What is Design Thinking - Blog number 9,001

Chel
May 31, 2023
6 min read

Updated: Jun 1, 2023

I don't know if there are 9,000 blogs on what design thinking is, but it wouldn't surprise me. And yes, I am now going to add to that pile so here goes blog number 9001 on the subject of "What is Design Thinking"?

Where did it come from?

You will probably be surprised to know that Design Thinking can trace its roots all the way back to Plato's Republic and Socrates. In more modern times it came on to the scene in the 1940s, but really didn't get rocking until the 1990s with the IDEO Design Group coining the phrase and pushing it forward. Stanford University began teaching the method in the 2000s. You can get a full breakdown on the timeline over at Wikipedia. I am also very fond of this post by "stefdr". But now I will attempt to explain Design Thinking from my own perspective.

Design Thinking is a Mindset

In short, Design Thinking is a mindset. Just like you would say "I am going to be open minded about this." or "I am going to think about this from a sustainable angle." Design Thinking is another way you can decide to think about things. Especially problems.

Mindsets are a natural way for us to think as humans. As you go through the world, interacting with it, there are certain lenses you put on to see things through. Let's use the two examples from above.

If you are trying to be inclusive, open minded, accepting, and so on, you will likely try to think of situations and ideas in a non-judgmental way. Even with curiosity. You will set your own preferences or the way you would do something aside, and try to be open to the way someone else does it.

Likewise if you're trying to save the planet, you may look at every purchase through the lens of sustainability. You may consider every decision by the government through the impact on the environment.

Phase One: Empathy

Design Thinking is a mindset that exists for solving problems in a collaborative, human centered way. For this particular lens, you think about the problem from the perspective of the person(s) having it. You try to fully understand the impact of the problem and how that might make the person(s) feel, behave, etc. This is called "Empathy". And it is the first of five phases that comprise the Design Thinking mindset.

Once you have empathized with the person having the problem, it becomes easier to identify the root of the actual problem. What I mean by that is that often times the problem that we are being presented with such as, "Grocery shopping is too difficult!" is not the problem at all. It is the symptom of something else.

Phase Two: Define

After empathizing with the people having the problem, you begin to understand the actual issue(s) facing them and who they are. So the problem might actually be, "There are so many options in the stores, I feel overwhelmed and paralyzed by decisions. Shopping becomes exhausting and time consuming."

We have entered the second phase of Design Thinking which is called "Define". We understand the root of the problem, so we can define it better and create what is called the problem statement. After some detective work, digging into the information we created from the Empathy phase, we might come up with a problem statement like, "How might we help people feel confident that they are making good choices when faced with many options in the grocery store?"

Phase Three: Ideate

Now that we have defined the problem, it is time to come up with solutions! Wait. Did you catch that? We didn't start with a solution. We started with people and a problem. That is another key point of Design Thinking. You solve the problem with the human (or user) at the center. You can't really know the right solution until you fully understand the problem, the impact, and what the persons at the center of it all really need. There usually is not even just one solution, but many possible ones. There may not even be a "right" solution! So how do we decide what to do? We "Ideate". Welcome to phase three of Design Thinking!

Ideation is about collecting ideas. This means you get as many ideas as possible. There is only one rule in this phase. Can you guess it? If you thought, "Keep the people having the problem in mind..." you are right :) The only real rules here is to come up with ideas that keep the people we came to know in the empathy phase at the center of our ideas.

There are no good, bad or too crazy ideas. There are no limits. Just potential. You gather as many ideas as possible and then you go through a method of grouping the ideas up into "themes". You may do this several times and you will probably go through multiple methods of squeezing ideas out of everyone participating.

Phase Four: Prototype

As you go through the cycle of getting lots of ideas (called diverging) and then filtering those ideas down in various ways (called converging) you eventually start to find some that are really coming to the top of the pile. For those, you may decide they should be explored more. But how can we explore ideas without lots of money and time? And now we enter the fourth phase of Design Thinking, "Prototype".

This is all about exploring and experimenting. How might this idea look? How might it work? What would it be like to interact with it? Prototyping can be done with paper, Legos, cardboard, playdough, or even digitally with shapes and other tools. The idea here is that you're not making a real thing, you're making an inexpensive example of it. Through this approach you will uncover so much about your ideas. Some may end up being removed from the list once you start playing with them. Others will begin to become even more appealing. You may even have more than one you feel are really promising solutions to the problem statement you have for the people you're trying to help. So how do we pick which one? We "Test".

Phase Five: Test

Testing is a very important part of Design Thinking. This is where you gather some of those people that you empathized with and present them with your prototyped idea. You let them evaluate the prototype, take down feedback and observations, then potentially go back and work through the phases again to refine your solution until it is good enough.

Make It

Once you have fully tested your prototypes, its likely that one has become the winner. This is the thing that will get made or put into practice. You may not be making a physical product. You may be updating a process or in this case, having the grocery store organize its products differently. Either way, this is where your solution goes into the real world. But we are not done yet.

We never really leave the test phase. No solution, no matter how good it is, lasts the test of time. There will always be ways we can improve the solution or product. There will always be cases that we can solve for. For example in this case, could we solve better for people with visual diversity? What about people that don't read? As you can see, there are always ways we can continue to change our solutions to meet the person where they are in the world. This is called "iterating" and that's another blog post!

Summary: TL;DR

Design Thinking is a mindset. A way to "think" about problems that puts the people having the problem at the center. While it can be done alone, it is best suited for collaboratively with a group.

This mindset has five phases:

Empathy - Get to know the people having the problem.
Define - Find the root of the problem.
Ideate - Gather and consider many different solutions.
Prototype - Create lo-fi examples of favorite solutions.
Test - See what the people think about the prototypes.

Putting the solution out into the world or "making" it is not the end. In fact some say that is the beginning! You will continue to monitor and evaluate the solution to make sure it is fit for purpose and you're not overlooking any ways it could be made even better.

How do I start learning?

There are many, many self-paced courses out there that you can take at your own pace to get an introduction into design thinking. You can of course, also take one our workshops which I will talk more about in the next section.

Please note, I do not receive any "kickbacks" for recommending these courses. I am not affiliated with these companies in any way. These are just courses I myself have taken in the past or have heard very good things from multiple people:

Want to see it in action?

The best way to learn and understand Design Thinking is to do Design Thinking. Unfortunately, that can be a little difficult if you don't work or go to school somewhere that is offering workshops to attend.

That is why I have created my Fundamentals workshop. This is a six hour, virtual, hands on event that will take you through the entire Design Thinking process. The workshops are suitable for absolute beginners to experienced practitioners looking for a reset of their beginners mindset. Our goal has been to make Design Thinking as accessible as possible, so our prices are kept affordable with heavy discounts for young persons.

You can check out the workshops coming up below or on the Workshops page.