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Ideas Made to Matter

Design thinking, explained

Rebecca Linke

Sep 14, 2017

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO.

Since then, the design thinking process has been applied to developing new products and services, and to a whole range of problems, from creating a business model for selling solar panels in Africa to the operation of Airbnb .

At a high level, the steps involved in the design thinking process are simple: first, fully understand the problem; second, explore a wide range of possible solutions; third, iterate extensively through prototyping and testing; and finally, implement through the customary deployment mechanisms.

The skills associated with these steps help people apply creativity to effectively solve real-world problems better than they otherwise would. They can be readily learned, but take effort. For instance, when trying to understand a problem, setting aside your own preconceptions is vital, but it’s hard.

Creative brainstorming is necessary for developing possible solutions, but many people don’t do it particularly well. And throughout the process it is critical to engage in modeling, analysis, prototyping, and testing, and to really learn from these many iterations.

Once you master the skills central to the design thinking approach, they can be applied to solve problems in daily life and any industry.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Infographic of the design thinking process

Understand the problem

The first step in design thinking is to understand the problem you are trying to solve before searching for solutions. Sometimes, the problem you need to address is not the one you originally set out to tackle.

“Most people don’t make much of an effort to explore the problem space before exploring the solution space,” said MIT Sloan professor Steve Eppinger. The mistake they make is to try and empathize, connecting the stated problem only to their own experiences. This falsely leads to the belief that you completely understand the situation. But the actual problem is always broader, more nuanced, or different than people originally assume.

Take the example of a meal delivery service in Holstebro, Denmark. When a team first began looking at the problem of poor nutrition and malnourishment among the elderly in the city, many of whom received meals from the service, it thought that simply updating the menu options would be a sufficient solution. But after closer observation, the team realized the scope of the problem was much larger , and that they would need to redesign the entire experience, not only for those receiving the meals, but for those preparing the meals as well. While the company changed almost everything about itself, including rebranding as The Good Kitchen, the most important change the company made when rethinking its business model was shifting how employees viewed themselves and their work. That, in turn, helped them create better meals (which were also drastically changed), yielding happier, better nourished customers.

Involve users

Imagine you are designing a new walker for rehabilitation patients and the elderly, but you have never used one. Could you fully understand what customers need? Certainly not, if you haven’t extensively observed and spoken with real customers. There is a reason that design thinking is often referred to as human-centered design.

“You have to immerse yourself in the problem,” Eppinger said.

How do you start to understand how to build a better walker? When a team from MIT’s Integrated Design and Management program together with the design firm Altitude took on that task, they met with walker users to interview them, observe them, and understand their experiences.

“We center the design process on human beings by understanding their needs at the beginning, and then include them throughout the development and testing process,” Eppinger said.

Central to the design thinking process is prototyping and testing (more on that later) which allows designers to try, to fail, and to learn what works. Testing also involves customers, and that continued involvement provides essential user feedback on potential designs and use cases. If the MIT-Altitude team studying walkers had ended user involvement after its initial interviews, it would likely have ended up with a walker that didn’t work very well for customers.

It is also important to interview and understand other stakeholders, like people selling the product, or those who are supporting the users throughout the product life cycle.

The second phase of design thinking is developing solutions to the problem (which you now fully understand). This begins with what most people know as brainstorming.

Hold nothing back during brainstorming sessions — except criticism. Infeasible ideas can generate useful solutions, but you’d never get there if you shoot down every impractical idea from the start.

“One of the key principles of brainstorming is to suspend judgment,” Eppinger said. “When we're exploring the solution space, we first broaden the search and generate lots of possibilities, including the wild and crazy ideas. Of course, the only way we're going to build on the wild and crazy ideas is if we consider them in the first place.”

That doesn’t mean you never judge the ideas, Eppinger said. That part comes later, in downselection. “But if we want 100 ideas to choose from, we can’t be very critical.”

In the case of The Good Kitchen, the kitchen employees were given new uniforms. Why? Uniforms don’t directly affect the competence of the cooks or the taste of the food.

But during interviews conducted with kitchen employees, designers realized that morale was low, in part because employees were bored preparing the same dishes over and over again, in part because they felt that others had a poor perception of them. The new, chef-style uniforms gave the cooks a greater sense of pride. It was only part of the solution, but if the idea had been rejected outright, or perhaps not even suggested, the company would have missed an important aspect of the solution.

Prototype and test. Repeat.

You’ve defined the problem. You’ve spoken to customers. You’ve brainstormed, come up with all sorts of ideas, and worked with your team to boil those ideas down to the ones you think may actually solve the problem you’ve defined.

“We don’t develop a good solution just by thinking about a list of ideas, bullet points and rough sketches,” Eppinger said. “We explore potential solutions through modeling and prototyping. We design, we build, we test, and repeat — this design iteration process is absolutely critical to effective design thinking.”

Repeating this loop of prototyping, testing, and gathering user feedback is crucial for making sure the design is right — that is, it works for customers, you can build it, and you can support it.

“After several iterations, we might get something that works, we validate it with real customers, and we often find that what we thought was a great solution is actually only just OK. But then we can make it a lot better through even just a few more iterations,” Eppinger said.

Implementation

The goal of all the steps that come before this is to have the best possible solution before you move into implementing the design. Your team will spend most of its time, its money, and its energy on this stage.

“Implementation involves detailed design, training, tooling, and ramping up. It is a huge amount of effort, so get it right before you expend that effort,” said Eppinger.

Design thinking isn’t just for “things.” If you are only applying the approach to physical products, you aren’t getting the most out of it. Design thinking can be applied to any problem that needs a creative solution. When Eppinger ran into a primary school educator who told him design thinking was big in his school, Eppinger thought he meant that they were teaching students the tenets of design thinking.

“It turns out they meant they were using design thinking in running their operations and improving the school programs. It’s being applied everywhere these days,” Eppinger said.

In another example from the education field, Peruvian entrepreneur Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor hired design consulting firm IDEO to redesign every aspect of the learning experience in a network of schools in Peru. The ultimate goal? To elevate Peru’s middle class.

As you’d expect, many large corporations have also adopted design thinking. IBM has adopted it at a company-wide level, training many of its nearly 400,000 employees in design thinking principles .

What can design thinking do for your business?

The impact of all the buzz around design thinking today is that people are realizing that “anybody who has a challenge that needs creative problem solving could benefit from this approach,” Eppinger said. That means that managers can use it, not only to design a new product or service, “but anytime they’ve got a challenge, a problem to solve.”

Applying design thinking techniques to business problems can help executives across industries rethink their product offerings, grow their markets, offer greater value to customers, or innovate and stay relevant. “I don’t know industries that can’t use design thinking,” said Eppinger.

Ready to go deeper?

Read “ The Designful Company ” by Marty Neumeier, a book that focuses on how businesses can benefit from design thinking, and “ Product Design and Development ,” co-authored by Eppinger, to better understand the detailed methods.

Systematic Innovation of Products, Processes, and Services , a five-day course taught by Eppinger and other MIT professors.

Leadership by Design: Innovation Process and Culture , a two-day course taught by MIT Integrated Design and Management director Matthew Kressy.
Managing Complex Technical Projects , a two-day course taught by Eppinger.
Apply for M astering Design Thinking , a 3-month online certificate course taught by Eppinger and MIT Sloan senior lecturers Renée Richardson Gosline and David Robertson.

Steve Eppinger is a professor of management science and innovation at MIT Sloan. He holds the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Chair and has a PhD from MIT in engineering. He is the faculty co-director of MIT's System Design and Management program and Integrated Design and Management program, both master’s degrees joint between the MIT Sloan and Engineering schools. His research focuses on product development and technical project management, and has been applied to improving complex engineering processes in many industries.

What is design thinking?

Discover what is design thinking and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Deep dive into a few case studies and learn how to apply design thinking.

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Design thinking is a mindset that breeds innovation. While it’s based on the design process, anyone in any profession can use it when they’re trying to come up with creative solutions to a problem.

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what design thinking is and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Then we’ll present a couple of design thinking case studies and wrap up with a primer on how to apply design thinking. And don’t worry, this guide is broken down into easily digestible chunks, as follows:

Let’s get started!

What is design thinking? A definition

Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it’s anchored by human-centred design.

Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics.

Design thinking is also solution-based, looking for effective solutions to problems, not problem-based, which looks at the problem itself and tends to focus on limitations.

Design thinking is all about getting hands-on with solutions. The aim is to quickly turn your ideas into testable products so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

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Why is design thinking important?

Design thinking is important because it challenges assumptions and fosters innovation. While many ways of thinking rely on the habits and experiences we’ve formed, they can limit us when it comes to thinking of design solutions. Design thinking, however, encourages us to explore new ideas.

It’s an actionable technique that allows us to tackle “wicked problems,” or problems that are ill-defined. For example, achieving sustainable growth or maintaining your competitive edge in business count as wicked problems, and on a broader scale, poverty and climate change are wicked problems too. Design thinking uses empathy and human-centred thinking to tackle these kinds of problems.

Who uses design thinking?

The short answer? Everyone! Design thinking can help you in whatever your role or industry. People in business, government, entertainment, health care, and every other industry can benefit from using design thinking to come up with innovative solutions.

The most important thing design thinking does is help people focus on their customers or end users. Instead of focusing on problems to fix, design thinking keeps things user-centric, which boosts customer engagement.

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

According to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (known as d-school), the five stages of design thinking are:

Although these stages appear to be linear, following one after the other, design thinking isn’t a linear process. Stages are often run in parallel or out of order, or repeated when necessary.

Phase 1: Empathise

Your goal here is to research your users’ needs to gain an empathic understanding of the problems they face. You’ll get to know your users and their wants and needs so you can make sure your solutions put them front and centre. This means setting aside your own assumptions and getting to know your users on a psychological and emotional level. You’ll observe, engage, watch and listen.

Phase 2: Define

Here you state your users’ needs by compiling the information you gathered during the Empathise phase and then analysing it until you can define the core problem your team has identified.

You do this by asking questions like: what patterns do you see in the data? What user issues need to be resolved? The conclusion of this phase comes when you’ve figured out a clear problem statement that is defined by the users’ needs. For example, “Bank customers in Glasgow need…”

You can learn more about how to write a problem statement in this guide.

Phase 3: Ideate

In this phase, you’ll generate ideas and solutions. You and your team will hold ideation sessions where you can come up with as many ideas as possible. No idea is too silly for this stage. The important thing is getting all ideas out on the table. There are a variety of techniques you can use, like brainstorming and mind mapping, to come up with solutions. This phase ends when you’ve managed to narrow down your ideas to just a few of the best ones.

Phase 4: Prototype

Your goal in this phase is to find the best solution to the problem by prototyping —that is, producing scaled down versions of the product or its features found in the previous phase. You’ll put each solution to the test by improving, redesigning, accepting, or rejecting it.

Phase 5: Test

Here you’ll try out the solutions you arrived at in the previous phases by user testing them. However, while this is the final stage of design thinking in theory, it’s rarely the final stage in reality. Design thinking often includes going back to previous phases to find other solutions or to further iterate or refine your existing solution.

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Design thinking examples and case studies

Now that you understand the theory and process of design thinking, let’s look at some examples in action where design thinking had a real-world impact.

Case Study 1: American Family Insurance’s Moonrise App

American Family Insurance, a company that offers life, business, auto, and home insurance, came to design company IDEO with the goal of innovating in a way that would help working families.

Stages 1 & 2: Empathise and Define

While American Family thought their customers might benefit from budgeting tools, IDEO found from their research in the Empathise phase that, actually, people needed a way to build up their savings against unforeseen needs.

They noticed a lot of people had meticulously planned budgets, which made budgeting tools a moot point. But they were living just within their means and an extra expense, like a doctor’s visit or kid’s basketball uniform, could throw their budget off. These people didn’t want to take on debt though, they wanted extra work so they could have a cushion.

Stages 3 & 4: Ideate and Prototype

IDEO took that idea and ran with it, creating Moonrise, an app that matches people looking for work with extra hours and income. Today’s businesses depend on on-demand work but the temp agencies they work with tend to want permanent placements. Moonrise does things differently. It enables companies to find people who are already employed elsewhere for short-term work through a simple text message interface. The employers can list shifts on the platform and workers are paid as soon as they finish their shifts.

Stage 5: Test

To test the app, 11 Moonrisers, six employers, and a team of designers and programmers were assembled for a one week period to work out the kinks in the platform.

Based on the test’s success, American Family Insurance now owns the startup Moonrise, which launched in Chicago in 2018 and has since expanded to additional states. In 2018, over 7,000 shifts have been fulfilled and over $500,000 has been earned by people on the app.

Case Study 2: GE Healthcare’s Scanning Tools

GE Healthcare has cutting-edge diagnostic imaging tools at its disposal, but for kids they’re an unpleasant experience.

“The room itself is kind of dark and has those flickering fluorescent lights…. That machine that I had designed basically looked like a brick with a hole in it,” explained Doug Dietz , a designer who worked for GE. How could they make the experience better for kids?

The team at GE began by observing and gaining empathy for children at a daycare centre and talking to specialists who knew what paediatric patients went through. The team then recruited experts from a children’s museum and doctors from two hospitals. This gave them a lot of insight into what children went through when they had to sit for these procedures and what could be done to lessen the children’s stress.

Stages 3, 4 & 5: Ideate, Prototype, and Test

The first prototype of the new and improved “Adventure Series” scanner was invented. Through research and pilot programs, the redesign made imaging machines more child-friendly, making sure they have other things to focus on than the scary looks and sounds of the machine. For example, the Coral City Adventure in the emergency room gives children an underwater experience where they get into a yellow submarine and listen to the sound of harps while their procedure takes place.

Patient satisfaction scores increased to 90% and children no longer suffer such anxiety about their scans. The children hold still for their procedures more easily, making repeats of the scans unnecessary. There’s also less need for anesthesiologists, which improved the bottom line for those hospitals that used the scanning machines because more patients could get scanned each day.

