Design thinking in the industrial sector

What is often missing – and makes all the difference:

A deep understanding of your customers’ actual goals and challenges.
What economic effects do they want to achieve? What operational or strategic hurdles stand in their way?

Those who develop products without this understanding often base their decisions on internal assumptions or filtered feedback – not on what really matters to customers.

Design thinking closes this gap.

It helps to identify strategically relevant problems at an early stage – and to develop solutions that are economically effective, user-centred and feasible. For PMs, this means clearer priorities, fewer assumptions and better decisions.

Three typical hurdles – and how design thinking helps in an industrial setting:

• Filtered insights:
  Sales and service are valuable sources of information because they are in daily contact with customers. However, their feedback often reflects only certain perspectives, such as escalation issues, sales obstacles or support requests. This information is important, but it is often reactive, selective or coloured by the respective role. To obtain a more comprehensive, objective picture of user needs, usage contexts and decision-making processes, direct dialogue with users is required. User interviews enable precisely that: they reveal deeper, qualitative insights – e.g. about genuine motivations, unspoken frustrations, workarounds or usage patterns that would otherwise remain hidden. This allows assumptions to be validated, blind spots to be uncovered, and solutions to be developed that are truly relevant – beyond purely sales- or support-driven optimisations. User interviews are therefore an indispensable tool for customer-centric product development, marketing and strategic decisions.
  
  For PMs, this means clearer priorities, fewer assumptions, and better decisions.
• Solution-oriented thinking before understanding the problem:
  Instead of starting with a wish list of features, design thinking first asks why: what real user problem needs to be solved? Targeted user observation and interviews provide a deeper understanding – far beyond what traditional requirement lists offer.
  
  This empathy-based approach prevents hasty solutions and focuses on genuine needs. Rapid iterations are used to test what really works – not just what appears to be desirable. This rethinking helps product managers develop products that have substance – not just features. The result is solutions that are more relevant and sustainable.
• Lengthy, expensive development cycles:
  Instead of investing months in developing a final product that ultimately fails to meet requirements, iterative working enables rapid learning loops. Early prototypes and user feedback allow misconceptions to be identified and corrected in good time. This not only saves resources, but also minimises the risk of costly mistakes – especially in complex or long-term projects. For product managers, this means learning faster and making better decisions – before it becomes expensive.