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What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking has been around for centuries. One famous example is Thomas Edison’s invention of the light bulb and the industry that grew around it, which reflects principles now associated with design thinking. While definitions of design thinking vary, a recent Harvard Business Review article calls it “a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design”. At its core, design thinking is a mindset, approach, and system—a strategic process and toolkit for collaboration and problem-solving. It revolves around a deep, empathetic understanding of human needs and behaviors. Simply put, it's a way of formalizing what many design teams already do, enabling others to ‘think like designers’.
Popularized by David M. Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO and Roger Martin of the Rotman School, design thinking into stages:
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Empathize: Gather user insights and empathy from observation, interviews, and other sources, and summarize them in memorable and actionable terms.
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Define: Work together to get crystal clear on what problem or problems we are trying to solve.
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Ideate: Use a mix of divergent and convergent thinking to generate numerous ideas for solving the identified problem.
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Prototype: Develop prototypes, often quite simple, of the ideas to be tested.
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Test: Test the ideas with would-be users. Iterate and re-test as necessary.
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Implement: Launch.
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