How Design Thinking Motivated Us

by Keith Crawford | Mar 12, 2020

As designers, we were inspired to reimagine the deathcare space after having mediocre experiences with the deaths of our father and mother, respectively. We knew there was a better way. We used Design Thinking to blaze a path.

So what is design thinking? Here’s a quick overview. “Design Thinking is “a process for solving problems by prioritizing the consumer’s needs above all else.” It first was popularized by the design firm IDEO and a piece in the Harvard Business Review. It has a “human-centered” core and a problem-solving approach. Small business and education are using Design Thinking to spark innovation. And, it isn’t just for “things,” but problems in need of solutions and requires empathy for those you are designing for.

Empathy has been a key motivation at the core of our process. Our business is centered around solving problems for consumers. We saw that there was a huge need to keep families who are already under stress from grief from having to meet at a funeral home, taking time and money away from them at their most vulnerable moment.

We started by imagining how we would redesign a funeral home, but it didn’t take long until we realized that a physical space wasn’t what needed a facelift. What consumers needed was a bigger disruption and reimagination. That was the inspiration that began our journey to Solace.

As we created Solace, we thought about the pain points for families and have worked hard to eliminate them … the hidden prices, the in-person meetings, the upselling, all of the things that we experienced as we navigated the deathcare space ourselves for our families.

Putting consumers at the center of what we do and using empathy as our lens, we will continue to reimagine our business and revolutionize a dying industry.

Photo by Anna Dickson