How to apply design thinking

If you want to apply design thinking in your own work, follow these steps and best practices:

Improve design thinking skills. Use training to explain, improve, and practically implement the phases of design thinking. You can do this in several ways such as workshops, online courses, or case studies shared with your team.
Identify the correct problem. Listen to users and ask them unbiased questions in order to understand their perspectives. Engage with everyone and stay open-minded, so you can identify the correct problem, not the problem you or your organisation thinks users are having.
Have more debriefs. Be open about what went right and what went wrong in your process. Openly discuss why things succeeded or failed and why. View failure as learning, not as an excuse to give up.
Iterate and iterate some more. The goal of design thinking is finding the best answer possible—and that probably won’t come in the first round of iteration. You’ll need to test and iterate as much as possible with new ways to solve the problem.

Design thinking is so popular—and so effective—because it places the user’s needs front and centre. For more user-centric design tips, learn how to incorporate user feedback in product design , get to grips with user research ethics , and learn how to conduct effective user interviews .

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What is Design Thinking, and how is it used to problem solve?

27 Feb 2024

Stuck in a rut, struggling to find innovative solutions? Traditional problem-solving methods might leave you feeling frustrated and limited. Enter design thinking : a human-centered approach that unlocks creativity and fosters innovative solutions to complex challenges.

This blog will equip you with the knowledge and tools to use design thinking effectively, empowering you and your team to tackle any obstacle head-on. Let’s dive in and explore the transformative power of design thinking.

What IS design thinking?

Design thinking isn’t just for designers. It’s a flexible framework for anyone seeking solutions that are:

Desirable : meeting the needs and desires of users.
Feasible : practical and achievable within constraints.
Viable : sustainable and commercially viable.

Forget linear problem-solving — design thinking is iterative and collaborative . It involves five key stages:

Empathize : Understand your users deeply through observation, interviews, and empathy exercises.
Define : Clearly define the problem based on user insights, not assumptions.
Ideate : Brainstorm a wide range of potential solutions, thinking outside the box.
Prototype : Build low-fidelity prototypes to test and refine your ideas quickly.
Test : Gather feedback from users and iterate on your prototypes based on their responses.

Think of it like building a product: you start with understanding your users’ needs, then explore various possibilities, test them, and refine your approach based on real-world feedback.

How can design thinking help you solve problems?

The beauty of design thinking lies in its versatility. It can be applied to various scenarios, from developing new products and services to improving internal processes and even tackling social challenges .

Here are just a few examples:

A company struggling with customer retention might use design thinking to understand their customers’ frustrations and develop solutions to improve satisfaction.
A non-profit organization might use design thinking to design a more effective educational program by understanding the needs of both students and teachers.
A team facing communication challenges within their department might use design thinking to develop a more collaborative work environment.

Putting design thinking into practice

Ready to unleash the power of design thinking? Here are some tips to get you started:

Assemble a diverse team : Bring together individuals with different perspectives and backgrounds to generate richer ideas.
Start small : Choose a manageable problem to tackle first and experiment with the design thinking process.
Emphasize empathy : Put yourself in your users’ shoes and understand their needs deeply.
Embrace failure : View setbacks as opportunities to learn and iterate.
Build prototypes : Don’t wait for everything to be perfect. Get your ideas out there and test them early and often.
Iterate and improve : Based on user feedback, continuously refine your solutions until they truly address the problem.

Resources to help you on your design thinking journey

Remember, you don’t have to navigate the design thinking journey alone. Here are some resources to help you:

The Interaction Design Foundation (IDF) : A comprehensive website offering free articles, courses, and tools related to design thinking.
IDEO U : An online learning platform with design thinking courses and resources from the renowned design firm IDEO.
Stanford d.school : The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University, offering courses, workshops, and resources on design thinking.

Bonus Tip: If you’re looking for a user-friendly platform to create and share your prototypes, try Biteable . Create engaging video presentations, explainer animations , and even interactive prototypes – perfect for testing your design thinking solutions with users.

Unlock better solutions with design thinking

By embracing the human-centered approach of design thinking, you can unlock new possibilities and tackle problems with creativity and innovation. Start your design thinking journey today and see how it can transform your problem-solving approach for the better.

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A complete guide to the design thinking process

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Learn the five stages of the design thinking process, get practical tips to apply them, and get templates to seamlessly run design thinking exercises.

How many projects have you worked on that stalled because your team couldn’t align on the best path forward? How many more got shelved because they didn’t meet user needs or expectations? And how many got delayed in rounds and rounds of never-ending feedback?

Thankfully, you don’t have to keep repeating those experiences month after month. The (not so) secret weapon: design thinking .

Design thinking gives teams a new way to approach their projects and overcome some of those well-known challenges. It can help teams understand their users' needs and challenges, then apply those learnings to solve problems in a creative, innovative way. Understanding design thinking can transform your team’s problem-solving approach — and how you work together.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is an iterative process where teams seek to understand user needs, challenge assumptions, define complex problems to solve, and develop innovative solutions to prototype and test. The goal of design thinking is to come up with user-focused solutions tailored to the particular problem at hand.

While often used in product design, service design, and customer experience, you can use design thinking in virtually any situation, industry, or organization to create user-centric solutions to specific problems.

Design thinking process 101: Definitions and approaches

The design thinking process puts customers’ and users’ needs at the center and aims to solve challenges from their perspective.

Design thinking typically follows five distinct stages:

Empathize stage

The first stage of design thinking lays the foundation for the rest of the process because it focuses on the needs of the real people using your product. At this stage, you want to get familiar with the people experiencing the problems you’re trying to solve, understanding their point of view, and learning about their user experience. You want to understand their challenges and what they need from your product or company to address them.

The goal of this stage is for your team to develop a user-centered vision of the core problem you need to solve. The idea is to challenge any assumptions or biases teams have, instead using their customer perspective as a guiding source. This is important because it aligns the team on what needs to be considered during the rest of the design thinking process.

To help you get a solid understanding of the problems you’re solving, you can ask a lot of questions to build empathy with your users. These will invite people to share their experiences and observations to help your team better understand the problem. Then, you can move on to some specific exercises for the empathy stage of the process.

As you build up your understanding of your users, it's helpful to visualize their experience. A common way to do this is to assemble a customer journey map . This helps identify areas of friction and understand customer preferences.

Learn more: 7 types of questions to build empathy for design thinking

Ideate stage

Your priority here is to think outside the box and source as many ideas as possible from all areas of the business. Bring in people from different departments so you benefit from a wider range of experiences and perspectives during ideation sessions. Don’t worry about coming up with concrete solutions or how to implement each one — you’ll build on that later. The goal is to explore new and creative ideas rather than come up with an actual plan.

Key steps in the ideation phase:

Define your problem : Creating a problem statement ensures that your team can focus on solving the right problem and staying aligned with your end-user or customer’s problem
Start ideating : Choose a brainstorming technique to help organize team participation that fits your goal (More on that in the next section.)
Prioritize your ideas : Once you have several ideas, prioritize them based on how well they take into account the customer’s needs‍ ‍
Choose the best solution : Choose the best ideas to move forward to either the define stage or the prototype stage

Learn more: The ideation stage of design thinking: What you need to know

Your priority here is to generate as many ideas as possible, without judging or evaluating them. This step encourages designers to think creatively and push the boundaries of what's possible. We’ve put together a list of different brainstorming techniques to help your teams come up with creative new ideas.

Put it into practice: How to facilitate a brainstorming session

Prototyping stage

At this stage, your team’s goal is to remove uncertainty around your proposed solutions. This is where you start thinking about them in more detail, including how you’ll bring them to life. Your prototypes should help the team understand if the design or solution will work as it’s intended to.

Here, the focus is on speed and efficiency — you don’t want to invest a ton of time or resources into these solutions yet because you’re not sure they’re the best ones for the problem you’re trying to solve. You just need a functional, interactive prototype that can prove your concept. These are learning opportunities to help you spot any issues or opportunities before you take it any further.

Learn more: A guide to prototyping: the 4th stage of design thinking

Testing stage

The testing stage is normally one of the last stages of the design thinking process. After you’ve developed a concept or prototype, you need to test it in the real-world to understand its viability and usability. It’s where your product, design, or development teams evaluate the creative solutions they’ve come up with, to see how real users interact with them.

Testing your concepts and observing how people interact with them helps you understand whether or not the prototype solves real problems and meets their needs, before you invest in it fully.

However, design thinking is an iterative process: You may go through the ideation, prototyping, and testing phases multiple times to improve and refine your solutions as you learn more from your users.

Read the guide: Testing: A guide to the 5th stage of design thinking

The relationship between human-centered design and design thinking

These two terms are often used together, because they complement one another. However, they’re two different things, so understanding their differences is important.

Simply put, design thinking is a working process, while human-centered design is a mindset or approach.

The first step in finding success with design thinking is to foster a culture of human-centered design within your team. This is because design thinking focuses so heavily on the users and customers — the people using your product or service.

To inspire your team, we’ve put together four human-centered design examples — and explain why they work so well.

Benefits of design thinking

For organizations who’ve never run a design thinking workshop before, it can feel like a big change in how you approach the design process. But it can offer many benefits for your business.

Foster a true design culture within your organization

Design thinking is an iterative process — it’s not something you do once and call it done. The more you do it, the more you’ll see a design-focused culture emerge within your organization, which is much more effective than going to one-off creative retreats or setting up expensive innovation centers that no one ever uses.

This mindset and cultural shift can help scale design thinking within the business. But it’s important to know how to avoid some of the pitfalls companies can face when trying to create a design culture internally.

Learn more: How to use the LUMA System of Innovation for everyday design thinking

Encourage collaboration across departments

Design thinking isn’t just for the designers on the team. The earlier stages of the process — Empathize, Define, and Ideate — are perfect for bringing in people from across the business. In fact, bringing in varied viewpoints and perspectives can help you come up with more creative or effective solutions.

You can use the design thinking process to get more people involved, and help everyone contribute ideas.

Improve understanding of user needs

So many companies say they’re “customer focused,” but lack a clear understanding of what really matters most to their customers in the context of their product or service. Design thinking puts the user front and center, with the Empathize stage dedicated to understanding and discovering user needs.

Learn more: How to identify user needs and pain points

Skills and behaviors needed for successful design thinking

To get the most out of a design thinking exercise, you’ll need a collaborative and creative mindset within your team. The team needs to be willing to explore new ideas, and laser-focused on customer or user needs.

Here are some specific skills to help your design thinking process run smoothly.

Divergent and convergent thinking

Divergence and convergence is a human-centered design approach to problem-solving. It switches between expansive and focused thinking, giving you a process that balances understanding people’s problems and developing solutions.

It focuses on understanding a user's needs, behaviors, and motivations, to help you develop empathy for their problems. Then, it encourages experimentation and iteration to help you effectively design solutions to meet those needs.

Collaborative working

Design thinking isn’t a solo activity. You’ll bring in people from different teams or business areas. To get the most out of the process, everyone needs to collaborate and communicate effectively. Teams that are good at collaborating drive the best outcomes, while also making it an enjoyable experience working together.

There are several core collaboration skills your team needs to succeed:

Open-mindedness
Communication
Adaptability
Organization
Time management

Learn more about why these skills are so important and how you can improve them individually or as a team: 7 collaboration skills your team needs to succeed

Participatory or collaborative design

For many design teams and creative folks, the idea of designing something with other people can be enough to make them shudder. “Design by committee” is their idea of a nightmare. But the design thinking process isn’t about “making the logo 10% bigger” or “using a different shade of blue.” It’s user- and solution-focused.

You’ll get the best outcomes if you bring insights, perspectives, and expertise from multiple stakeholders. That includes at the Prototype and Test stages, as everyone will have ideas to contribute to help you bring solutions to life.

Learn more: What is co-design? A primer on participatory design

Common challenges in design thinking

If your team hasn’t mastered or fully committed to each one of the design thinking steps, you may encounter problems that make it harder to reap the benefits of design thinking.

Here are 4 common challenges that teams face when implementing design thinking practices.

A company culture that doesn't foster collaboration
An inability to adjust to non-linear processes
A lack of in-depth user research
Getting too invested in a single idea

Learn how to address these in Mural's guide on design thinking challenges .

Design thinking tools and templates to help you get started

Using mural for design thinking.

There are lots of tools you can use to run design thinking workshops — including Mural. We help designers work as effectively as possible, so they can get to better solutions quicker. We’ve incorporated some design thinking shortcuts and “hidden” features into our application, making it perfect for in-person or remote (or even asynchronous) collaborative sessions. These include:

Use the C-key shortcut to quickly connect ideas with arrows
Seamlessly import existing information from spreadsheets
Duplicate elements you already created for faster visualization
Fit your canvas to your screen and zoom in
Get even more options using the right-click menu

And to help you get started, we’ve hand-picked some Mural templates relevant to each stage of the design process below.

Templates for the Empathy stage

The empathy map template helps you visualize the thoughts, feelings, and actions of your customersto help you develop a better understanding of the their experiences. The map is divided into four quadrants, where you record the following:

Thoughts: the customer’s internal dialogue and beliefs
Feelings: the customer’s emotional responses
Actions: the customer’s actions and behaviors
Observations: what the customer is seeing and hearing.

Try Mural’s empathy map template

Templates for the Define stage

This exercise helps you understand a situation or problem by identifying what’s working, what’s not, and areas for improvement. You start by listing out the problem, then identifying the positive aspects (the rose), negatives (thorn), and possible solutions for improvement (the buds).

You can use this template to run the exercise individually or in groups. It gives you a way to gather new ideas and perspectives on the problem you’re solving in real-time.

Try Mural’s Rose, thorn, bud template

Templates for the Ideate stage

The round robin brainstorming exercise is a collaborative session where every person contributes multiple ideas. This is a great way to come up with lots of different ideas and solutions in the ideation stage of design thinking, where you’re focusing on quantity and creativity.

Bringing in ideas from every team member encourages people to share their unique perspectives, and can also help you avoid groupthink.

Try Mural’s Round robin template

Templates for the Prototype stage

This template helps you map out how an idea will work in practice, as a functional system. Schematic diagramming is very flexible, so it can be used in many types of projects to make sure your idea is structurally sound. It can help you map out workflows and identify any decisions you need to make to bring your idea to life.

