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Design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. So, why call it ‘design thinking’? What’s special about design thinking is that designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply these human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way — in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, in our lives.
Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung and GE, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach. What’s more, design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including d.school, Stanford, Harvard and MIT. Even so, do you know what design thinking is, and why it’s so popular? Here, we’ll cut to the chase and tell you what it is and why it’s so popular.
Design thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same time, design thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of hands-on methods.
Design thinking revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. It helps us observe and develop empathy with the target user. Design thinking helps us in the process of questioning: questioning the problem, questioning the assumptions, and questioning the implications. Design thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill defined or unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping and testing. Design thinking also involves ongoing experimentation: sketching, prototyping, testing, and trying out concepts and ideas.
There are many variants of the design thinking process in use today, and they have from three to seven phases, stages, or modes. However, all variants of design thinking are very similar—they all embody the same principles, which were first described by Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon in The Sciences of the Artificial in 1996. Here, we will focus on the five-phase model, which the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (aka ‘d.school’) proposed. We’ve chosen d.school’s approach because they’re at the forefront of applying and teaching design thinking. The five phases of design thinking, according to d.school, are as follows:
It is important to note that the five phases, stages, or modes are not always sequential. They do not have to follow any specific order. What’s more, they can often occur in parallel and repeat iteratively. As such, you should not envision the phases as a hierarchal or step-by-step process. Instead, you should understand it as an overview of the modes or phases that contribute to an innovative project, rather than sequential steps.
Sometimes, the easiest way to understand something intangible, such as design thinking, is by understanding what it is not.
Humans naturally develop patterns of thinking modelled on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge. These assist us in quickly applying the same actions and knowledge in similar or familiar situations, but they also have the potential to prevent us from quickly and easily accessing or developing new ways of seeing, understanding, and solving problems.
These patterns of thinking are often referred to as schemas, which are organized sets of information and relationships between things, actions, and thoughts that are stimulated and initiated in the human mind when we encounter some environmental stimuli. A single schema can contain a vast amount of information. For example, we have a schema for dogs which encompasses the presence of four legs, fur, sharp teeth, a tail, paws, and a number of other perceptible characteristics. When the environmental stimuli match this schema—even when there is a tenuous link or only a few of the characteristics are present—the same pattern of thought enters the mind.
As these schemas are stimulated automatically, this process can obstruct a more fitting impression of the situation or prevent us from seeing a problem in a way that will enable a new problem-solving strategy. Rising above this ‘fog’, or—more aptly—floating up and away from this confining compartment, calls for us to be innovative in our approach. Unsurprisingly, innovative problem solving is also known as ‘thinking outside of the box’.
Thinking outside of the box can provide an innovative solution to a sticky problem. However, thinking outside of the box can be a real challenge as we naturally develop patterns of thinking that are modelled on the repetitive activities and commonly accessed knowledge we surround ourselves with. It takes something to break away from a situation where we’re too closely involved to be able to find better possibilities. Still, that is what we must do.
To illustrate how a fresh way of thinking can create unexpectedly good solutions, let’s look at a famous story. Some years ago, an incident occurred where a truck driver had tried to pass under a low bridge. Alas, he failed, and the truck became firmly lodged under the bridge. The driver was unable to continue driving through or reverse out.
The story goes that as the truck became stuck, it caused massive traffic problems, which resulted in emergency personnel, engineers, firefighters, and truck drivers gathering to negotiate various solutions so as to dislodge the truck.
Emergency workers were debating whether to dismantle parts of the truck or chip away at parts of the bridge. Each spoke of a solution which fitted within his or her respective level of expertise. In the heat of the emergency, all parties carried on with their ways of viewing the problem, including the truck driver, whose initial dismay over a scraped roof had turned into a deeper concern.
A boy walking by and witnessing the intense debate looked at the truck, at the bridge, then looked at the road and said nonchalantly, "Why not just let the air out of the tires?" to the absolute amazement of all the specialists and experts trying to unpick the problem.
When the solution was tested, the truck was able to drive free with ease, having suffered only the damage caused by its initial attempt to pass underneath the bridge. Whether or not the story actually happened in real life, it symbolizes the struggles we face where oftentimes the most obvious solutions are the ones hardest to come by because of the self-imposed constraints we work within.
Author/Copyright holder: Daud. Copyright terms and license: CC BY
The freshness of a child’s perspective, untainted by professional specialization, can save the day when a problem gets as big as the one above. Happily, getting that freshness doesn’t involve something as drastic as trying to become a child again.
Challenging our assumptions and everyday knowledge is often difficult for us humans, as we rely on building patterns of thinking in order not to have to learn everything from scratch every time. We rely on doing everyday processes more or less unconsciously—for example, when we get up in the morning, eat, walk, and read—but also when we assess challenges at work and in our private lives. Especially experts and specialists rely on their solid thought patterns, patterns that serve them well in their respective fields, not to mention the people to whom they deliver their skills. Even so, it can be very challenging and difficult for experts to start questioning their knowledge. Pride aside, it can prove more than a little disconcerting to think that many years of education and practical experience can hinder rather than help in dealing with a problem.
Design thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box’ thinking, as designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods.
At the heart of design thinking is the intention to improve products by analysing and understanding how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate. At the heart of design thinking lies also the interest and ability to ask significant questions and challenge assumptions. One element of outside the box thinking is to falsify previous assumptions, i.e., to make it possible to prove whether they are valid or not. Once we have questioned and investigated the conditions of a problem, the solution-generation process will help us produce ideas that reflect the genuine constraints and facets of that particular problem. Design thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper; it helps us do the right kind of research and to prototype and test our products and services so as to uncover new ways of improving the product, service, or design.
