Look through the eyes of the customer

Empathize. Put yourself in the shoes of your future customer. Understand his pains and imagine the gains you can bring.

Observe. Observe what he does, not just what he says. Disconnects between what he says and does can give great insights.

Engage. Have a personal conversation. Elicit broad responses, so that you can find deeper information and more profound motivations.

Watch and Listen: See how people go about their work, what they do and try to avoid, go through the steps with them and experience how it feels. 

This is a divergent way of thinking, trying to uncover as many angles and ideas as possible.

Converge and define

Now converge and define the right problem you want to address, for which people and in what circumstances.

A well-defined problem helps find perspectives you can use to evaluate design options and finally build the right solution. 

Include potential customers and users in the definition of the problem and the development of solution. This will help in realizing the change needed to build and use the solution. 

Ideate

Write one or two paragraphs describing your product or services. 
To be successful your content needs to be useful to your readers.

Generate ideas and concepts on what the solution can look like. The more ideas to choose from, the higher the chance to find a good solution.

Go beyond the obvious, and brainstorm as a group. Do not judge too soon, stimulate creativity and let the ideas flow.

Build and learn

Build the solution the agile way. In small steps. Demonstrate often and listen to feedback. Deploy and learn from the way the customer uses your product.

Building solutions is a learning process, by learning teams in a learning organization.