Try Mural’s Schematic diagramming template

Templates for the Test stage

In think aloud testing, users test out a product or prototype and talk through the relevant tasks as they complete them. You can use this template to record the feedback, insights, and experiences of your testers, and identify the success and failure points in your proposed solution.

Try Mural’s Think aloud testing template

Design thinking examples: What it looks like in practice

Design thinking is a very flexible approach that works for companies of any size, from large enterprises to small startups.

Here are some examples of how companies use design thinking, for many types of creative projects.

IBM uses design thinking to design at scale

IBM was traditionally an engineering-led organization, but now it's shifting its focus onto design, working to spread a design culture throughout the business. One of the main ways of doing that is by launching IBM Design Camps.

These camps are comprehensive educational programs that help people understand the concept of design thinking and how it specifically works at IBM.

Learn more about how IBM runs design thinking workshops with remote or distributed teams .

Somersault Innovation uses design thinking to transform its sales process

Somersault Innovation has used design thinking methods to help their sales team co-create solutions with their customers. It’s helped sellers become more customer-centric.

Now, their sellers can create mutual success plans with their prospects, making it easier for them to find a path forward together.

Mural uses design thinking to drive growth

At Mural, our marketing team is constantly following new trends, evaluating metrics, and working to deliver the best experiences for our customers. Design thinking helps us adopt a customer-centric approach by ensuring that we're focused on the right problems. This helps us have the biggest impact on the company’s long-term growth while creating the most value for our users.

David J. Bland planned a book using the design thinking methodology

It’s not just visual creative projects that can benefit from the design thinking process. Founder, speaker, and author David J. Bland used the methodology to plan out his book and collaborate with other team members in the process. In addition to helping him refine and adjust the structure, Bland also used it to gather feedback from early readers and target audiences, which helped get the final product just right.

Support design thinking with tools that facilitate creative collaboration

While we’ve covered some of the skills and behaviors you need to successfully run design thinking exercises, having the right tools can help a lot, too. A collaborative platform helps teams communicate, share ideas, and turn those ideas into solutions together.

Mural helps teams visualize their ideas in a collaboration platform that unlocks teamwork . This helps everyone stay on the same page, while giving them the ability to add their own ideas freely and easily. Mural facilitates effective collaboration both in person and remotely, making it ideal for design thinking workshops for co-located and distributed teams. Plus, it has tons of ready-to-use templates (like the ones we listed above) to help you get started.

Ready to give it a try? Start your Free Forever account today, and run your next design thinking workshop in Mural.

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Design Thinking: How it works [Theory, Practice & Examples]

So you’ve heard of Design Thinking , but it sounds a bit like hocus-pocus? Imagine standing at the entrance of a sleek, futuristic museum, greeted by a door that refuses to budge. Frustration mounts as you struggle to figure out how to open it, but then, a child approaches, effortlessly pushes the door, and you follow suit, feeling a blend of awe and embarrassment. That moment captures the essence of design thinking—a concept that, like that perplexing door, may initially seem locked, yet holds the key to unlocking innovation, creativity, and problem-solving potential in today’s complex world. In a hurry? Skip the theory and get straight to the 5 stages of design thinking .

woman during the process of design thinking

Design thinking, a term that has surged in popularity, transcends the realm of aesthetics and reaches into the very core of how we tackle challenges , both big and small. It’s a methodology that isn’t confined to designers alone but is a powerful tool for anyone seeking novel solutions, whether in business, education, healthcare, or even personal life. Design thinking isn’t just a buzzword – it’s a dynamic and transformative approach that promises to reshape how we approach problems and create solutions.

Design Thinking: A Definition

Design thinking is a transformative problem-solving approach that puts human needs and experiences at its core. At its essence, it’s a structured methodology that empowers individuals and organizations to tackle complex challenges by fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation. Unlike traditional problem-solving methods, design thinking is not confined to a linear path; instead, it encourages dynamic and iterative thinking to arrive at innovative solutions (see also: Innovation Management ).

Historical Background

To truly grasp the significance of design thinking, it’s essential to delve into its historical roots. The concept finds its origins in the mid-20th century, primarily within the field of industrial design. Visionaries like Herbert A. Simon and L. Bruce Archer were among the early proponents of this methodology, emphasizing the importance of user-centered design . Over the decades, design thinking evolved, incorporating insights from various disciplines, such as psychology, engineering, and business. It gained prominence in the corporate world thanks to influential figures like David Kelley of IDEO and the Stanford d.school, which helped popularize and formalize the design thinking process we know today.

Design Thinking Core Principles

Empathy : Design thinking starts with deep empathy for the end-user. This means understanding their needs, desires, and pain points on a profound level. Empathy forms the foundation upon which innovative solutions are built.
Iteration : Design thinking embraces the idea that the first solution is rarely the best one. It encourages continuous refinement and iteration of ideas through prototyping and testing. This iterative process allows for the discovery of unexpected insights and improvements.
User-Centricity : The user is the focal point of the entire design thinking process. Solutions are not imposed from the top down; they emerge organically from an understanding of the user’s perspective and needs.
Collaboration : Design thinking thrives on interdisciplinary collaboration . It brings together individuals with diverse skills and perspectives to foster creative problem-solving.

These principles, combined with a structured framework, make design thinking a potent methodology for addressing a wide range of challenges , from designing user-friendly products to solving complex organizational problems.

The Stages of Design Thinking

While Design Thinking is often described as a mindset, at it’s core it is a five step process.

Stage I: Empathize

The journey of design thinking commences with a crucial first step— empathy . In this initial stage, designers and problem-solvers immerse themselves in the world of the end-user, seeking to understand their needs , desires, and challenges on a profound level. This isn’t a casual observation – it’s a deep dive into the user’s experiences. Empathy involves conducting interviews, surveys, and even shadowing users in their daily routines. The goal? To gain insights that go beyond what’s explicitly stated—to uncover the unspoken, the latent, and the emotions that influence user behavior. Empathy is the bedrock upon which the entire design thinking process rests, for it’s from this wellspring of understanding that innovative solutions emerge. If you want to learn more about understanding different personalities, take our DISC-Test.

Stage II: Define

With a wealth of empathetic insights in hand, the next stage is to distill these observations into a clear and concise problem statement . What are the specific challenges and pain points that need to be addressed? Defining the problem is a pivotal moment in the design thinking process because it frames the entire journey. It’s about reframing the issue to focus on what truly matters to the user. This stage requires a delicate balance of precision and creativity—precision in articulating the problem, and creativity in reframing it to inspire fresh ideas.

Stage III: Ideate

Now, armed with a well-defined problem, the design thinking process enters the ideation stage —a veritable playground for creative brainstorming. Here, the emphasis is on quantity rather than quality, as the goal is to generate a broad spectrum of ideas, no matter how wild or unconventional they may seem. Ideation sessions often involve cross-functional teams engaging in free-flowing discussions, sketching, and mind mapping . It’s in this stage that the magic of creativity takes flight, and seemingly impossible solutions begin to take shape.

Stage IV: Prototype

Ideation is a boundless landscape of possibilities, but to transform these concepts into tangible solutions, the process moves to prototyping . Prototypes are simplified representations of the envisioned solutions, ranging from paper sketches to interactive mock-ups. The purpose of prototyping is to bring ideas to life in a tangible form that can be tested and refined. It’s an essential step to bridge the gap between abstract concepts and real-world applicability. Prototypes serve as a canvas for experimentation and iteration, allowing designers to uncover flaws, make improvements, and fine-tune their solutions.

Stage V: Test!

The final stage of design thinking is where ideas are put to the test in the real world . Testing involves presenting prototypes to the end-users and gathering their feedback . This user-centric approach ensures that the proposed solutions align with the users’ needs and expectations. The feedback loop is iterative, often leading back to the ideation and prototyping stages as insights are gained. This process of testing and refinement continues until the most suitable and effective solution emerges, ready to address the defined problem effectively.

In these stages, design thinking transforms from a theoretical concept into a hands-on, user-driven methodology that fosters innovation and creative problem-solving. Each stage plays a vital role in the iterative process that leads to meaningful solutions.

Design Thinking Examples & Benefits

To truly appreciate the transformative power of design thinking, let’s turn to real-world examples where this methodology has reshaped industries and solved complex problems.

Case Studies

One such shining example comes from Airbnb . In its early days, Airbnb faced a significant challenge: how to establish trust between hosts and guests in the sharing economy. By applying design thinking principles, they delved deep into the user experience, empathizing with both hosts and guests. They introduced features like user profiles, reviews, and a secure payment system, all aimed at fostering trust and confidence. This approach not only propelled Airbnb’s growth but also revolutionized the hospitality industry.

Another compelling case is that of the healthcare giant, Mayo Clinic . In an industry fraught with complexities and patient-centric challenges, Mayo Clinic turned to design thinking to improve patient experiences. They revamped waiting areas, redesigned appointment scheduling, and introduced user-friendly mobile apps for patients to access their medical records. These innovations not only improved patient satisfaction but also enhanced the overall quality of care.

Benefits of the Design Thinking Process

Design thinking isn’t just a methodology; it’s a mindset that empowers individuals and organizations to navigate the complexities of our modern world effectively. Its benefits extend far beyond problem-solving and innovation, permeating into the very fabric of how we approach challenges and create solutions:

Fosters Innovation : Design thinking places the user at the core of problem-solving, encouraging innovative thinking that leads to groundbreaking solutions.
Promotes Adaptability : In an ever-changing world, design thinking equips organizations with the ability to pivot and evolve in response to shifting market dynamics and customer preferences.
Enhanced User Satisfaction : Whether in product design or service delivery, design thinking ensures that solutions precisely meet user needs and expectations, resulting in happier and more loyal customers.
Encourages Collaboration : Design thinking fosters a culture of collaboration among multidisciplinary teams, promoting teamwork and creativity.

Read more about the benefits in this review of educational research: Having good design thinking skills can assist in solving really complex problems.

salary differences by design thinking skills infographic

Challenges and Criticisms

While design thinking has garnered widespread acclaim, it’s not immune to criticism, and one prevalent concern is the risk of over-hyping. In the rush to embrace this transformative approach, there’s a danger of viewing it as a panacea for all organizational challenges. Design thinking, like any methodology, has its limitations. It’s not a one-size-fits-all solution, and not every problem requires a design thinking approach. Over-hyping can create unrealistic expectations , leading to disappointment when results fall short. It’s essential to strike a balance between recognizing design thinking’s potential and acknowledging its boundaries.

Implementation Challenges

Implementing design thinking within organizations can be a journey fraught with challenges. Resistance to change is a common stumbling block. Employees accustomed to traditional problem-solving methods may find it challenging to adapt to the iterative and user-centric nature of design thinking. Another challenge is the need for time and resources . Design thinking, when done right, demands investment in research, prototyping, and user testing, which can strain budgets and schedules. Additionally, maintaining a consistent commitment to the process throughout the organization can be difficult. Without leadership support and a culture that encourages experimentation and learning from failures, design thinking initiatives may falter. Addressing these challenges requires a thoughtful and strategic approach to ensure that design thinking becomes ingrained in the organizational DNA .

How to Incorporate Design Thinking

Design thinking isn’t reserved for designers alone – it’s a mindset that anyone can cultivate to enhance problem-solving skills and drive innovation in their work and daily lives.

Practical tips for individuals

Start with Empathy : Whether you’re designing a product or tackling a personal challenge, begin by understanding the needs and perspectives of those involved. Ask questions, actively listen , and put yourself in their shoes.
Embrace Iteration : Don’t settle for the first solution that comes to mind. Be open to refining and iterating on your ideas. Embrace failure as a learning opportunity.
Diverse Perspectives : Seek input from people with different backgrounds and viewpoints. Collaborative brainstorming can lead to more creative and effective solutions.
Prototype and Test : Even in non-design contexts, consider creating prototypes or mock-ups to visualize your ideas. Test them with potential users or stakeholders to gather feedback.
User-Centric Approach : Always prioritize the end-user or recipient of your work. Your solutions should address their needs and provide value.

Organizational Integration

To foster a design thinking culture within organizations, several steps can be taken:

Leadership Buy-In : Leaders should champion the adoption of design thinking, setting an example for the rest of the organization. They should communicate its value and allocate resources for its implementation (see also “ Leadership test “)
Training and Education : Offer design thinking training and workshops to employees at all levels. Equip them with the skills and knowledge to apply design thinking methodologies.
Cross-Functional Teams : Encourage collaboration across different departments and disciplines. Create teams that bring together diverse skills and perspectives for problem-solving.
Design Thinking Spaces : Designate physical or virtual spaces where employees can brainstorm, prototype, and test ideas. These spaces should be conducive to creativity and collaboration.
Reward Innovation : Recognize and reward employees who contribute innovative ideas and solutions through design thinking. Create incentives for innovation and risk-taking.
Feedback and Continuous Improvement : Establish mechanisms for collecting feedback on design thinking initiatives. Use this feedback to refine processes and adapt to evolving needs.

By following these steps, individuals can harness the power of design thinking in their personal and professional lives, while organizations can create an environment where design thinking thrives, leading to innovative solutions and a more agile , customer-centric approach.

It’s worth emphasizing that design thinking holds greater importance than ever before. It equips individuals and organizations with the tools to navigate change effectively , foster innovation, and create solutions that prioritize the needs of users, transcending disciplinary boundaries.

Consider embracing design thinking in your own context . Whether you’re seeking solutions in your daily life or aiming to cultivate a culture of creativity within your organization, the key lies in embracing empathy, collaboration, and a willingness to experiment. These qualities unlock the potential of design thinking.

In the words of the iconic designer and innovator Steve Jobs , “ Design is how it works .” Let design thinking be the guiding light in our intricate world, where innovation and user-centric solutions pave the path forward. Its enduring relevance underscores our innate capacity to create, adapt, and thrive .

You might also be interested in: Pareto Concept – Why it still works!

