Design

Thinking
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Design Thinking
Design thinking is a process for creative problem solving. It is a non-linear,
iterative process which seeks to understand users, challenge assumptions,
redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test.

D
esign thinking utilizes elements from the designer’s toolkit like empathy
and experimentation to arrive at innovative solutions. By using design
thinking, you make decisions based on what future customers really want
instead of relying only on historical data or making risky bets based on instinct
instead of evidence. Design thinking relies on the human ability to be intuitive, to
recognize patterns, and to construct ideas that are emotionally meaningful as well as
functional. The elements of design thinking combine to form an iterative approach—
one you can try out and adapt to suit your needs.

Design thinking has a human-centered core. It encourages organizations to focus on

the people they’re creating for, which leads to better products, services, and internal
processes. When you sit down to create a solution for a business need, the first
question should always be what’s the human need behind it?

In employing design thinking, you’re pulling together what’s desirable from a human
point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also
allows those who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast
range of challenges. The process starts with taking action and understanding the
right questions. It’s about embracing simple mindset shifts and tackling problems
from a new direction.

There’s a notion about design thinking that it’s a cookbook where the answer falls
out the end. But the truth is it’s messier than that. As you go along, even if you’re
not getting anywhere, if you haven’t unlocked new insight or if the prototype hasn’t
unlocked a clear path that everyone agrees on, you have to stay there. Design thinking
is not a linear path. It’s a big mass of looping back to different places in the process.

Origins of Design Thinking

Both the industrial revolution and World War II pushed the boundaries of what
we thought was technologically possible. Engineers, architects and industrial
designers—as well as cognitive scientists—then began to converge on the issues of
collective problem solving, driven by the significant societal changes that took place
at that time. Design thinking emerged, or should we say converged, out of the muddy
waters of this chaos from the 50s and 60s onwards.

Cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon was the first to
mention design thinking as a way of thinking in his 1969 book, The Sciences of the
Artificial. He then went on to contribute many ideas throughout the 70s which are
now regarded as principles of design thinking.

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From the 1970s onwards, design thinking started to combine the human,
technological and strategic needs of our times and progressively developed over the
decades to become the leading innovation methodology it is today. Design thinking
continues to gain ground across a wide range of industries and is still explored and
enhanced by those at the forefront of the field.

What Does It Look Like to Be Good at Design Thinking?

The great beauty of design thinking is that the essential elements combine to form
an iterative approach. It may not always proceed linearly, but there’s a roadmap to
help move you toward your solution. It starts with identifying a driving question that
inspires you and your team to think about who you’re really designing for, and what
they actually need. Next, you gather inspiration—what other solutions out in the
world can help you rethink the way you’re working? Use that to push past obvious
solutions, and arrive at breakthrough ideas. Build rough prototypes to make those
ideas tangible, and find what’s working and what’s not. Gather feedback, go back to
the drawing board, and keep going. And once you’ve arrived at the right solution, craft
a story to introduce it to your colleagues, clients, and its users. Some of those steps
may happen several times, and you may even jump back and forth between them. But
that roadmap can take you from a blank slate to a new, innovative idea.

Why Is Design Thinking so Important in Today’s World?

Over recent decades, it has become crucial to develop and refine skills which allow us
to understand and act on rapid changes in our environment and behavior. The world
has become increasingly interconnected and complex, and design thinking offers a
means to grapple with all this change in a more human-centric manner.

Design teams use design thinking to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems

(otherwise known as wicked problems) because the process reframes these problems
in human-centric ways, and allows designers to focus on what’s most important for
users. Design thinking offers us a means to think outside the box and also dig that bit
deeper into problem solving. It helps designers carry out the right kind of research,
create prototypes and test out products and services to uncover new ways to meet
users’ needs.

The design thinking process has become increasingly popular over the last
few decades because it was key to the success of many high-profile, global
organizations—companies such as Google, Apple and Airbnb have wielded it to
notable effect, for example. This outside the box thinking is now taught at leading
universities across the world and is encouraged at every level of business.

Design thinking improves the world around us every day because of its ability to
generate ground-breaking solutions in a disruptive and innovative way. Design
thinking is more than just a process, it opens up an entirely new way to think, and
offers a collection of hands-on methods to help you apply this new mindset.

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The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process which seeks to understand users,

challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to
prototype and test. The method consists of five phases—Empathize, Define, Ideate,
Prototype and Test and is most useful when you want to tackle problems that are ill-
defined or unknown.

The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford, commonly known as the d.school,
describes design thinking as a five-stage process. It’s important to note these stages
are not always sequential and designers can often run the stages in parallel, out of
order and repeat them in an iterative fashion. The various stages of design thinking
should be understood as different modes which contribute to the entire design
project, rather than sequential steps. The ultimate goal throughout is to derive as
deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.

STAGE 1: EMPATHIZE—RESEARCH YOUR USERS’ NEEDS

The first stage of the design thinking process allows you to gain an empathetic
understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through user research.
Empathy is crucial to a human-centered design process like design thinking because
it allows you to set aside your own assumptions about the world and gain real insight
into users and their needs.

