Exploring Windmill’s design thinking methodology

Design is about much more than visuals. Design is deeply embedded in product development, and the process itself is as important as the deliverable.

Here at Windmill, design is a journey we take with our clients, and we want to make sure we’re on a journey that’s enjoyable for everyone involved. We start by asking ourselves how we can best collaborate with our client’s product and development teams. Oftentimes, we are not the solo designers working on a project, which makes collaboration a key component to both our own success and the success of our clients.

Our goal at Windmill is to enable our clients to be as self-sufficient as possible. In order to accomplish this, we apply the three lenses of design thinking:

Business Viability

A common pitfall in design is getting lost in concepts and prototypes that never make it to market. As imaginative as designers can get, in order to be successful, an idea must be viable enough for a business to fully implement. This includes everything from managing expectations throughout the project lifecycle, to making sure everything remains within a client’s budget, to building a platform that truly solves the business challenges at hand.

We believe in establishing a shared vision toward success through open lines of communication with our clients from the onset of any engagement. By fostering a collaborative environment, we’re able to streamline the design process and deliver products that are customized to our clients’ needs.

Technical Feasibility

Designing and developing a product is one part of the challenge; successfully implementing a product is another. Successful design ultimately depends on the technical feasibility of the product, i.e. whether or not it actually works as intended and how well it integrates into a client’s existing technology stack.

Customer Desirability

In addition to all the operational benefits to a business, the product must ultimately delight end-users. Understanding our customers’ customers is just as important as understanding the business requirements of any given product. Our overall goal as designers is to build a product that delivers true value to the people who use it, hopefully making their lives easier in the process.

Sprinting Toward Success

The sweet spot between business viability, technical feasibility, and customer desirability is where true innovation happens. Many businesses focus on local problems, but in order to get to the root of any business challenge and provide a solution that fully addresses it, we try our best to present a holistic approach that takes into account each area of business that might be impacted.

We conduct a series of design workshops and sprints that enable us to identify the breadth of every challenge and develop a comprehensive solution. We invest our time in understanding our clients and their business models so we can deliver products and platforms that are perfectly customized to their needs.

This is our proven design thinking methodology, and we’re proud of all the amazing ideas it’s helped us bring to life, from concept to reality.