Additional Resources

For readers eager to dive deeper into the world of design thinking, there is a wealth of resources available to further your understanding and expertise:

“ Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation ” by Idris Mootee: This book offers a strategic perspective on design thinking and its application in business.
“ Change by Design ” by Tim Brown: Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, provides valuable insights into the design thinking process and its potential for innovation.
“ The Design Thinking Playbook ” by Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link, and Larry Leifer: A comprehensive guide to practical design thinking methods and tools.
IDEO U ( https://www.ideou.com/ ): IDEO U offers online courses and resources on design thinking, innovation, and leadership.
Stanford d.school ( https://dschool.stanford.edu/ ): Explore Stanford University’s d.school website for design thinking tools, case studies, and free resources.
Nielsen Norman Group ( https://www.nngroup.com/ ): The Nielsen Norman Group offers valuable insights and research on user-centered design and usability.
Coursera Design Thinking Specialization : This series of courses offered by the University of Virginia on Coursera provides a comprehensive understanding of design thinking principles and their application.
edX Design Thinking MicroMasters Program : This program by Rochester Institute of Technology on edX covers design thinking, innovation, and leadership.

VIDEO: Doreen Lorenzo about Design Thinking (TedTalk)

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How to solve problems using the design ...

How to solve problems using the design thinking process

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you develop solutions in a human-focused way. Initially designed at Stanford’s d.school, the five stage design thinking method can help solve ambiguous questions, or more open-ended problems. Learn how these five steps can help your team create innovative solutions to complex problems.

As humans, we’re approached with problems every single day. But how often do we come up with solutions to everyday problems that put the needs of individual humans first?

This is how the design thinking process started.

What is the design thinking process?

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you tackle complex problems by framing the issue in a human-centric way. The design thinking process works especially well for problems that are not clearly defined or have a more ambiguous goal.

One of the first individuals to write about design thinking was John E. Arnold, a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford. Arnold wrote about four major areas of design thinking in his book, “Creative Engineering” in 1959. His work was later taught at Stanford’s Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (also known as d.school), a design institute that pioneered the design thinking process.

This eventually led Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon to outline one of the first iterations of the design thinking process in his 1969 book, “The Sciences of the Artificial.” While there are many different variations of design thinking, “The Sciences of the Artificial” is often credited as the basis.

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A non-linear design thinking approach

Design thinking is not a linear process. It’s important to understand that each stage of the process can (and should) inform the other steps. For example, when you’re going through user testing, you may learn about a new problem that didn’t come up during any of the previous stages. You may learn more about your target personas during the final testing phase, or discover that your initial problem statement can actually help solve even more problems, so you need to redefine the statement to include those as well.

Why use the design thinking process

The design thinking process is not the most intuitive way to solve a problem, but the results that come from it are worth the effort. Here are a few other reasons why implementing the design thinking process for your team is worth it.

Focus on problem solving

As human beings, we often don’t go out of our way to find problems. Since there’s always an abundance of problems to solve, we’re used to solving problems as they occur. The design thinking process forces you to look at problems from many different points of view.

The design thinking process requires focusing on human needs and behaviors, and how to create a solution to match those needs. This focus on problem solving can help your design team come up with creative solutions for complex problems.

Encourages collaboration and teamwork

The design thinking process cannot happen in a silo. It requires many different viewpoints from designers, future customers, and other stakeholders . Brainstorming sessions and collaboration are the backbone of the design thinking process.

Foster innovation

The design thinking process focuses on finding creative solutions that cater to human needs. This means your team is looking to find creative solutions for hyper specific and complex problems. If they’re solving unique problems, then the solutions they’re creating must be equally unique.

The iterative process of the design thinking process means that the innovation doesn’t have to end—your team can continue to update the usability of your product to ensure that your target audience’s problems are effectively solved.

The 5 stages of design thinking

Currently, one of the more popular models of design thinking is the model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (or d.school) at Stanford. The main reason for its popularity is because of the success this process had in successful companies like Google, Apple, Toyota, and Nike. Here are the five steps designated by the d.school model that have helped many companies succeed.

1. Empathize stage

The first stage of the design thinking process is to look at the problem you’re trying to solve in an empathetic manner. To get an accurate representation of how the problem affects people, actively look for people who encountered this problem previously. Asking them how they would have liked to have the issue resolved is a good place to start, especially because of the human-centric nature of the design thinking process.

Empathy is an incredibly important aspect of the design thinking process. The design thinking process requires the designers to put aside any assumptions and unconscious biases they may have about the situation and put themselves in someone else’s shoes.

For example, if your team is looking to fix the employee onboarding process at your company, you may interview recent new hires to see how their onboarding experience went. Another option is to have a more tenured team member go through the onboarding process so they can experience exactly what a new hire experiences.

2. Define stage

Sometimes a designer will encounter a situation when there’s a general issue, but not a specific problem that needs to be solved. One way to help designers clearly define and outline a problem is to create human-centric problem statements.

A problem statement helps frame a problem in a way that provides relevant context in an easy to comprehend way. The main goal of a problem statement is to guide designers working on possible solutions for this problem. A problem statement frames the problem in a way that easily highlights the gap between the current state of things and the end goal.

Tip: Problem statements are best framed as a need for a specific individual. The more specific you are with your problem statement, the better designers can create a human-centric solution to the problem.

Examples of good problem statements:

We need to decrease the number of clicks a potential customer takes to go through the sign-up process.

We need to decrease the new subscriber unsubscribe rate by 10%.

We need to increase the Android app adoption rate by 20%.

3. Ideate stage

This is the stage where designers create potential solutions to solve the problem outlined in the problem statement. Use brainstorming techniques with your team to identify the human-centric solution to the problem defined in step two.

Here are a few brainstorming strategies you can use with your team to come up with a solution:

Standard brainstorm session: Your team gathers together and verbally discusses different ideas out loud.

Brainwrite: Everyone writes their ideas down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and each team member puts their ideas up on the whiteboard.

Worst possible idea: The inverse of your end goal. Your team produces the most goofy idea so nobody will look silly. This takes out the rigidity of other brainstorming techniques. This technique also helps you identify areas that you can improve upon in your actual solution by looking at the worst parts of an absurd solution.

It’s important that you don’t discount any ideas during the ideation phase of brainstorming. You want to have as many potential solutions as possible, as new ideas can help trigger even better ideas. Sometimes the most creative solution to a problem is the combination of many different ideas put together.

4. Prototype stage

During the prototype phase, you and your team design a few different variations of inexpensive or scaled down versions of the potential solution to the problem. Having different versions of the prototype gives your team opportunities to test out the solution and make any refinements.

Prototypes are often tested by other designers, team members outside of the initial design department, and trusted customers or members of the target audience. Having multiple versions of the product gives your team the opportunity to tweak and refine the design before testing with real users. During this process, it’s important to document the testers using the end product. This will give you valuable information as to what parts of the solution are good, and which require more changes.

After testing different prototypes out with teasers, your team should have different solutions for how your product can be improved. The testing and prototyping phase is an iterative process—so much so that it’s possible that some design projects never end.

After designers take the time to test, reiterate, and redesign new products, they may find new problems, different solutions, and gain an overall better understanding of the end-user. The design thinking framework is flexible and non-linear, so it’s totally normal for the process itself to influence the end design.

Tips for incorporating the design thinking process into your team

If you want your team to start using the design thinking process, but you’re unsure of how to start, here are a few tips to help you out.

Start small: Similar to how you would test a prototype on a small group of people, you want to test out the design thinking process with a smaller team to see how your team functions. Give this test team some small projects to work on so you can see how this team reacts. If it works out, you can slowly start rolling this process out to other teams.

Incorporate cross-functional team members : The design thinking process works best when your team members collaborate and brainstorm together. Identify who your designer’s key stakeholders are and ensure they’re included in the small test team.

Organize work in a collaborative project management software : Keep important design project documents such as user research, wireframes, and brainstorms in a collaborative tool like Asana . This way, team members will have one central source of truth for anything relating to the project they’re working on.

Foster collaborative design thinking with Asana

The design thinking process works best when your team works collaboratively. You don’t want something as simple as miscommunication to hinder your projects. Instead, compile all of the information your team needs about a design project in one place with Asana.

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Design Problem Statements: What They Are and How to Frame Them

Even exciting product ideas can flop without an understanding of the user problem to solve. A design problem statement is an essential step in the design process for creating products that truly matter.

By Jordan DeVos

Jordan’s expertise spans across brand strategy, service design, and UX. She works with organizations to help strengthen teams and innovate.

PREVIOUSLY AT

In 2006, Microsoft made the competitive move and released Zune, its version of the futuristic, one-buttoned, every-song-in-your-pocket iPod. The onscreen colors were punchy and the interface was type-led with a beautiful minimalist font. It was a bold move to challenge Apple, but in the world of product, success is not always about being first .

The Zune by Microsoft failed to address any particular design problems in daily life

It could be argued that the Zune-only features, such as wirelessly sending a song from one Zune to another (an innovative feature in the mid-aughts) were just as good as the iPod-exclusive features, making Microsoft’s product a seemingly strong contender. But instead, it was a failure.

You could unearth countless reasons why the Zune wasn’t a success (and probably a pile of reasons why it should have been). One major underlying cause was that Microsoft had not identified a problem the Zune would solve. There were no clear user needs that the iPod was failing to meet or any new innovation that would shake things up. The Zune was solving nothing.

If there is no problem, there is no solution, and no reason for a company to exist. – Vinod Khosla, Khosla Ventures (a Silicon Valley venture capital firm)

What Exactly Is a “Design Problem”?

We’ve all had them, solved them, and most definitely caused them. But to put it in simple terms is a challenge in itself. The Oxford dictionary says a problem is “a matter or situation regarded as unwelcome or harmful and needing to be dealt with and overcome.” True, but this implies there is an awareness of the desired outcome. With all due respect to the brilliant minds at the Oxford Dictionary, this definition is missing an important component of most examples of design problems: unconscious desires .

Inventor of the automobile, Henry Ford, knew about this layer of desire when he famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.” He knew that the unwelcome matter at hand was that horses were too slow. But this wasn’t really the problem that needed solving. There was a deeper need that his customers couldn’t articulate.

Richard Buchanan is a “design theorist” whose career revolves around human-centered design thinking principles. In his paper, Design Research and the New Learning , he alludes to a user’s unarticulated need when he defines design as “the human power of conceiving, planning, and making products or services that serve human beings in the accomplishment of their individual and collective purposes.” It’s the user’s purpose that needs attention, not simply an unwelcome situation. This deeper need is at the root of what a user desires, whether or not they can articulate it.

Ford’s customers thought they needed a faster version of what they already had. But Ford understood their deeper purpose: to get from one place to another faster . This distinction helped him avoid simply engineering a faster horse and instead opened the doors to create something that had never existed before.

A problem isn’t simply an unwanted situation or a matter that deviates from the norm—although these are still valid definitions of a problem. For designers and creative problem solving, a problem is an unmet need that, if met, can satisfy the user’s purpose.

Why Frame a Problem?

Framing a design problem is the first step in a human-centered design process . It prioritizes the elements just discussed: the user and the purpose they desire to accomplish. This means that an initial round of user research can be revolutionary in uncovering deep-rooted desires. Conducting user interviews or desktop research, such as competitive analysis, can reveal insights into potential users and what problems they face.

For instance, “New mums need a way to feel connected to a support group because they spend a large amount of time alone with their babies and end up feeling isolated and lonely,” is one of many design problem statement examples a designer might create when tasked with creating a product for parents. These mums have a deep-rooted desire to know they’re not alone, and a new product might help them accomplish the purpose of feeling connected.

A design team could develop an app, a social network platform, or even a brick-and-mortar venue where mums could gather. The problem statement would guide the team in navigating decisions and features, like, should we use AI? What other apps should it link to? How could the environment be designed? The framed problem provides a framework for crafting the best solution for the user.

By framing the problem with a statement narrow enough to bring focus yet broad enough for creativity, the product design team can stay simultaneously focused on design problem-solving and open to innovative possibilities.

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Identifying Barriers and Opportunities

When you know the direction you want to go, you can see what’s in front of you. With a clearly defined problem that’s rooted in a user’s purpose, it’s easier to see what barriers are in the way of reaching that end goal. And if the problem is clearly stated at the start of a project, it can act as a lens through which to find additional opportunities that might have gone unnoticed.

Aligning the Team Around Design Problem Solving

Without realizing it, members of a team—stakeholders, designers , developers, and even users—each have a different image in their head of what the end product should be. They are each thinking about it in a slightly different way informed by different mental models . Arguably the biggest impact of framing a problem is how it aligns these varying views.

The best design thinking problem statement examples collect multiple perspectives within a framework that sparks effective conversations and decisions. Once an articulated statement is made, expectations for the team can be managed and efforts are aligned.

An open discussion with the team is the first step in how to write a problem statement

Guiding the Project and All Future Decisions

A product team can function without a problem defined—it happens all the time. But when an explicit statement declares what problem needs to be solved, every effort is focused on that single outcome.

A well-framed product design problem statement that is documented as part of a product design brief is a simple tool to weigh options and measure success. A good design problem statement will leave room for creativity, but it ultimately provides a clear lens through which to view each element of the project.

Outlining the problem statement and the design process steps acts as a filter that sifts out superfluous or irrelevant ideas and retains only the ones that meet the need. As the design process progresses, the team should refer to the initial problem statement and ensure that what is being designed still addresses the core problem statement documented in the product design brief.

God gave us ten styluses … let’s not invent another. – Steve Jobs on his distaste for the Apple Newton’s unnecessary stylus pen

Saving Time and Money in the Long Run

With a shared perspective and sign-off on the ultimate purpose of the product, the design process can run more efficiently. There will always be inevitable tangents and dead ends in innovative projects, but even these learnings can be more insightful when everything is driven by finding a solution to a single problem.

Working from a shared understanding of the design problem needing to be solved can also prevent public embarrassment—apart from a failed product. When Juicero launched its extravagant juicing machine, it was met with jabs and jeers because it charged a premium price for what anyone can do with their hands—squeeze fresh juice from a packet. It managed to raise $120 million in investments but suspended sales 16 months after launching.

