Using Design Thinking to Launch a Dog Walking Business

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Introduction

Have you ever thought about opening your own business in your community? The design thinking process is the most important aspect of kickstarting a successful business in the 21st century. When thinking about starting a simple but effective business, dog walking should be at the top of your list. Throughout this blog, you will learn how to execute the 5 steps of the design thinking process and how you can relate that process to starting a successful dog walking business!

📸 - Use Empathy to Put Yourself in the Owner's Shoes

Empathizing is the first and most important step of the design thinking process. It is key to know what your customer thinks, what they do, how they feel, and what they say. Observing potential customers and immersing yourself into their lifestyle will help you, as a business owners, better understand the people you are specifically planning to satisfy. A few ways that business owners can engage with their customers consist of conducting interviews, allowing them to take photographs of their day-to-day life, and making different types of empathy maps. To empathize for dog walking, walkers can use their experience with dogs that they own themselves to empathize with others or they can actually go out into their community to interview passionate dog owners.

🔎 - Make Sure to Define the Problem You're Addressing

During the Define phase of the design thinking process, it is important to make sure that you "pinpoint" a specific problem, focus on a certain "scope", and "magnify" your point of view on the problem. Many business owners use the "how might we..." statement to brainstorm solutions for the produced problem statement. The Define phase should be based off of your observations and engagements in the empathize phase of the design thinking process. For a dog walking business, defining the problem may be the most simple but important part of the process. In dog walking, the problem is that most dog owners are working full-time and often absent from their homes when their dog needs the most. This causes owners to not be able to properly care for their dogs during the day, for long periods at a time. The "why" of your business is the backbone of the define phase.

💡 - Come Up With Solutions to Ideate For Your Business

To enable yourself to ideate during the design thinking process, it is essential to find new ideas to solve the problem, look for a wide range of solutions, and try to create innovative solutions that propel your business. A innovative person should also look for possible alternative services or products for their business. Business owners should use this step to know exactly what they want to provide for their customers and how that product or service is incorporated into the their community. In a dog walking business, many would think that dog walking is the only efficient service you can do, but in fact there are many more successful alternatives in the industry. Some of these alternatives include solutions like dog sitting, drop-in visits, and even dog running if the owner wants the dog to be highly active or in shape. Dog sitting and drop-in visits involve more responsibility and can differentiate you from others.

⚙️ - Use Previous Phases to Create an Effective Prototype

To be a successful business owner, you must have a working prototype that is able to be used or received by your customers. This is your chance to share and spread your ideas with customers that are interested in your product or service. There is a potential for lots of publicity in this stage of the design thinking process. Build or conduct your product or service to the specifications of your business capabilities and your customers needs. Producing a prototype for dog walking, is very simple and easy for you to do. You should first start by sharing the purpose of dog walking with you customer and then you could give them one free walk. After that walk, they should be able to give you some feedback, which is part of the last step of design thinking.

📋 - Test Your Prototype And Gather Feedback

Finally, you must have a test for customers to give you feedback based on the functional results of your prototype. Using a survey, whether that be online or in person, is the best way to test the prototype. Customer feedback is important for the business because it allows the business owner make necessary changes to their prototype or even in some cases, make a new product or service that satisfies the feedback given by the customers. It is important to test your prototype like it's not good enough and needs help. A test can also help you empathize and learn more about your customers' needs. For a dog walking business, an online survey through email or text would be best because you may never see the client. Testing can be vital to the long-term success of a business, no matter what industry you are in because customer satisfaction is key.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is very difficult to have a successful business without following the design thinking process. Hopefully, while ready this blog, you have become knowledgable and aware of how to effectively carry through with the process. If you are considering dog walking, the design thinking process isn't as necessary, but parts of it with help you understand what your client want/need and it will also help you know if your service is acceptable from customer feedback. I challenge you to use design thinking in any possible business that you go in to, but make sure that you take your time during all of these crucial phases for the process to be efficient.

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