Grand Old Man of User Experience, Don Norman, who also coined the very term User Experience, explains what Design thinking is and what’s so special about it:
“…the more I pondered the nature of design and reflected on my recent encounters with engineers, business people and others who blindly solved the problems they thought they were facing without question or further study, I realized that these people could benefit from a good dose of design thinking. Designers have developed a number of techniques to avoid being captured by too facile a solution. They take the original problem as a suggestion, not as a final statement, then think broadly about what the real issues underlying this problem statement might really be (for example by using the ’Five Whys’ approach to get at root causes).”
– Don Norman, Rethinking Design Thinking
The design process often involves a number of different groups of people in different departments; for this reason, developing, categorizing, and organizing ideas and problem solutions can be difficult. One way of keeping a design project on track and organizing the core ideas is with a design thinking approach.
Tim Brown, CEO of the celebrated innovation and design firm IDEO, shows in his successful book, Change by Design that design thinking is firmly based on generating a holistic and emphatic understanding of the problems that people face, and that it involves ambiguous or inherently subjective concepts such as emotions, needs, motivations, and drivers of behaviors. This contrasts with a solely scientific approach, where there’s more of a distance in the process of understanding and testing the user’s needs and emotions—e.g., via quantitative research. Tim Brown sums up that design thinking is a third way: design thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach, crystallized in the field of design, which combines a holistic user-centered perspective with rational and analytical research with the goal of creating innovative solutions.
Some of the scientific activities will include analyzing how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate: researching user needs, pooling experience from previous projects, considering present and future conditions specific to the product, testing the parameters of the problem, and testing the practical application of alternative problem solutions. Unlike a solely scientific approach, where the majority of known qualities, characteristics, etc. of the problem are tested so as to arrive at a problem solution, design thinking investigations include ambiguous elements of the problem to reveal previously unknown parameters and uncover alternative strategies.
After arriving at a number of potential problem solutions, the selection process is underpinned by rationality. Designers are encouraged to analyze and falsify these problem solutions so that they can arrive at the best available option for each problem or obstacle identified during each phase of the design process.
With this in mind, it may be more correct to say that design thinking is not about thinking out of the box, but on its edge, its corner, its flap, and under its bar code, as Clint Runge put it. (Clint Runge is Founder and Managing Director of Archrival, a distinguished youth marketing agency, and adjunct Professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln.)
Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
Wise words—whatever helps you gain that needed perspective, assume that position. Author/Copyright holder: Interaction Design Foundation.
With a solid foundation in science and rationality, design thinking seeks to generate a holistic and emphatic understanding of the problems that people face. Design thinking tries to empathize with human beings. That involves ambiguous or inherently subjective concepts such as emotions, needs, motivations, and drivers of behaviors. The nature of generating ideas and solutions in design thinking means this approach is typically more sensitive to and interested in the context in which users operate and the problems and obstacles they might face when interacting with a product. The creative element of design thinking is found in the methods used to generate problem solutions and insights into the practices, actions, and thoughts of real users.
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and license: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
As you can see, there’s plenty of flow between the steps.
Design thinking is an iterative and non-linear process. This simply means that the design team continuously use their results to review, question, and improve their initial assumptions, understandings and results. Results from the final stage of the initial work process inform our understanding of the problem, help us determine the parameters of the problem, enable us to redefine the problem, and, perhaps most importantly, provide us with new insights so we can see any alternative solutions that might not have been available with our previous level of understanding.
Tim Brown believes that design thinking techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business. Design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees, freelancers, and leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service in order to drive new alternatives for business and society.
Design thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach, crystallized in the field of design, which combines a user-centered perspective with rational and analytical research with the goal of creating innovative solutions.
Design thinking is essentially a problem-solving approach specific to design, which involves assessing known aspects of a problem and identifying the more ambiguous or peripheral factors that contribute to the conditions of a problem. This contrasts with a more scientific approach where the concrete and known aspects are tested in order to arrive at a solution. Design thinking is an iterative process in which knowledge is constantly being questioned and acquired so it can help us redefine a problem in an attempt to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. Design thinking is often referred to as ‘outside the box thinking’, as designers are attempting to develop new ways of thinking that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods – just like artists do. At the heart of design thinking is the intention to improve products by analyzing how users interact with products and investigating the conditions in which they operate. Design thinking offers us a means of digging that bit deeper to uncover ways of improving user experiences.
Don Norman. “Rethinking Design Thinking”, 2013:
http://www.core77.com/posts/24579/rethinking-design-thinking-24579
Tim Brown, Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation Introduction, 2009
Bill Moggridge, “Design Thinking: Dear Don”, 2010:
http://www.core77.com/posts/17042/design-thinking-dear-don-17042
Beginner course
The world’s leading companies, such as Apple, Google and Samsung, are already using the design thinking approach—because they know it’s the way forward when it comes to innovation and product success. Through Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide, you will deep dive into the five phases of this paradigm-shifting approach to problem-solving—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. By receiving detailed guidance on problem-solving activities ranging from ideation techniques—such as brainstorming and using analogies—to ways of gathering feedback from your prototypes, you’ll be able to download many templates involved and effectively use them in your work. Get ready to unpack, explore, and master design thinking—using it to set yourself apart and unlock the next stage of your professional life.
“The course is very comprehensive and offers a good balance of mediums to learn from.”
— Reid Dickson, United States
“I enjoyed all of the tools available for download. It helped me easily share this information with others who were interested in design thinking.”
— Jenna Franklin, United States
“There were lots of real world examples particularly from the instructors’ work.”
— Gillian Tyler, Australia