Ultimately, the product brought very little value to juice-lovers because it solved a non-existent problem. Not every idea should be executed, and a well-framed problem statement can help determine which ones should just stay in the sketchbook.

A mistake in product design thinking can result in product failure

Helping Connect Emotionally to the User

A problem can’t be defined unless you know who is struggling. By taking the time to conduct research and speak to potential users and ask questions about their current situation and how they feel about it, your team can suddenly step into the shoes of the user.

The emotional engagement needed at the problem framing stage aligns the product with the person it’s meant to serve. The user’s motivations, desires, and fears can create a framework for measuring all ideas and proposals. Seeing a problem from a human perspective will inevitably illuminate intuitive and emotional insights that will make a product more lovable.

How Can a Problem Be Framed?

Even though the benefits of framing a problem are significant, it’s often a skipped step. It’s not uncommon to receive a thoroughly constructed design brief that includes everything from visual direction and functional requirements. And sometimes that’s all you need when you join the team.

But if you’re at the beginning of a project and the visual and functional decisions are already being made, it’s worth taking a step back to define the problem the product is solving. Sometimes there is plenty of time to do this, other times there’s resistance and limited resources. Regardless of where you find yourself, there are methods that can help bring a level of clarity to everyone involved.

If I had an hour to solve a problem, I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions. – Albert Einstein

The Four Ws: Questions to Answer

Ideally, this is a method that gathers key stakeholders around a pile of Post-its and a large wall. By asking four simple questions, everyone can put their own thoughts up and together synthesize the content to find focus and clarity.

Who is affected? Who is experiencing the problem? Can this user be further specified (by demographic, persona, motivation, reason for being in the situation)?
What is the problem? What are the struggles? What task needs to be accomplished? What pain point needs to be relieved?
Where does it happen? What is the context in which the user experiences the problem? Is it in a physical or digital space? Who else is involved?
Why does it matter? Why is this problem worth solving? What value does it bring to the user? What value does it bring to the business?

Empathy Map: Putting Yourself in the User’s Shoes

Empathy maps are a common tool used in UX design and can be helpful in many stages throughout a product’s development. Here, at the start, it instantly connects the team to the user to find out what their purpose might be. Depending on the amount of time you have for the problem framing stage, this method can involve user interviews and observational shadowing.

Hear and see. What kind of comments or concepts does the user encounter? What are others saying that the user is exposed to? What does the user observe others doing around them? (This category illustrates the user’s surroundings.)
Say and do. What are the user’s comments and behaviors? What are they saying out loud to others? What do they do in practice? (These are things that are explicitly done and can be clearly observed.)
Think and feel. What does the user think but keep to themself? How do they emotionally react to a situation? What are their desires? (These aren’t always apparent by simply observing a user, but can be revealed through conversational interviews. It takes some digging to understand what is happening on a subconscious level, but this is where great insights can be found.)
Pains and gains. What frustrations does the user have? What about the experience is unnecessary or disappointing? In contrast, what about the experience is improving the life of the user? What works well? Where or when is the user happiest? (These are the outcomes of the experience.)

Empathy maps are a tool for design problem-solving

The Final Problem Statement

This is a simple but really effective way to bring focus to the insights you’ve uncovered and the ultimate problem you can frame. The design problem statement structure template is like a page from MadLibs, a sentence with blank spaces to fill with your insights. It creates a concise statement rooted in your team’s collective thinking. It’s important to keep the statement specific enough so there is a shared vision for the product, but broad enough to allow for creativity and new insights.

Here are a few design problem statement example formats:

e.g., “I am a new mum trying to take care of my baby in the best way possible, but I don’t know if I’m doing a good job because I’m always at home alone and don’t have anyone to talk to about it, which makes me feel isolated and alone.”
e.g., “New mums need a way to connect with other mums because they are often at home alone during the day and feel isolated and alone.”
e.g., “Our new mum has the problem that she has no one to talk to about the best way to care for her baby when she is at home alone every day. Our solution should deliver a way for her to feel connected to other mums so she feels less isolated and alone.”

Every Good Problem Framing Phase, No Matter How Simple, Should:

Avoid proposing solutions. It’s easy to think in the tangible terms of features and functionality, but these will only distract from first understanding the fundamental problem.
Ask why. It’s a simple question to help find insights under the surface. But as Fast Company contributor Tina Seelig writes , asking “why” lets you see a situation from a different angle.
Reflect. Make time to step back and look for connections and patterns. This is where insights lie that can set a product apart from competitors.
Keep it universal. Avoid using jargon or any unnecessary complexities. The problem should be simple for anyone to understand, and ideally, to retell. Equipping team members to easily talk about what you are trying to achieve will build confidence and passion within the project.

Forget the Horse, Deliver a Car

What is a design problem statement? Some clients may set a brief that clearly defines the problem to solve. Others might not know about this crucial stage. Therein lies an opportunity for you to lead the client in taking a step back and evaluating why this product will exist. Together you can align the team, craft a framework, and kick off an effective and efficient process.

Perhaps the greatest value of this step is understanding the human psyche. Framing a problem from a customer’s perspective lets you more effectively deliver what people never knew they needed. Dave Thomsen, a former IDEO designer, writes that a human-centric approach leads to great user benefits and purpose.

When designers design a product that deeply connects to a user’s desired purpose, it becomes easier to build a product experience and a brand that connects to people on an emotional level. In turn, these will not only be more successful products but will prove to be more purposeful and meaningful in the lives of the people who use them.

Understanding the basics

What is included in a design brief.

A design brief includes a clear design problem statement and the proposed solution to that problem. The brief will also outline the overall design process and expectations between the client and the team. Finally, it should include a basic schedule of deliverables and designate responsibilities.

What is the designing process?

The design process in general is the process by which a problem is identified, understood, and addressed through design. Decisions in the design process should ideally be informed by research, data, and a clear understanding of the target user.

What is design thinking approach?

Design thinking approach is a methodology in which the creative strategies and process-based solutions learned in the field of design can inform creative problem-solving in any field or discipline. The approach is a popular and effective tool in the world of product development.

What does design thinking do?

Design thinking is the process by which teams can apply the insights and process-based creative problem-solving strategies to product development, business, and other fields and professions.

What is problem solving in design?

Problem-solving is one of the main goals of design that characterizes it beyond a more freely creative venture. Designers identify problems to solve and then apply research to making design decisions to address the core problem.

What is a good problem statement?

With a good problem statement, UX designers have a clearly-defined understanding of the user and their core problem. The problem statement should avoid proposing a firm solution in the beginning, which should be uncovered through research and iterative design exploration.

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Jordan DeVos

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Member since March 28, 2018

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Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem

Once you’ve empathized with your users, you can move on to the second stage of the design thinking process and define the problem your users need you to solve..

If you’ve read our introduction to User Experience (UX) Design , you’ll know that UX is essentially about solving the problems that prevent users from accomplishing what they want to do with our product.

Before you can go into problem-solving mode, however, there is one very crucial step that you need to complete—one that will shape your entire design project from start to finish. In the Design Thinking process , this step is what’s known as the “define” stage.

As the second step in the Design Thinking process, the define stage is where you’ll establish a clear idea of exactly which problem you will solve for the user. You’ll then shape this into a problem statement which will act as your northern star throughout the design process.

In this guide, we’ll tell you everything you need to know about this stage in the Design Thinking process, as well as how to define a meaningful problem statement.

Here’s what we’ll cover:

What is the define stage and why is it necessary?
What is a problem statement?
How to define a meaningful problem statement
What comes after the define phase?

Before we dive in, though, if you’d like an overview of the entire Design Thinking process, check out this video:

1. What is the define stage and why is it necessary?

As the second step in the Design Thinking process, the define stage is dedicated to defining the problem: what user problem will you be trying to solve? In other words, what is your design challenge?

The define stage is preceded by the empathize phase , where you’ll have learned as much about your users as possible, conducting interviews and using a variety of immersion and observation techniques. Once you have a good idea of who your users are and, most importantly, their wants, needs, and pain-points, you’re ready to turn this empathy into an actionable problem statement.

The relationship between the empathize and define stages can best be described in terms of analysis and synthesis. In the empathize phase, we use analysis to break down everything we observe and discover about our users into smaller, more manageable components—dividing their actions and behaviour into “what”, “why” and “how” categories, for example. In the define stage, we piece these components back together, synthesising our findings to create a detailed overall picture.

Why is the define stage so important?

The define stage ensures you fully understand the goal of your design project. It helps you to articulate your design problem, and provides a clear-cut objective to work towards. A meaningful, actionable problem statement will steer you in the right direction, helping you to kick-start the ideation process (see Stage Three of the Design Thinking process ) and work your way towards a solution.

Without a well-defined problem statement, it’s hard to know what you’re aiming for. Your work will lack focus, and the final design will suffer. Not only that: in the absence of a clear problem statement, it’s extremely difficult to explain to stakeholders and team members exactly what you are trying to achieve.

With this in mind, let’s take a closer look at problem statements and how you can go about defining them.

2. What is a problem statement?

A problem statement identifies the gap between the current state (i.e. the problem) and the desired state (i.e. the goal) of a process or product . Within the design context, you can think of the user problem as an unmet need. By designing a solution that meets this need, you can satisfy the user and ensure a pleasant user experience.

A problem statement, or point of view (POV) statement, frames this problem (or need) in a way that is actionable for designers. It provides a clear description of the issue that the designer seeks to address, keeping the focus on the user at all times.

Problem or POV statements can take various formats, but the end goal is always the same: to guide the design team towards a feasible solution. Let’s take a look at some of the ways you might frame your design problem:

From the user’s perspective: “I am a young working professional trying to eat healthily, but I’m struggling because I work long hours and don’t always have time to go grocery shopping and prepare my meals. This makes me feel frustrated and bad about myself.”
From a user research perspective: “Busy working professionals need an easy, time-efficient way to eat healthily because they often work long hours and don’t have time to shop and meal prep.”
Based on the four Ws—who, what, where, and why: “Our young working professional struggles to eat healthily during the week because she is working long hours. Our solution should deliver a quick and easy way for her to procure ingredients and prepare healthy meals that she can take to work.”

As you can see, each of these statements addresses the same issue—just in a slightly different way. As long as you focus on the user, what they need and why, it’s up to you how you choose to present and frame your design problem.

We’ll look at how to form your problem statement a little later on. Before we do, let’s consider some problem statement “do”s and “don’t”s.

What makes a good problem statement?

A good problem statement is human-centered and user-focused. Based on the insights you gathered in the empathize phase, it focuses on the users and their needs—not on product specifications or business outcomes. Here are some pointers that will help you create a meaningful problem statement:

Focus on the user: The user and their needs should be front and center of your problem statement. Avoid statements that start with “we need to…” or “the product should”, instead concentrating on the user’s perspective: “Young working professionals need…”, as in the examples above.
Keep it broad: A good problem statement leaves room for innovation and creative freedom. It’s important to keep it broad enough to invite a range of different ideas; avoid any references to specific solutions or technical requirements, for example.
Make it manageable: At the same time, your problem statement should guide you and provide direction. If it’s too broad in terms of the user’s needs and goals, you’ll struggle to hone in on a suitable solution. So, don’t try to address too many user needs in one problem statement; prioritize and frame your problem accordingly.

Bearing these things in mind, let’s explore some useful methods for creating a meaningful problem statement.

3. How to write a meaningful problem statement

Writing a meaningful problem statement can be extremely challenging. How do you condense all the complexities of the user’s conscious and unconscious desires into one simple, actionable statement? Fortunately, there are some tried-and-tested methods that will help you do just that.

Space saturation and group

One of the first steps in defining a problem statement is to organize your findings from the empathize phase. Space saturation and group is a popular method used by design thinkers to collect and visually present all observations made in the empathize phase in one space. As the name suggests, you will literally “saturate” a wall or whiteboard with Post-It notes and images, resulting in a collage of artifacts from your user research.

As the Stanford d.school explains: “You space saturate to help you unpack thoughts and experiences into tangible and visual pieces of information that you surround yourself with to inform and inspire the design team. You group these findings to explore what themes and patterns emerge, and strive to move toward identifying meaningful needs of people and insights that will inform your design solutions.”

This method should involve anyone who took part in the empathize stage of the design project, and should take no longer than 20-30 minutes.

The four Ws

Asking the right questions will help you put your finger on the right problem statement. With all your findings from the empathize phase in one place, ask yourself the four Ws: Who , what , where , and why?

Who is experiencing the problem? In other words, who is your target user; who will be the focus of your problem statement?
What is the problem? Based on the observations you made during the empathize phase, what are the problems and pain-points that frequently came up? What task is the user trying to accomplish, and what’s standing in their way?
Where does the problem present itself? In what space (physical or digital), situation or context is the user when they face this problem? Are there any other people involved?
Why does it matter? Why is it important that this problem be solved? What value would a solution bring to the user, and to the business?

Approaching your observations with these four questions in mind will help you to identify patterns within your user research. In identifying the most prevalent issues, you’ll be one step closer to formulating a meaningful problem statement.

The five whys

Another question-based strategy, the five whys technique can help you delve deeper into the problem and drill down to the root cause. Once you’ve identified the root cause, you have something that you can act upon; somewhere specific to focus your problem-solving efforts.

Let’s take our previous example of the young working professional who wants to eat healthily, but finds it difficult to do so. Here’s how you might use the five whys to break the problem down and get to the root cause:

Why is she not eating healthily? → She orders takeaway everyday.
Why does she order takeaway everyday? → Her fridge and cupboards are empty.
Why are the fridge and cupboards empty? → She hasn’t been grocery shopping in over a week.
Why hasn’t she been grocery shopping? → She doesn’t have time to go to the supermarket.
Why doesn’t she have time? → She works long hours and is exhausted.

The root cause here is a lack of time, so your solution might focus on efficiency and convenience. Your final problem statement might look something like this: “Young working professionals need a quick, convenient solution to eating healthily.”

4. What comes after the define phase?

By the end of the define phase, you’ll have turned your findings from the empathize stage into a meaningful, actionable problem statement. With your problem statement to hand, you’ll be ready to move on to the ideation phase , where you’ll turn your problem statement into “how might we” questions and generate as many potential solutions as possible.

