Page - 164 - in The Future of Software Quality Assurance

164 M.F. Tannian Fig. 2 Design thinkingasavehicle toachieve user-informed development and quality [inavisual thinking style] the product or service plays in the end user’s life. This understanding is needed to influence the numeroussubtle decisions being made as they implement and test. Promotinguserandoverallsolutionawarenesswithindevelopmentteamswillassist members to recognize the impactof their efforts (Fig.2). Design thinking is a promising method for delivering products and services grounded in a user-informed development process. A brief introduction to design thinkingis providednext. 3 IntroducingDesign Thinking There are a number of books available that explore design thinking, such as [4, 5]. After reading Nigel Cross’s Design Thinking [6] and Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie’s Designing for Growth: A Design Thinking Tool Kit for Managers [4], you may wonder what design thinking really means. There are two schools of thought that have adopted the term “design thinking.” Cross is a member of a discipline of inquiry that explores design and how designers (e.g., architects, industrial designers) do what they do. The second school attempts to provide a bridgebetweendesignerly thinkingandsuccessfulbusiness innovation.Tobeclear, design thinking in the remainderof this chapter is that which enablesbusinesses to be successful innovators. An accessible introduction to design thinking is the A4Q DesignThinkingFoundationLevel syllabus [7]. 3.1 FundamentalConcepts There isnosingle approachto design thinking.However there arecommonaspects among the well-established approaches. Design thinking at its core is a user-