To gain empathy towards people, we as design thinkers often observe them in their
natural environment passively or engage with them in interviews. Also, as design
thinkers, we should try to imagine ourselves in these users’ environment, or stepping
into their shoes as the saying goes, in order to gain a deeper understanding of their
situations.

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Assuming a Beginner’s Mindset

If we are to empathize with users, we should always try to adopt the mindset of a
beginner. What this means is that, as designers (or design thinkers), we should always
do our best to leave our own assumptions and experiences behind when making
observations. Our life experiences create assumptions within us, which we use to
explain and make sense of the world around us. However, this very process affects
our ability to empathize in a real way with the people we observe. Since completely
letting go of our assumptions is impossible (regardless of how much of a checkered
reputation the word “assumption” has!), we should constantly and consciously
remind ourselves to assume a beginner’s mindset. It’s helpful if you always remind
yourself never to judge what you observe, but to question everything—even if you
think you know the answer—and to really listen to what others are saying.

Interviews

One-on-one interviews can be a productive way to connect with real people and gain
insights. Talking directly to the people you’re designing for may be the best way to
understand needs, hopes, desires and goals. The benefits are similar to video- and
camera-based studies, but interviews are generally structured, and interviewers
will typically have a set of questions they wish to ask their interviewees. Interviews,
therefore, offer the personal intimacy and directness of other observation methods,
while allowing the design team to target specific areas of information to direct the
Design Thinking process.

Most of the work happens before the interviews: team members will brainstorm to
generate questions to ask users and create themes or topics around the interview
questions so they can flow smoothly from one to another.

STAGE 2: DEFINE—STATE YOUR USERS’ NEEDS AND PROBLEMS

In the Define stage, you accumulate the information you created and gathered during
the Empathize stage. You analyze your observations and synthesize them to define
the core problems you and your team have identified so far. You should always seek to
define the problem statement in a human-centered manner as you do this.

During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created
and gathered during the Empathise stage. This is where you will analyse your
observations and synthesise them in order to define the core problems that you and
your team have identified up to this point. You should seek to define the problem as a
problem statement in a human-centred manner.

To illustrate, instead of defining the problem as your own wish or a need of the
company such as, “We need to increase our food-product market share among young
teenage girls by 5%,” a much better way to define the problem would be, “Teenage girls
need to eat nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow.”

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The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish
features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the
problems or, at the very least, allow users to resolve issues themselves with the
minimum of difficulty. In the Define stage you will start to progress to the third stage,
Ideate, by asking questions which can help you look for ideas for solutions by asking:
“How might we… encourage teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and
also involves your company’s food-product or service?”

What Makes a Good Problem Statement?

A problem statement is important to a Design Thinking project, because it will

guide you and your team and provides a focus on the specific needs that you have
uncovered. It also creates a sense of possibility and optimism that allows team
members to spark off ideas in the Ideation stage. A good problem statement should
thus have the following traits. It should be:

• Human-centred. This requires you to frame your problem statement according

to specific users, their needs and the insights that your team has gained in the
Empathise phase. The problem statement should be about the people the team is
trying to help, rather than focussing on technology, monetary returns or product
specifications.
• Broad enough for creative freedom. This means that the problem statement should
not focus too narrowly on a specific method regarding the implementation of the
solution. The problem statement should also not list technical requirements, as
this would unnecessarily restrict the team and prevent them from exploring areas
that might bring unexpected value and insight to the project.
• Narrow enough to make it manageable. On the other hand, a problem statement
such as , “Improve the human condition,” is too broad and will likely cause team
members to easily feel daunted. Problem statements should have sufficient
constraints to make the project manageable.

As well as the three traits mentioned above, it also helps to begin the problem
statement with a verb, such as “Create”, “Define”, and “Adapt”, to make the problem
become more action-oriented.

STAGE 3: IDEATE—CHALLENGE ASSUMPTIONS AND CREATE IDEAS

Designers are ready to generate ideas as they reach the third stage of design thinking.
The solid background of knowledge from the first two phases means you can start to
“think outside the box”, look for alternative ways to view the problem and identify
innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created.

Ideation is often the most exciting stage in a Design Thinking project because almost
unrestrained free thinking can occur within the given field. In the Ideation stage, the
aim is to generate a large quantity of ideas — ideas that potentially inspire newer,
better ideas — which the team can then filter and narrow down into the best, most

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practical, or most innovative ones. There are many great methods that can help the
design team during the Ideation sessions.

Ideation Will Help You:

• Ask the right questions and innovate.
• Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation
potential of your solution.
• Bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
• Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
• Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
• Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.

Ideation Methods to Spark Innovative Ideas

There are hundreds of ideation methods. Some methods are merely renamed or
slightly adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get brief
overview of some of the best methods:
• Brainstorm • Provocation
• Braindump • Movement
• Brainwrite • Bodystorm
• Brainwalk • Gamestorming
• Challenge Assumptions • Cheatstorm
• SCAMPER • Crowdstorm
• Mindmap • Co-Creation Workshops
• Sketch or Sketchstorm • Prototype
• Storyboard • Creative Pause
• Analogies

Brain storming rules

• Set a time limit

• Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a plan, or a goal
and stay focused on the topic
• Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal
• Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas
• Aim for quantity
• Build on each others’ ideas
• Be visual
• One conversation at a time

STAGE 4: PROTOTYPE—START TO CREATE SOLUTIONS

This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution
for each of the problems identified during the first three stages. Design teams will
produce a number of inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific

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features found within the product) to investigate the problem solutions generated in
the previous stage.