As you move through the Design Thinking process, you’ll constantly refer back to your problem statement to make sure you’re moving in the right direction. A well-thought-out problem statement will keep you on track, help you communicate your objectives to key stakeholders, and ultimately lead you to that all-important user solution.

Want to learn more about designing user-friendly solutions? Check out these articles:

UX Best Practices: How Can You Become A Better Designer?
What Is User Experience Design? Everything You Need To Know To Get Started
This Is Why Empathy Matters As A UX Designer
What is lean UX?

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4 Stages of Design Thinking

Business professionals using the stages of design thinking

08 Feb 2022

Design thinking has changed the way people think about innovation—especially in business. While the concept originated from designers, professionals have adapted the process to solve business problems more effectively.

Here’s what you need to know about the design thinking process and how you can apply it.

Access your free e-book today.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is an approach to problem-solving and innovation that’s both user-centric and solutions-based—that is, it focuses on finding solutions instead of problems.

For example, if a business is struggling with bad reviews, design thinking would advise it to focus on improving how it treats customer-facing employees (a solution) rather than scrutinizing reviews (the problem).

User-centric solutions require empathy at all stages and must consider how people are impacted. While this may seem obvious, it’s a crucial element that can’t be overlooked in the innovation process.

Four Stages of Design Thinking

There are several models that systematize the design thinking process. In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-stage framework: clarify, ideate, develop, and implement.

The clarification stage involves observing and framing findings. Your observations form the foundation of your design thinking, so it’s important to be unbiased.

First, identify and empathize with your audience. Where are they coming from? What are their common pain points? Why do they need your solution? How will they benefit?

Once your observations are clearly defined, consolidate them and take note of any that stand out. Outliers can help reframe findings into a problem statement or question that guides the design thinking process to the final stage.

Try to focus on the big picture, and don’t be afraid to frame and reframe observations as you glean additional insights. The clarification stage is vital to the entire process’s success.

With your problem statement or question defined, you can use observations to think of potential solutions. Don’t feel limited as you ideate.

There are several ways you can approach this phase:

Search for similarities in pain points and categorize them.
Evaluate what resources you have and consider how they can be used to solve the problem.
Brainstorm ideas that could yield positive results.

Whatever method you choose, remember that all ideas are possible solutions.

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

The third stage focuses on developing ideas from the ideation phase. This is done through testing possible solutions and noting the successes and failures of each.

At this point, adjustments aren’t only acceptable but recommended. The purpose isn’t to find the final solution but to test, adjust, prototype, and experiment. If something doesn’t work, try an iteration of it or go back a stage or two in the process.

4. Implement

The final stage—implementation—is the culmination of the previous three phases. It’s where you take all your observations, ideas, and developments and implement a solution.

It’s important to note that testing and experimentation don’t abruptly end. You can expect additional iterations and modifications to the solution that entail returning to a previous stage. Continue refining until you find a successful solution and implement it. Once you’ve done that, the design thinking process is complete.

Check out the video about the design thinking process below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

The Importance of Design Thinking Across Industries

Design thinking can be applied in any industry to any problem. Whether you work in manufacturing or finance, you can utilize design thinking to address pain points.

For example, if you work for a finance company struggling with employee engagement—a common problem with the rise in remote work—you could benefit from an unconventional approach to problem-solving . Your leadership and human resources teams could use design thinking to come up with ways to increase employee satisfaction, such as offering more benefits or mental health-focused programs.

Design thinking can seem like a massive undertaking, but it’s an accessible and adaptable method for all professionals who recognize the value of user-centric, solutions-based innovation.

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Design Thinking as a Tool

Design thinking is a valuable addition to your professional toolbox. Through its four stages, it teaches how to assess situations with an unbiased view, ideate without assumptions, and continually experiment, test, and reiterate for better results.

Are you interested in learning more about design thinking? Explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation to discover how to use design thinking principles and innovative problem-solving tools to help you and your business succeed.

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What is design thinking and why is it important?

Here’s what you need to know about this creative problem-solving technique, including a definition and why it’s taking the business world by storm.

img src="WeWork106BoulevardHaussmann.jpg" alt="open floor coworking area with natural light in Paris">

Design thinking started out as a process for creating sleek new technology and products. But this methodology is now widely used across both the private and public sectors, for business and personal projects, all around the world.

Design-thinking methodology was popularized by design consulting firm IDEO . The methods gained momentum in the larger business world after Tim Brown, the chief executive officer of IDEO, wrote an article in 2008 for the Harvard Business Review about the use of design thinking in business—including at a California hospital, a Japanese bicycle company, and the healthcare industry in India. Today, one of the most popular courses at Stanford University is Designing Your Life , which applies design thinking to building a joyful career and life.

Here’s what design thinking is, how it works, and why it’s important.

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is a process for solving problems by prioritizing the consumer’s needs above all else. It relies on observing, with empathy, how people interact with their environments , and employs an iterative, hands-on approach to creating innovative solutions .

Design thinking is “human-centered,” which means that it uses evidence of how consumers (humans) actually engage with a product or service, rather than how someone else or an organization thinks they will engage with it. To be truly human-centered, designers watch how people use a product or service and continue to refine the product or service in order to improve the consumer’s experience. This is the “iterative” part of design thinking. It favors moving quickly to get prototypes out to test, rather than endless research or rumination.

In contrast to traditional problem-solving, which is a linear process of identifying a problem and then brainstorming solutions , design thinking only works if it is iterative. It is less of a means to get to a single solution, and more of a way to continuously evolve your thinking and respond to consumer needs.

Why is design thinking important?

Design thinking enables organizations to create lasting value for consumers. The process is useful in any complex system ( not just design systems ) because it:

Aims to solve a concrete human need

Using an observational, human-centric approach, teams can uncover pain points from the consumer that they hadn’t previously thought of, ones that the consumer may not even be aware of. Design thinking can provide solutions to those pain points once they’re identified.

Tackles problems that are ambiguous or difficult to define

Consumers often don’t know what problem they have that needs solving or they can’t verbalize it. But upon careful observation, one can identify problems based on what they see from real consumer behavior rather than simply working off of their ideas of the consumer. This helps define ambiguous problems and in turn makes it easier to surface solutions.

Leads to more innovative solutions

Humans are not capable of imagining things that are not believed to be possible, which makes it impossible for them to ask for things that do not yet exist. Design thinking can help surface some of these unknown pain points that would otherwise have never been known. Using an iterative approach to tackle those problems often lead to non-obvious, innovative solutions .

Makes organizations run faster and more efficiently

Rather than researching a problem for a long time without devising an outcome, design thinking favors creating prototypes and then testing to see how effective they are.

The five stages of the design-thinking process

Design thinking follows a five-stage framework.

1. Empathize

In this first stage, the designer observes consumers to gain a deeper understanding of how they interact with or are affected by a product or issue. The observations must happen with empathy, which means withholding judgment and not imparting preconceived notions of what the consumer needs. Observing with empathy is powerful because it can uncover issues the consumer didn’t even know they had or that they could not themselves verbalize. From this point, it’s easier to understand the human need for which you are designing.

In this second stage, you gather your observations from the first stage to define the problem you’re trying to solve. Think about the difficulties your consumers are brushing up against, what they repeatedly struggle with, and what you’ve gleaned from how they’re affected by the issue. Once you synthesize your findings, you are able to define the problem they face.

The next step is to brainstorm ideas about how to solve the problem you’ve identified. These ideation sessions could be in a group, where your team gathers in an office space that encourages creativity and collaboration , an innovation lab , or can be done solo. The important part is to generate a bunch of different ideas. At the end of this process, you’ll come up with a few ideas with which to move forward.

4. Prototype

This is the stage that turns ideas into an actual solution. Prototypes are not meant to be perfect. The point of a prototype is to come out quickly with a concrete version of the idea to see how it is accepted by consumers. Examples of prototypes include a landing page to test consumer desire for a product or a video that demonstrates streamlined logistic processes.

Once you give a prototyped solution to consumers, you must observe how they interact with it. This testing stage is the one in which you collect feedback on your work.

The design-thinking process is an iterative, rather than linear, one. At the end of the fifth stage, you’ll likely have to go back to one or several of the other stages. Perhaps the testing has shown you need to develop another prototype, for which you’d return to the fourth stage. Or perhaps it’s shown that you’ve misdefined the consumer’s needs. If so, you would have to return to an earlier stage of the process.

What industries and roles can benefit from design thinking?

While design thinking originated with designers, it is now widely used by people from all disciplines . Even among design agencies the work is famously cross-functional: IDEO and similar agencies hire non-designers—chefs, engineers, social scientists, biologists—and integrate them into their project teams to add perspective.

Our growth innovation team at WeWork comprises a designer, who focuses on applying this method for the end consumer of a project; a technologist, who uses this technique to deliver value to engineers; and a business strategist, who applies this method to deliver value for business owners and various stakeholders.

Design thinking has been used at Kaiser Permanente to overhaul the system of shift changes among nursing staff. It has helped the Singapore government make the process for securing a work pass in the nation-state easier and more human. Design thinking has been used to solve business problems at companies like Toyota, Intuit, SAP, and IBM .

One reason for the proliferation of design thinking in industries is that it’s useful to break down problems in any complex system, be it business, government, or social organizations. It can be used to explore big questions about how to respond to the growth of technology and globalization, how to pivot in response to rapid change, and how to support individuals while catering to larger organizations.

Design thinking can be used by all departments in a business. It can be fostered by bright, airy physical workspaces that cater to the way employees prefer to work. To employ design thinking in all projects, managers should first define the consumers they’re trying to help and then employ the five stages of design thinking to define and tackle the identified problems. Employing a design-thinking process makes it more likely a business will be innovative, creative, and ultimately more human.

This article was originally published on October 18, 2019, and has been updated throughout by the editors.

Graham Tuttle was a director of growth innovation at WeWork. He has more than a decade of experience in design and new product development. Prior to WeWork, Tuttle worked at frog in design strategy, helping global enterprises and startups take a user-centered approach to product development, innovation, and investment strategy. He has an M.B.A. and a masters of design from the Illinois Institute of Technology and contributed to the development of 101 Design Methods: A Structured Approach for Driving Innovation in Your Organization , a step-by-step guidebook for innovation planning.

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May 18, 2023 Is it time to throw out the standard playbook when it comes to problem solving? Uniquely challenging times call for unique approaches, write Michael Birshan , Ben Sheppard , and coauthors in a recent article , and design thinking offers a much-needed fresh perspective for leaders navigating volatility. Design thinking is a systemic, intuitive, customer-focused problem-solving approach that can create significant value and boost organizational resilience. The proof is in the pudding: From 2013 to 2018, companies that embraced the business value of design had TSR that were 56 percentage points higher than that of their industry peers. Check out these insights to understand how to use design thinking to unleash the power of creativity in strategy and problem solving.

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Creative Problem Solving

What is creative problem solving.

Creative problem solving (CPS) is a process that design teams use to generate ideas and solutions in their work. Designers and design teams apply an approach where they clarify a problem to understand it, ideate to generate good solutions, develop the most promising one, and implement it to create a successful solution for their brand’s users.

An illustration of a tilted square showing a process in motion with Clarify, Ideate, Develop and Implement shown on it.

Why is Creative Problem Solving in UX Design Important?

Creative thinking and problem solving are core parts of user experience (UX) design. Note: the abbreviation “CPS” can also refer to cyber-physical systems. Creative problem solving might sound somewhat generic or broad. However, it’s an ideation approach that’s extremely useful across many industries.

Not strictly a UX design-related approach, creative problem solving has its roots in psychology and education. Alex Osborn—who founded the Creative Education Foundation and devised brainstorming techniques—produced this approach to creative thinking in the 1940s. Along with Sid Parnes, he developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving Process. It was a new, systematic approach to problem solving and creativity fostering.

Diagram of CPS process showing Fact finding, Idea finding and Solution finding with 12 sub-sections.

Osborn’s CPS Process.

The main focus of the creative problem solving model is to improve creative thinking and generate novel solutions to problems. An important distinction exists between it and a UX design process such as design thinking. It’s that designers consider user needs in creative problem solving techniques, but they don’t necessarily have to make their users’ needs the primary focus. For example, a design team might trigger totally novel ideas from random stimuli—as opposed to working systematically from the initial stages of empathizing with their users. Even so, creative problem solving methods still tend to follow a process with structured stages.

What are 4 Stages of Creative Problem Solving?

The model, adapted from Osborn’s original, typically features these steps:

Clarify: Design teams first explore the area they want to find a solution within. They work to spot the challenge, problem or even goal they want to identify. They also start to collect data or information about it. It’s vital to understand the exact nature of the problem at this stage. So, design teams must build a clear picture of the issue they seek to tackle creatively. When they define the problem like this, they can start to question it with potential solutions.

Ideate: Now that the team has a grasp of the problem that faces them, they can start to work to come up with potential solutions. They think divergently in brainstorming sessions and other ways to solve problems creatively, and approach the problem from as many angles as they can.

Develop: Once the team has explored the potential solutions, they evaluate these and find the strongest and weakest qualities in each. Then, they commit to the one they decide is the best option for the problem at hand.

Implement: Once the team has decided on the best fit for what they want to use, they discuss how to put this solution into action. They gauge its acceptability for stakeholders. Plus, they develop an accurate understanding of the activities and resources necessary to see it become a real, bankable solution.

What Else does CPS Involve?

A diagram showing Divergent and Convergent thinking as a process between a problem and solution.

Two keys to the enterprise of creative problem solving are:

Divergent Thinking

This is an ideation mode which designers leverage to widen their design space when they start to search for potential solutions. They generate as many new ideas as possible using various methods. For example, team members might use brainstorming or bad ideas to explore the vast area of possibilities. To think divergently means to go for:

Quantity over quality: Teams generate ideas without fear of judgment (critically evaluating these ideas comes later).

Novel ideas: Teams use disruptive and lateral thinking to break away from linear thinking and strive for truly original and extraordinary ideas.

