing our journey across the Design Thinking landscape…
We’ve completed the first stage outlined in a previous blog, and empathised with our users - and now have a realistic understanding of the challenges they’re facing. Whether that’s the confusion experienced by a scheme member trying to find a statement, or the frustration a pensions administrator feels navigating five screens and two logins just to answer a simple query.
We now have a much clearer picture of those people - what they think, feel, see and hear than simply their job title or demographic segment.
Welcome to the Define stage! This is where we try to extract a clear signal from the noisy mess of reality. We stop collecting user insights at this stage and start clarifying them - synthesising what we’ve learned into a focused, actionable problem statement.
In my previous article, I quoted Donald A. Norman (one of the early thinkers around Design Thinking):
The biggest risk isn’t getting the solution wrong - it’s solving the wrong problem brilliantly.
As counterintuitive as it sounds - jumping to solutions is easy. Defining the right problem to solve... that’s the hard bit. This is a common challenge across all design processes and there are many ways to tackle this.
The “Define” stage in Design Thinking helps us articulate the problem we're trying to solve prior to any attempt to solve it. It isn’t just about simply writing a tidy summary. It’s about framing the challenge in a way that both invites creativity but anchors you to reality.
You can see this Define stage within the UK’s Design Council’s commonly adopted "Double Diamond" as shown below, but there are many frameworks and methods that attempt to address this.
Let’s say you’ve heard from members in stage one, that they’re confused by their retirement options because the leaflet they’ve read is unclear. If you think about the solution first, you could leap to: "We need a new leaflet." But a more thoughtful solution might be reached by asking a "How might we…?" question (referred to as an “HMW” in designer jargon):
"How might we help members approaching retirement feel less confused about their options?"
This subtle shift reframes the goal - so rather than thinking of how we might push out more content to members, we’re instead looking to find ways to build members’ confidence. Instead of solving for information delivery, we’re solving for understanding.
One of the ways we might consider doing this may well be sending out more information, but this simple reframing also opens a much wider range of possible solutions.
You may struggle to reach a concise HMW question. One way to develop them is to create a 'point of view' statement first. These are essentially the same thing but phrased from the end-user’s perspective.
<Person/Role> needs a way to <Verb> because <Insight from Empathy Stage>
<Members approaching retirement> need a way to <more easily understand their options> because <they feel confused by the literature we provide>.
Not only can we validate this statement with our end users, but it’s relatively easy to turn it in to a HMW question.
In a sector filled to the brim with compliance, complexity and constraints, it’s easy to default to familiar answers. But clarity at the “Define” stage helps avoid “solutions in search of a problem.” Some considerations might be:
When launching new tools: Where are you focusing your efforts? Are you solving for accessibility, trust, or convenience?
When redesigning processes: Is the root cause of a bottleneck simply resource capacity? Or, is it a technical, emotional or informational gap?
When communicating with stakeholders: Are you addressing what really matters to them, or what’s convenient to you?
A well-defined problem acts like a compass. It keeps teams aligned, decisions focused, and energy directed where it has the most impact. It's a process we've applied in developing our Frontier platform.
So in summary, there are a few practical steps you can take:
You might wonder if spending time defining the problem slows things down. It certainly requires effort in the short term so can feel like slowing down progress. But in practice, it’s the opposite. A good problem definition prevents wasted effort. It gives teams a shared language and ensures that when you do move into idea generation, you’re aiming at the right target.
Next up, we’ll explore the Ideate stage. We’ll look at how to generate ideas that are bold, grounded and inclusive - and how constraints (yes, even the ones we grumble about) can fuel creativity rather than stifle it.
Because when you know specifically which problem you’re solving, ideas emerge faster - and because they are more obviously relevant tend to stick better.
If you have any questions on Design Thinking or would like to discuss anything further, please get in touch.
Design Thinking for the LGPS: Practical tools for better outcomes
Design Thinking for the LGPS: stage one - start with empathy
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