What is design thinking and how can it be used to develop innovative solutions to complex problems?

1 The benefits of design thinking

Design thinking can help you tackle challenges that are ambiguous, uncertain, or wicked, meaning they have no clear or definitive solution. By focusing on the users, you can uncover their latent needs, motivations, and pain points, and create solutions that are desirable, feasible, and viable. Design thinking can also foster collaboration, creativity, and experimentation, as you work with diverse teams, generate multiple ideas, and learn from feedback and failures.

2 The stages of design thinking

Design thinking is not a linear or rigid process, but rather a flexible and iterative one. Moving back and forth between the stages is possible, depending on the context and insights you gain. Generally, the five stages of design thinking are empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. Empathy involves researching and observing users to understand their perspective and context. Definition requires synthesizing findings and articulating the problem from the users' point of view. Ideation is where you brainstorm ideas without judging or filtering them to look for patterns, themes, and opportunities. Prototyping involves building low-fidelity representations of your ideas, such as sketches or mockups, to share with your team and users. Testing is when you evaluate and refine your prototypes based on user feedback to identify what works and what doesn't.

3 The tools of design thinking

Design thinking requires a variety of tools and methods to support each stage of the process, such as interviews, observation, persona creation, journey mapping, ‘How might we’ reframing, brainstorming, sketching, prototyping, and testing. Interviews involve asking open-ended questions to gain insights into user experiences, opinions, and needs. Observation involves watching and recording how users interact with products or services in their natural environment. Personas are fictional characters that represent typical or ideal users of a solution. Journey mapping visualizes the steps, actions, emotions, and pain points a user goes through when trying to achieve a goal or complete a task. ‘How might we’ reframes the problem into an opportunity for innovation. Brainstorming encourages generating as many ideas as possible in a short amount of time. Sketching draws ideas quickly and roughly using simple shapes and symbols. Prototyping involves creating low-cost and easy-to-modify versions of ideas to test and improve. And testing involves collecting feedback from users by observing how they interact with prototypes and measuring their satisfaction and performance.

5 The applications of design thinking

Design thinking can be applied to any domain or industry, where there are problems to be solved, opportunities to be seized, or improvements to be made. For instance, in the education sector, design thinking can help create more engaging and effective learning experiences that cater to the diverse needs of students. In healthcare, it can help providers design more accessible and affordable services that enhance the quality and safety of care. Additionally, social innovators can use design thinking to develop sustainable and scalable solutions that address the root causes of social issues. Finally, in business, design thinking can aid leaders in designing innovative and competitive strategies that create value for customers and stakeholders.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?