Choice creation: The freedom to explore the design space helps teams maximize their options, not only regarding potential solutions but also about how they understand the problem itself.

Author and Human-Computer Interactivity Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains some techniques that are helpful for divergent thinking:

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Convergent Thinking

This is the complementary half of the equation. In this ideation mode, designers analyze, filter, evaluate, clarify and modify the ideas they generated during divergent thinking. They use analytical, vertical and linear thinking to isolate novel and useful ideas, understand the design space possibilities and get nearer to potential solutions that will work best. The purpose with convergent thinking is to carefully and creatively:

Look past logical norms (which people use in everyday critical thinking).

Examine how an idea stands in relation to the problem.

Understand the real dimensions of that problem.

Professor Alan Dix explains convergent thinking in this video:

What are the Benefits of Creative Problem Solving?

Design teams especially can benefit from this creative approach to problem solving because it:

Empowers teams to arrive at a fine-grained definition of the problem they need to ideate over in a given situation.

Gives a structured, learnable way to conduct problem-solving activities and direct them towards the most fruitful outcomes.

Involves numerous techniques such as brainstorming and SCAMPER, so teams have more chances to explore the problem space more thoroughly.

Can lead to large numbers of possible solutions thanks to a dedicated balance of divergent and convergent thinking.

Values and nurtures designers and teams to create innovative design solutions in an accepting, respectful atmosphere.

Is a collaborative approach that enables multiple participants to contribute—which makes for a positive environment with buy-in from those who participate.

Enables teams to work out the most optimal solution available and examine all angles carefully before they put it into action.

Is applicable in various contexts—such as business, arts and education—as well as in many areas of life in general.

It’s especially crucial to see the value of creative problem solving in how it promotes out-of-the-box thinking as one of the valuable ingredients for teams to leverage.

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains how to think outside the box:

How to Conduct Creative Problem Solving Best?

It’s important to point out that designers should consider—and stick to—some best practices when it comes to applying creative problem solving techniques. They should also adhere to some “house rules,” which the facilitator should define in no uncertain terms at the start of each session. So, designers and design teams should:

Define the chief goal of the problem-solving activity: Everyone involved should be on the same page regarding their objective and what they want to achieve, why it’s essential to do it and how it aligns with the values of the brand. For example, SWOT analysis can help with this. Clarity is vital in this early stage. Before team members can hope to work on ideating for potential solutions, they must recognize and clearly identify what the problem to tackle is.

Have access to accurate information: A design team must be up to date with the realities that their brand faces, realities that their users and customers face, as well as what’s going on in the industry and facts about their competitors. A team must work to determine what the desired outcome is, as well as what the stakeholders’ needs and wants are. Another factor to consider in detail is what the benefits and risks of addressing a scenario or problem are—including the pros and cons that stakeholders and users would face if team members direct their attention on a particular area or problem.

Suspend judgment: This is particularly important for two main reasons. For one, participants can challenge assumptions that might be blocking healthy ideation when they suggest ideas or elements of ideas that would otherwise seem of little value through a “traditional” lens. Second, if everyone’s free to suggest ideas without constraints, it promotes a calmer environment of acceptance—and so team members will be more likely to ideate better. Judgment will come later, in convergent thinking when the team works to tighten the net around the most effective solution. So, everyone should keep to positive language and encourage improvisational tactics—such as “yes…and”—so ideas can develop well.

Balance divergent and convergent thinking: It’s important to know the difference between the two styles of thinking and when to practice them. This is why in a session like brainstorming, a facilitator must take control of proceedings and ensure the team engages in distinct divergent and convergent thinking sessions.

Approach problems as questions: For example, “How Might We” questions can prompt team members to generate a great deal of ideas. That’s because they’re open-ended—as opposed to questions with “yes” or “no” answers. When a team frames a problem so freely, it permits them to explore far into the problem space so they can find the edges of the real matter at hand.

An illustration showing the How Might We Formula with an example.

UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains “How Might We” questions in this video:

Use a variety of ideation methods: For example, in the divergent stage, teams can apply methods such as random metaphors or bad ideas to venture into a vast expanse of uncharted territory. With random metaphors, a team prompts innovation by drawing creative associations. With bad ideas, the point is to come up with ideas that are weird, wild and outrageous, as team members can then determine if valuable points exist in the idea—or a “bad” idea might even expose flaws in conventional ways of seeing problems and situations.

Professor Alan Dix explains important points about bad ideas:

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What Special Considerations Should Designers Have for CPS?

Creative problem solving isn’t the only process design teams consider when thinking of potential risks. Teams that involve themselves in ideation sessions can run into problems, especially if they aren’t aware of them. Here are the main areas to watch:

Bias is natural and human. Unfortunately, it can get in the way of user research and prevent a team from being truly creative and innovative. What’s more, it can utterly hinder the iterative process that should drive creative ideas to the best destinations. Bias takes many forms. It can rear its head without a design team member even realizing it. So, it’s vital to remember this and check it. One team member may examine an angle of the problem at hand and unconsciously view it through a lens. Then, they might voice a suggestion without realizing how they might have framed it for team members to hear. Another risk is that other team members might, for example, apply confirmation bias and overlook important points about potential solutions because they’re not in line with what they’re looking for.

Professor Alan Dix explains bias and fixation as obstacles in creative problem solving examples, and how to overcome them:

Conventionalism

Even in the most hopeful ideation sessions, there’s the risk that some team members may slide back to conventional ways to address a problem. They might climb back inside “the box” and not even realize it. That’s why it’s important to mindfully explore new idea territories around the situation under scrutiny and not merely toy with the notion while clinging to a default “traditional” approach, just because it’s the way the brand or others have “always done things.”

Dominant Personalities and Rank Pulling

As with any group discussion, it’s vital for the facilitator to ensure that everyone has the chance to contribute. Team members with “louder” personalities can dominate the discussions and keep quieter members from offering their thoughts. Plus, without a level playing field, it can be hard for more junior members to join in without feeling a sense of talking out of place or even a fear of reprisal for disagreeing with senior members.

Another point is that ideation sessions naturally involve asking many questions, which can bring on two issues. First, some individuals may over-defend their ideas as they’re protective of them. Second, team members may feel self-conscious as they might think if they ask many questions that it makes them appear frivolous or unintelligent. So, it’s vital for facilitators to ensure that all team members can speak up and ask away, both in divergent thinking sessions when they can offer ideas and convergent thinking sessions when they analyze others’ ideas.

Premature Commitment

Another potential risk to any creativity exercise is that once a team senses a solution is the “best” one, everyone can start to shut off and overlook the chance that an alternative may still arise. This could be a symptom of ideation fatigue or a false consensus that a proposed solution is infallible. So, it’s vital that team members keep open minds and try to catch potential issues with the best-looking solution as early as possible. The key is an understanding of the need for iteration—something that’s integral to the design thinking process, for example.

A diagram of the 5-stage Design Thinking Process.

Overall, creative problem solving can help give a design team the altitude—and attitude—they need to explore the problem and solution spaces thoroughly. Team members can leverage a range of techniques to trawl through the hordes of possibilities that exist for virtually any design scenario. As with any method or tool, though, it takes mindful application and awareness of potential hazards to wield it properly. The most effective creative problem-solving sessions will be ones that keep “creative,” “problem” and “solving” in sharp focus until what emerges for the target audience proves to be more than the sum of these parts.

Learn More About Creative Problem Solving

Take our course, Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services .

Watch our Master Class Harness Your Creativity To Design Better Products with Alan Dix, Professor, Author and Creativity Expert.

Read our piece, 10 Simple Ideas to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing .

Go to Exploring the Art of Innovation: Design Thinking vs. Creative Problem Solving by Marcino Waas for further details.

Consult Creative Problem Solving by Harrison Stamell for more insights.

Read The Osborn Parnes Creative Problem-Solving Process by Leigh Espy for additional information.

See History of the creative problem-solving process by Jo North for more on the history of Creative Problem Solving.

Questions about Creative Problem Solving

To start with, work to understand the user’s needs and pain points. Do your user research—interviews, surveys and observations are helpful, for instance. Analyze this data so you can spot patterns and insights. Define the problem clearly—and it needs to be extremely clear for the solution to be able to address it—and make sure it lines up with the users’ goals and your project’s objectives.

You and your design team might hold a brainstorming session. It could be a variation such as brainwalking—where you move about the room ideating—or brainwriting, where you write down ideas. Alternatively, you could try generating weird and wonderful notions in a bad ideas ideation session.

There’s a wealth of techniques you can use. In any case, engage stakeholders in brainstorming sessions to bring different perspectives on board the team’s trains of thought. What’s more, you can use tools like a Problem Statement Template to articulate the problem concisely.

Take our course, Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services .

Watch as Author and Human-Computer Interaction Expert, Professor Alan Dix explains important points about bad ideas:

Some things you might try are: 1. Change your environment: A new setting can stimulate fresh ideas. So, take a walk, visit a different room, or work outside.

2. Try to break the problem down into smaller parts: Focus on just one piece at a time—that should make the task far less overwhelming. Use techniques like mind mapping so you can start to visualize connections and come up with ideas.

3. Step away from work and indulge in activities that relax your mind: Is it listening to music for you? Or how about drawing? Or exercising? Whatever it is, if you break out of your routine and get into a relaxation groove, it can spark new thoughts and perspectives.

4. Collaborate with others: Discuss the problem with colleagues, stakeholders, or—as long as you don’t divulge sensitive information or company secrets—friends. It can help you to get different viewpoints, and sometimes those new angles and fresh perspectives can help unlock a solution.

5. Set aside dedicated time for creative thinking: Take time to get intense with creativity; prevent distractions and just immerse yourself in the problem as fully as you can with your team. Use techniques like brainstorming or the "Six Thinking Hats" to travel around the problem space and explore a wealth of angles.

Remember, a persistent spirit and an open mind are key; so, keep experimenting with different approaches until you get that breakthrough.

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains important aspects of creativity and how to handle creative blocks:

Read our piece, 10 Simple Ideas to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing .

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains the Six Thinking Hats ideation technique.

Creative thinking is about coming up with new and innovative ideas by looking at problems from different angles—and imagining solutions that are truly fresh and unique. It takes an emphasis on divergent thinking to get “out there” and be original in the problem space. You can use techniques like brainstorming, mind mapping and free association to explore hordes of possibilities, many of which might be “hiding” in obscure corners of your—or someone on your team’s—imagination.

Critical thinking is at the other end of the scale. It’s the convergent half of the divergent-convergent thinking approach. In that approach, once the ideation team have hauled in a good catch of ideas, it’s time for team members to analyze and evaluate these ideas to see how valid and effective each is. Everyone strives to consider the evidence, draw logical connections and eliminate any biases that could be creeping in to cloud judgments. Accuracy, sifting and refining are watchwords here.

Watch as Professor Alan Dix explains divergent and convergent thinking:

The tools you can use are in no short supply, and they’re readily available and inexpensive, too. Here are a few examples:

Tools like mind maps are great ways to help you visualize ideas and make connections between them and elements within them. Try sketching out your thoughts and see how they relate to each other—you might discover unexpected gems, or germs of an idea that can splinter into something better, with more thought and development.

The SCAMPER technique is another one you can try. It can help you catapult your mind into a new idea space as you Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate, and Reverse aspects of the problem you’re considering.

The “5 Whys” technique is a good one to drill down to root causes with. Once you’ve spotted a problem, you can start working your way back to see what’s behind it. Then you do the same to work back to the cause of the cause. Keep going; usually five times will be enough to see what started the other problems as the root cause.

Watch as the Father of UX Design, Don Norman explains the 5 Whys technique:

Read all about SCAMPER in our topic definition of it.

It’s natural for some things to get in the way of being creative in the face of a problem. It can be challenging enough to ideate creatively on your own, but it’s especially the case in group settings. Here are some common obstacles:

1. Fear of failure or appearing “silly”: when people worry about making mistakes or sounding silly, they avoid taking risks and exploring new ideas. This fear stifles creativity. That’s why ideation sessions like bad ideas are so valuable—it turns this fear on its head.

2. Rigid thinking: This can also raise itself as a high and thick barrier. If someone in an ideation session clings to established ways to approach problems (and potential solutions), it can hamper their ability to see different perspectives, let alone agree with them. They might even comment critically to dampen what might just be the brightest way forward. It takes an open mind and an awareness of one’s own bias to overcome this.

3. Time pressure and resource scarcity: When a team has tight deadlines to work to, they may rush to the first workable solution and ignore a wide range of possibilities where the true best solution might be hiding. That’s why stakeholders and managers should give everyone enough time—as well as any needed tools, materials and support—to ideate and experiment. The best solution is in everybody’s interest, after all.

It takes a few ingredients to get the environment just right for creative problem solving:

Get in the mood for creativity: This could be a relaxing activity before you start your session, or a warm-up activity in the room. Then, later, encourage short breaks—they can rejuvenate the mind and help bring on fresh insights.

Get the physical environment just right for creating problem solving: You and your team will want a comfortable and flexible workspace—preferably away from your workstations. Make sure the room is one where people can collaborate easily and also where they can work quietly. A meeting room is good as it will typically have room for whiteboards and comfortable space for group discussion. Note: you’ll also need sticky notes and other art supplies like markers.

Make the atmosphere conducive for creative problem solving: Someone will need to play facilitator so everyone has some ground rules to work with. Encourage everyone to share ideas, that all ideas are valuable, and that egos and seniority have no place in the room. Of course, this may take some enforcement and repetition—especially as "louder" team members may try to dominate proceedings, anyway, and others may be self-conscious about sounding "ridiculous."

Make sure you’ve got a diverse team: Diversity means different perspectives, which means richer and more innovative solutions can turn up. So, try to include individuals with different backgrounds, skills and viewpoints—sometimes, non-technical mindsets can spot ideas and points in a technical realm, which experienced programmers might miss, for instance.

Watch our Master Class Harness Your Creativity To Design Better Products with Alan Dix, Professor, Author and Creativity Expert.

