Design Thinking

Design thinking is a problem-solving method that starts from the people who have the problem. The team observes users before defining what to solve, then tests rough prototypes with them. The method differs from a classic project in one respect: the problem statement is a hypothesis, which the team revises as it learns.

The five stages

The design agency IDEO and Stanford's d.school spread the method in the 2000s. The d.school describes it in five stages:

• empathize with users by watching and interviewing them where they actually face the problem
• define the problem from what the team saw
• generate many ideas before judging any of them
• prototype the most promising ones cheaply, in paper, cardboard or clickable mockups
• test the prototypes with users

The stages loop, since a test often sends the team back to redefining the problem. These loops are cheap: a paper prototype that fails after two days costs far less than a product that fails after six months.

Where it is used

Design thinking started with products and services. Public administrations use it to redesign procedures, companies to rethink internal projects such as the onboarding of new employees. It pairs well with agile methodologies: a team uses design thinking to decide what to build, then builds it in short iterations and keeps testing with users.

The method loses its value when the empathy stage happens in a meeting room, from what the team assumes about its users. A workshop full of sticky notes that ends without a prototype or a single user test is design thinking in name only.