When designers want to determine and understand exactly how users will interact
with a product, the most obvious method is to test how the users interact with the
product. It would be foolhardy and pointless to produce a finished product for the
users to test. Instead, designers can provide simple, scaled down versions of their
products, which can then be used in order to observe, record, judge, and measure
user performance levels based on specific elements, or the users’ general behaviour,
interactions, and reactions to the overall design. These earlier versions are known as
prototypes; they are not necessarily in the medium of the finished product as this
may not be cost-effective in terms of time or money.

Prototypes are built so that designers can think about their solutions in a different
way (tangible product rather than abstract ideas), as well as to fail quickly and
cheaply, so that less time and money is invested in an idea that turns out to be a bad
one. Tim Brown, CEO of the international design and innovation firm IDEO, said it
best: “They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to prototype our ideas,
we avoid costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a
weak idea for too long.”

STAGE 5: TEST—TRY YOUR SOLUTIONS OUT

Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions
identified in the Prototype phase. This is the final phase of the model but, in an
iterative process such as design thinking, the results generated are often used to
redefine one or more further problems. Designers can then choose to return to
previous stages in the process to make further iterations, alterations and refinements
to rule out alternative solutions.

5 Guidelines when Planning a Test

• i. Let your users compare alternatives Create multiple prototypes, each with a
change in variable, so that your users can compare prototypes and tell you which
they prefer (and which they don’t). Users often find it easier to elucidate what
they like and dislike about prototypes when they can compare, rather than if there
was only one to interact with.
• ii. Show, don’t tell: let your users experience the prototype Avoid over-explaining
how your prototype works, or how it is supposed to solve your user’s problems.
Let the users’ experience in using the prototype speak for itself, and observe their
reactions.
• iii. Ask users to talk through their experience When users are exploring and using
the prototype, ask them to tell you what they’re thinking. This may take some
getting used to for most users, so it may be a good idea to chat about an unrelated
topic, and then prompt them by asking them questions such as, “What are you
thinking right now as you are doing this?”

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• iv. Observe Observe how your users use — either “correctly” or “incorrectly” —
your prototype, and try to resist the urge to correct them when they misinterpret
how it’s supposed to be used. User mistakes are valuable learning opportunities.
Remember that you are testing the prototype, not the user.
• v. Ask follow up questions Always follow up with questions, even if you think you
know what the user means. Ask questions such as, “What do you mean when you
say ___?”, “How did that make you feel?”, and most importantly, “Why?”

Remember that you are testing the prototype, not the user. Your prototype should be
designed with a central question in mind — a question that you will put to the test
during the testing stage. Make sure your users know what the prototype and test is
about, but do not over-explain how the prototype works.

The End Goal: Desirable, Feasible, and Viable Solutions

Design Thinking is a human-centered design process that may not have a fixed
sequence of steps, but will certainly have an ideal end point. The end goal of every
Design Thinking project is to design a solution that satisfies the tests of desirability,
feasibility, and viability.

• Desirability relates to the focus on people; it’s what puts the “human” in human-
centered design. If a solution is to be desirable, it has to appeal to the needs,
emotions, and behaviours of the people we are designing for.
• Feasibility is about technology. Is your design solution technically possible, or does
it depend on a technology that’s yet to be invented (or good enough for regular
use)? While we should never base designs on technical specifications, our design
solutions need to be practical and implementable without incurring huge costs.
• The last test is (commercial) viability: will your design solution work as a business?
Is there an appropriate business model behind your solution, or would it collapse
after a few years without investor or donor contributions? Design Thinking
is not about making a profit, but good design solutions should always be self-
sustaining — Design Thinking is a long-term process that should ideally continue
supporting and improving itself way beyond the project deadline.

And finally, the Design Thinking process is fluid, iterative and flexible: the different
stages often feed into one another and form iterative loops, and don’t necessarily
follow any sequence in a project. That said, the ideal end point of Design Thinking
(when you know you’ve done a great job) is when the product or service satisfies the
three tests of desirability, feasibility, and viability.

Conclusion

To think like a designer requires dreaming up wild ideas, taking time to tinker and
test, and being willing to fail early and often. The designer’s mindset embraces
empathy, optimism, iteration, creativity, and ambiguity. And most critically, design
thinking keeps people at the center of every process. A human-centered designer

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knows that as long as you stay focused on the people you’re designing for—and listen
to them directly—you can arrive at optimal solutions that meet their needs.

Anyone can approach the world like a designer. But to unlock greater potential and to
learn how to work as a dynamic problem solver, creative confidence is key. Creative
confidence is the belief that everyone is creative, and that creativity isn’t the ability to
draw or compose or sculpt, but a way of understanding the world.

SOURCES
Interaction Design Foundation www.interaction-design.org
IDEO www.ideou.com

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