Ideating alone? Watch as Professor Alan Dix gives valuable tips about how to nurture creativity:

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Research plays a crucial role in any kind of creative problem solving, and in creative problem solving itself it’s about collecting information about the problem—and, by association, the users themselves. You and your team members need to have a well-defined grasp of what you’re facing before you can start reaching out into the wide expanses of the idea space.

Research helps you lay down a foundation of knowledge and avoid reinventing the wheel. Also, if you study existing solutions and industry trends, you’ll be able to understand what has worked before and what hasn't.

What’s more, research is what will validate the ideas that come out of your ideation efforts. From testing concepts and prototypes with real users, you’ll get precious input about your creative solutions so you can fine-tune them to be innovative and practical—and give users what they want in a way that’s fresh and successful.

Watch as UX Strategist and Consultant, William Hudson explains important points about user research:

First, it’s crucial for a facilitator to make sure the divergent stage of the creative problem solving is over and your team is on to the convergent stage. Only then should any analysis happen.

If others are being critical of your creative solutions, listen carefully and stay open-minded. Look on it as a chance to improve, and don’t take it personally. Indeed, the session facilitator should moderate to make sure everyone understands the nature of constructive criticism.

If something’s unclear, be sure to ask the team member to be more specific, so you can understand their points clearly.

Then, reflect on what you’ve heard. Is it valid? Something you can improve or explain? For example, in a bad ideas session, there may be an aspect of your idea that you can develop among the “bad” parts surrounding it.

So, if you can, clarify any misunderstandings and explain your thought process. Just stay positive and calm and explain things to your critic and other team member. The insights you’ve picked up may strengthen your solution and help to refine it.

Last—but not least—make sure you hear multiple perspectives. When you hear from different team members, chances are you’ll get a balanced view. It can also help you spot common themes and actionable improvements you might make.

Watch as Todd Zaki Warfel, Author, Speaker and Leadership Coach, explains how to present design ideas to clients, a valuable skill in light of discussing feedback from stakeholders.

Lateral thinking is a technique where you approach problems from new and unexpected angles. It encourages you to put aside conventional step-by-step logic and get “out there” to explore creative and unorthodox solutions. Author, physician and commentator Edward de Bono developed lateral thinking as a way to help break free from traditional patterns of thought.

In creative problem solving, you can use lateral thinking to come up with truly innovative ideas—ones that standard logical processes might overlook. It’s about bypassing these so you can challenge assumptions and explore alternatives that point you and your team to breakthrough solutions.

You can use techniques like brainstorming to apply lateral thinking and access ideas that are truly “outside the box” and what your team, your brand and your target audience really need to work on.

Professor Alan Dix explains lateral thinking in this video:

1. Baer, J. (2012). Domain Specificity and The Limits of Creativity Theory . The Journal of Creative Behavior, 46(1), 16–29. John Baer's influential paper challenged the notion of a domain-general theory of creativity and argued for the importance of considering domain-specific factors in creative problem solving. This work has been highly influential in shaping the understanding of creativity as a domain-specific phenomenon and has implications for the assessment and development of creativity in various domains.

2. Runco, M. A., & Jaeger, G. J. (2012). The Standard Definition of Creativity . Creativity Research Journal, 24(1), 92–96. Mark A. Runco and Gerard J. Jaeger's paper proposed a standard definition of creativity, which has been widely adopted in the field. They defined creativity as the production of original and effective ideas, products, or solutions that are appropriate to the task at hand. This definition has been influential in providing a common framework for creativity research and assessment.

1. Fogler, H. S., LeBlanc, S. E., & Rizzo, B. (2014). Strategies for Creative Problem Solving (3rd ed.). Prentice Hall.

This book focuses on developing creative problem-solving strategies, particularly in engineering and technical contexts. It introduces various heuristic problem-solving techniques, optimization methods, and design thinking principles. The authors provide a systematic framework for approaching ill-defined problems, generating and implementing solutions, and evaluating the outcomes. With its practical exercises and real-world examples, this book has been influential in equipping professionals and students with the skills to tackle complex challenges creatively.

2. De Bono, E. (1985). Six Thinking Hats . Little, Brown and Company.

Edward de Bono's Six Thinking Hats introduces a powerful technique for parallel thinking and decision-making. The book outlines six different "hats" or perspectives that individuals can adopt to approach a problem or situation from various angles. This structured approach encourages creative problem-solving by separating different modes of thinking, such as emotional, logical, and creative perspectives. De Bono's work has been highly influential in promoting lateral thinking and providing a practical framework for group problem solving.

3. Osborn, A. F. (1963). Applied Imagination: Principles and Procedures of Creative Problem-Solving (3rd ed.). Charles Scribner's Sons.

Alex F. Osborn's Applied Imagination is a pioneering work that introduced the concept of brainstorming and other creative problem-solving techniques. Osborn emphasized how important it is to defer judgment and generate a large quantity of ideas before evaluating them. This book laid the groundwork for many subsequent developments in the field of creative problem-solving, and it’s been influential in promoting the use of structured ideation processes in various domains.

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What is the first stage in the creative problem-solving process?

Implementation
Idea Generation
Problem Identification

Which technique is commonly used during the idea generation stage of creative problem-solving?

Brainstorming
Prototyping

What is the main purpose of the evaluation stage in creative problem-solving?

To generate as many ideas as possible
To implement the solution
To assess the feasibility and effectiveness of ideas

In the creative problem-solving process, what often follows after implementing a solution?

Testing and Refinement

Which stage in the creative problem-solving process focuses on generating multiple possible solutions?

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Literature on Creative Problem Solving

Here’s the entire UX literature on Creative Problem Solving by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Creative Problem Solving

Take a deep dive into Creative Problem Solving with our course Creativity: Methods to Design Better Products and Services .

The overall goal of this course is to help you design better products, services and experiences by helping you and your team develop innovative and useful solutions. You’ll learn a human-focused, creative design process.

We’re going to show you what creativity is as well as a wealth of ideation methods ―both for generating new ideas and for developing your ideas further. You’ll learn skills and step-by-step methods you can use throughout the entire creative process. We’ll supply you with lots of templates and guides so by the end of the course you’ll have lots of hands-on methods you can use for your and your team’s ideation sessions. You’re also going to learn how to plan and time-manage a creative process effectively.

Most of us need to be creative in our work regardless of if we design user interfaces, write content for a website, work out appropriate workflows for an organization or program new algorithms for system backend. However, we all get those times when the creative step, which we so desperately need, simply does not come. That can seem scary—but trust us when we say that anyone can learn how to be creative on demand . This course will teach you ways to break the impasse of the empty page. We'll teach you methods which will help you find novel and useful solutions to a particular problem, be it in interaction design, graphics, code or something completely different. It’s not a magic creativity machine, but when you learn to put yourself in this creative mental state, new and exciting things will happen.

In the “Build Your Portfolio: Ideation Project” , you’ll find a series of practical exercises which together form a complete ideation project so you can get your hands dirty right away. If you want to complete these optional exercises, you will get hands-on experience with the methods you learn and in the process you’ll create a case study for your portfolio which you can show your future employer or freelance customers.

Your instructor is Alan Dix . He’s a creativity expert, professor and co-author of the most popular and impactful textbook in the field of Human-Computer Interaction. Alan has worked with creativity for the last 30+ years, and he’ll teach you his favorite techniques as well as show you how to make room for creativity in your everyday work and life.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you’ve completed the course. You can highlight it on your resume , your LinkedIn profile or your website .

All open-source articles on Creative Problem Solving

10 simple ideas to get your creative juices flowing.

4 years ago

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Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem

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Design thinking, explained
Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled "Design Thinking" by Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO.
The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process
Design thinking is a methodology which provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It's extremely useful when used to tackle complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown—because it serves to understand the human needs involved, reframe the problem in human-centric ways, create numerous ideas in brainstorming sessions and adopt a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important?
Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design. While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review .
Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem and
An integral part of the Design Thinking process is the definition of a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which the design thinker will focus on solving. This is perhaps the most challenging part of the Design Thinking process, as the definition of a problem (also called a design challenge) will require you to synthesise your observations about your users from the first stage in the ...
What is design thinking? Examples, stages and case studies
What is design thinking? A definition. Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it's anchored by human-centred design. Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics.
What is Design Thinking, and how is it used to problem solve?
Forget linear problem-solving — design thinking is iterative and collaborative.It involves five key stages: Empathize: Understand your users deeply through observation, interviews, and empathy exercises.; Define: Clearly define the problem based on user insights, not assumptions.; Ideate: Brainstorm a wide range of potential solutions, thinking outside the box.
The 5 Stages of the Design Thinking Process [ELI5 Guide]
Design thinking is a user-centric approach to problem-solving and is often employed by companies to overcome complex challenges in innovative ways. It's especially effective when applied to problems that are ill-defined or unknown. ... Five key steps make up the design thinking methodology: empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Stage ...
What is the Design Thinking? Definition, Importance ...
Design Thinking is defined as a human-centered approach to innovation and problem-solving that prioritizes understanding the needs of users, generating creative solutions, and iterating through rapid prototyping and testing. Learn more about design thinking importance, examples and process.
A complete guide to the design thinking process
Design thinking is an iterative process where teams seek to understand user needs, challenge assumptions, define complex problems to solve, and develop innovative solutions to prototype and test. The goal of design thinking is to come up with user-focused solutions tailored to the particular problem at hand.
Design Thinking: How it works [Theory, Practice & Examples]
Design thinking is a transformative problem-solving approach that puts human needs and experiences at its core. At its essence, it's a structured methodology that empowers individuals and organizations to tackle complex challenges by fostering empathy, creativity, and innovation. Unlike traditional problem-solving methods, design thinking is not confined to a linear path; instead, it ...
What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a systemic, intuitive, customer-focused problem-solving approach that organizations can use to respond to rapidly changing environments and to create maximum impact. (6 pages) Design and conquer: in years past, the word "design" might have conjured images of expensive handbags or glossy coffee table books.
How to solve problems using the design thinking process
The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you develop solutions in a human-focused way. Initially designed at Stanford's d.school, the five stage design thinking method can help solve ambiguous questions, or more open-ended problems. Learn how these five steps can help your team create innovative solutions ...
Design Problem Statements: What They Are and How to Frame Them
Design thinking approach is a methodology in which the creative strategies and process-based solutions learned in the field of design can inform creative problem-solving in any field or discipline. The approach is a popular and effective tool in the world of product development.
Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define the Problem
In the Design Thinking process, this step is what's known as the "define" stage. As the second step in the Design Thinking process, the define stage is where you'll establish a clear idea of exactly which problem you will solve for the user. You'll then shape this into a problem statement which will act as your northern star ...
4 Stages of Design Thinking
Design thinking is an approach to problem-solving and innovation that's both user-centric and solutions-based—that is, it focuses on finding solutions instead of problems. For example, if a business is struggling with bad reviews, design thinking would advise it to focus on improving how it treats customer-facing employees (a solution ...
What is design thinking and why is it important?
Design thinking is a creative problem-solving technique adapted for businesses. Here's its definition and why it matters. Here's what you need to know about this creative problem-solving technique, including a definition and why it's taking the business world by storm. Get up to three months free* on private offices (minimum commitment required
How to solve problems with design thinking
The proof is in the pudding: From 2013 to 2018, companies that embraced the business value of design had TSR that were 56 percentage points higher than that of their industry peers. Check out these insights to understand how to use design thinking to unleash the power of creativity in strategy and problem solving. Designing out of difficult times.
Design Thinking, Essential Problem Solving 101- It's More Than
The term "Design Thinking" dates back to the 1987 book by Peter Rowe; "Design Thinking." In that book he describes the way that architects and urban planners would approach design problems. However, the idea that there was a specific pattern of problem solving in "design thought" came much earlier in Herbert A Simon's book, "The Science of the Artificial" which was published ...
What is a design problem statement and why is it necessary?
A problem statement is a clear description of the issue (problem) which also includes a vision and methods used to make ways into solving the problem. — Guenbae "GB" Lee . Problem statements serve as a tool for design teams to identify users' pain points, thoroughly understand the problem, effectively define these problems, and ...
What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?
Design thinking can help people do out-of-the-box or outside-the-box thinking. People who use this methodology: Attempt to develop new ways of thinking —ways that do not abide by the dominant or more common problem-solving methods. Have the intention to improve products, services and processes.
Enhancing Design Thinking Workshops with ChatGPT: A New Era of
Define: Clarifying the Problem. The define stage is all about framing the problem statement. ChatGPT can assist by providing clarity on ambiguous or multifaceted problems. ... By integrating AI into the design process, teams can focus more on problem-solving and less on logistics, ultimately driving better user outcomes. While it's important ...
Creative Problem Solving
Creative problem solving (CPS) is a process that design teams use to generate ideas and solutions in their work. Designers and design teams apply an approach where they clarify a problem to understand it, ideate to generate good solutions, develop the most promising one, and implement it to create a successful solution for their brand's users.

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Design thinking, explained

What is design thinking?

Understand the problem

Involve users

Prototype and test. Repeat.

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What is design thinking?

Free course: Introduction to UX Design

What is design thinking? A definition

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Who uses design thinking?

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

Phase 1: Empathise

Phase 2: Define

Phase 3: Ideate

Phase 4: Prototype

Phase 5: Test

Design thinking examples and case studies

Case Study 1: American Family Insurance’s Moonrise App

Stages 1 & 2: Empathise and Define

Case Study 2: GE Healthcare’s Scanning Tools

Stages 3, 4 & 5: Ideate, Prototype, and Test

How to apply design thinking

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Design thinking process 101: Definitions and approaches

Empathize stage

Ideate stage

Prototyping stage

Testing stage

The relationship between human-centered design and design thinking

Benefits of design thinking

Foster a true design culture within your organization

Encourage collaboration across departments

Improve understanding of user needs

Skills and behaviors needed for successful design thinking

Divergent and convergent thinking

Collaborative working

Participatory or collaborative design

Common challenges in design thinking

Design thinking tools and templates to help you get started

Templates for the Empathy stage

Templates for the Define stage

Templates for the Ideate stage

Templates for the Prototype stage

Templates for the Test stage

Design thinking examples: What it looks like in practice

IBM uses design thinking to design at scale

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