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Design thinking definition
Design thinking is an agile, iterative process for design and innovation that centers users’ desires and needs, and enables your company to pivot as the industry changes and technology evolves. Design thinking acknowledges that there isn’t one way to solve a problem. Instead the methodology encourages questioning, experimenting, observing, and innovating in an environment that embraces diverse opinions and ideas.
With design thinking, you won’t rely on traditional corporate hierarchy for ideas and approval. Instead, you’ll foster a culture that encourages employees to challenge corporate traditions and facilitates smart, calculated risks.
Design thinking benefits
One of the biggest draws for implementing design thinking is that doing so can spur innovative ideas as your team cycles through the inspiration, ideation, and implementation phases, oftentimes hitting each cycle more than once as you develop new ideas and explore new solutions. Whereas most frameworks and ideologies are broken down into steps, design thinking isn’t meant to be approached in a rigid, orderly fashion. You can bounce between cycles and processes as you see fit, until the right solution and design are achieved.
As new technologies emerge, design thinking becomes an important means for turning these technologies into user-friendly services and products. Design thinking embraces the fast-paced change of technology with a positive outlook that considers every possibility, no matter how “out there” or creative it is. That attitude will be increasingly important as companies find new and exciting ways to make use of emerging technology.
Design thinking principles
Design thinking is used to create human-centered designs that are user-friendly, and to deliver the technology to users in a way that is intuitive and natural. There are a number of core principles that define design thinking. These aren’t meant to be step-by-step instructions for introducing design thinking to your company, but they are the principles on which your design thinking strategy should be founded.
- Wicked problems: A phrase developed by design theorists Horst Rittel and Melvin Webber, “wicked problems” stands for ill-defined or tricky issues that have unclear solutions and require creative thinking or nontraditional strategies to solve.
- Problem framing: With design thinking, there is more than one way to view a problem. Problems aren’t taken at face value. Instead, they’re recontextualized and re-interpreted to find a solution.
- Solution-focused thinking: Instead of focusing on problems, a design thinking model looks at solutions first, which can help improve understanding of the problem.
- Abductive reasoning: This form of logical inference starts with an observation or set of observations and then asks you to find the simplest, most likely explanation for the problems observed. It’s an important style of reasoning that is used in design thinking to reframe problems or ideas to find several ways to address the problem or opportunity.
- Co-evolution of problem and solution: When design thinkers work on a problem, they switch between thinking about the problem and looking at ideas for a solution to help come up with even more solution ideas.
- Representations and modelling: Computer models and physical prototypes are used to identify requirements, which can sometimes be abstract, and to enable your team to test, refine, and evaluate new ideas.
Design thinking process
There are four main phases of design thinking that your team will cycle through while developing solutions and products. Rather than offering a detailed prescription to follow, design thinking provides a loose structure that you can interpret as needed for your business needs.
- Inspiration: This is usually the first phase of the design process during which you will try to understand the problem or opportunity. You’ll want to establish objectives, benchmarks, key points of contact, requirements, technology needs, and how your solution or product will fit into the industry market.
- Empathy: Empathy is arguably one of the most important phases and principles of design thinking. When designing solutions, products, services, or hardware, you need to truly understand the perspective of the client or end-user.
- Ideation: This phase involves developing as many ideas as possible using both divergent and convergent thinking. You’ll alternate between divergent thinking, which involves a diverse group of people who engage in structured brainstorming, and convergent thinking, which zeroes in on the best ideas to select one to follow through with.
- Implementation and prototyping: Once you have established a few of the best ideas, it’s time for modeling and prototyping by creating actual products and services that can be tested, evaluated, and refined.
Empathy in design thinking
Empathy is an important aspect of design thinking. By considering the wants and needs of clients, users, and customers, you can develop the best product, software, or service possible. You’ll need to approach the process by trying to understand how you can make the client’s life easier, or how the final product can be more enjoyable, practical, efficient, or easy-to-use. It’s less about considering the aesthetic of the interface or physical product, and more about understanding how people use technology, what they want to gain from the experience, and how you can create a more meaningful experience for the user.
Design thinking jobs
Design thinking can be a part of nearly any job, especially in the technology industry, but there are a few specific roles that call for design thinkers, architects, and managers. Technology jobs that require design thinking skills will typically include:
- Design thinking strategist
- Design thinking consultant
- User experience developer
- User experience researchers
- Application developer
- Director of service design
Design thinking workshops and training
If you want to brush up on the principles of design thinking with a certification or course, you can choose from a variety of programs. These courses are designed to teach you the basics of design thinking and how to apply it within your own organization:
- Coursera Design Thinking courses
- Darden Executive Education and Lifelong Learning Certificate in Design Thinking
- eCornell University Design Thinking certificate
- EdX RIT MicroMasters Program in Design Thinking
- Global Knowledge Design Thinking Boot Camp
- IBM Enterprise Design Thinking training
- IDEO U Foundations in Design Thinking certificate
- Innovation Learning Innovation & Design Thinking Facilitator Program
- MIT Sloan Executive Education Mastering Design Thinking
- Stanford University Design Thinking Bootcamp
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