Design Thinking: How engaging stakeholders leads to better product development

When you design with people instead of for them, everything changes.

That’s really the heart of Design Thinking - understanding how people actually work, getting to the real problems, exploring ideas together, and testing early so there are no big surprises later.

It’s not new, it's been around since the 60s and shaped by the likes of IDEO and Stanford’s d.school decades ago. It’s now part of how teams everywhere, from Google to the NHS, work and has stuck around for a simple reason - it works. When you involve users from day one, you reduce risk, uncover what really matters, and build products people actually want to use.

At hrpr, it’s how we run every project, because we've seen first hand the benefits of keeping the people closest to the problem involved in shaping the solution.

Why involving people early matters

Most digital products fail because teams jump straight to solutions. A spec gets written, designs get made, and users are only consulted during user testing, or worse, after launch, when it’s too late to change much.

Design thinking flips that. It starts with empathy, understanding what’s working, what isn’t, and where the pain points are. 

That’s exactly what we did with 40Seven. We worked with surveyors and managers to bring two separate iOS apps together into one. The apps were well-used and familiar, so we didn’t want to throw everything out. The goal was to fix the friction without disrupting how people worked day to day.

We spent time out in the field - in the rain, in full sun, hi-vis on, iPads out - to see how the tools were really used. Then we ran workshops with surveyors and management to generate ideas, test early versions, and refine them together. By the time development kicked off, everyone had already helped shape the solution.

That involvement has made a big difference. When the new system rolls out, it won’t be a surprise. People will recognise it, trust it, and back it, because they’ve been part of it from the start.

Why it works

Bringing people in early isn’t just good practice, it’s the difference between “we built this for you” and “we built this with you.”

Design thinking gives teams a shared way to collaborate. It helps balance business goals with what users actually need, and it takes the stress out of change.

You don’t have to convince people at launch if they’ve been involved all along.

For 40Seven, it means smoother adoption and a tool that will make survey work more efficient in the field. 

For me, it's one of my favourite parts of the job - seeing something we’ve designed together making people’s lives a little easier.