What Is Design Thinking? A Guide to the Process, Benefits and Criticisms

Have you noticed that lots of people are talking about the concept of design thinking? It’s become a real buzzword in design and business and even companies like Apple and Google are using design thinking frameworks to help them build products. Design thinking is also taught in many top universities like Harvard, Stanford and MIT.

Before we get started, it’s important to point out that design thinking isn’t actually new. Less formal versions of the process have been used in design, engineering and business for well over 50 years. The term ‘design thinking’ was first used by Peter Rowe in his 1987 book about architecture and planning. Since then it’s been popularized by many design and business leaders, most notably David M Kelley, founder of design consulting powerhouse IDEO.

So what is design thinking? In this article we’re going to take a look at the goals of design thinking, walk through the exact stages involved in one of the most popular frameworks and discuss the benefits and criticisms.

What are the goals of design thinking?

Make innovation predictable and repeatable

At its core, the goal of design thinking is to make the process of innovation predictable and repeatable so that businesses can build more successful products. Sounds like a dream right?

To achieve this dream, design thinking models use many techniques already familiar to anyone who works in design, UX or related fields. Analytical techniques like experimentation, prototyping and testing are combined with activities such as brainstorming, sketching and mind mapping that encourage creativity and innovation.

Train everyone to think like a designer

Design thinking frameworks attempt to codify all these tools and techniques into a formal, repeatable process that can be easily taught to non-designers. The theory is, if everyone on a cross functional product team uses the design thinking process it will make collaboration easier and encourage creativity and innovation.

Understand the user to solve their problems

An important part of design thinking is gaining a deep understanding of your users problems and needs. You then use this understanding to build products that your users actually want, rather than what you assume they want. Sounds pretty obvious right?

Challenge assumptions

It’s easy to make assumptions about what your users want, especially if you already have experience designing successful products for them. Design thinking trains you to challenge these assumptions and look for new solutions that might not be immediately obvious.

The stages of the design thinking process

There are several popular and widely taught design thinking frameworks, most notably those developed by IDEO and the Stanford University d.school. We’re going to concentrate on the d.school framework.

The d.school framework has five stages – empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. These are all discussed in more detail below.

It’s important to note that the five stages are represented as a iterative loop. The idea is to traverse the loop multiple times, applying what you’ve learned at each stage to refine and continuously improve your product solution.

1. Empathize

The empathize stage is all about understanding your users. Why do they make certain decisions? What motivates them and what problems do they have that your product will solve? Once you really understand what your uses want, you can build them a much more useful product that meets their needs.

Tools and techniques

The main techniques used in the empathize stage are observation and user interviews. When conducting interviews, it’s important to understand the ‘why’ of what they are doing or saying. You should always ask lots of questions and encourage users to explain their though process and thinking as they go.

The interaction design foundation is a great place to learn more about user interviews.

2. Define

The goal of the define stage is to collate the data you gathered from observing and interviewing your users and define a problem statement that outlines their needs, problems or desires. This problem statement will be used throughout the rest of the design thinking process to eventually decide on a solution.

When writing a problem statement, make sure you focus on the needs of user and not the needs of the business – this is a common trap.

Tools and techniques

Look for patterns in what your users said or did when you were observing or interviewing them. If lots of users express the same problem or need then this should be included in the problem statement.

3. Ideate

The goal of the ideation stage is to generate a lot of potential solutions based on your problem statement. The point is not to settle on a solution but to find as many ways to satisfy the problem statement as you can, without restriction your creativity or imagination.

Tools and techniques

All the usual suspects come into play here, such as sketching, brainstorming and mind mapping. The important thing (and the most difficult thing) is to force yourself not to judge any of the ideas at this stage.

4. Prototype

In the prototype stage, the most promising solutions from the ideation phase are tested on users using prototypes. The idea is to try out as many of the potential solutions as possible and get as much feedback as you can. Each prototype should be designed to answer a specific question related to your problem statement.

Tools and techniques

A prototype can be code, storyboards, wireframes or whatever is relevant to your product. The closer it is to the final customer experience the better, but prototypes should be quick to build so you can try a lot of them.

5. Test

The test stage is designed to get feedback from users as they interact with your prototypes. Once the test stage is completed, a solution might be decided or the entire process can be repeated to even further refine the solution based on what you have learned.

Tools and techniques

Similar to the empathize stage, observation and user interviews are used to understand how users respond to each prototype. How well does the prototype solve the problem it was designed to test?

What are the benefits of design thinking?

According to advocates, design thinking helps businesses in several important ways.

• Design thinking is not just restricted to designers and creatives – everyone in the business can be trained to use the process. This creates a common language that makes collaboration between cross functional teams more effective and encourages innovation.

• The focus shifts from the problems of the business (we need to sell more widgets) to the problems of the user (how can we build the best product to solve the need of our users). This leads to better products and more sales.

• The risk of trying new ideas is reduced because the process of innovation is codified and predictable via testing, prototypes and refinement and feedback loops.

• Creativity and innovation is increased because businesses are empowered to challenge assumptions, embrace new ideas and consider many different solutions to problems.

Criticisms of design thinking

A major criticism of design thinking is the notion that it’s nothing more than a bunch of obvious ideas packaged into a slick product that consultants (like IDEO) can sell to their clients.

In a great medium article by Lee Vinsel, he hilariously re-frames the d.school design thinking process as follows:

1. Empathize – Consider Your Audience.

2. Define Mode – Pick a Clearly-Defined Topic, Neither Too Broad, Nor Too Narrow

3. Ideate Mode – F**king Think

4. Prototype – Write Your F**king Thoughts Down

5. Test Mode – Give What You’ve Written to Someone You Trust to Read It and Let You Know if It Sucks

Yep, it all seems pretty obvious when you put it like that! Businesses are always searching for a new billion dollar product idea, but unfortunately innovation is risky and expensive. It’s easy to see how consultants might fool businesses into paying big bucks for a simple solution that promises to take all the risk and expense out of trying new product ideas.

A second criticism suggests it’s just plain impossible for a business to ‘switch on’ design thinking and immediately start innovating and building winning products. There are many factors that determine how well a business innovates and these are often very hard (and slow) to change. To name a few – how much risk they are willing to take, how failure is treated and how well cross functional teams communicate.

Critics of consultants who sell agile development methodologies say similar things. You can’t just become ‘agile’ and reap the benefits overnight. The cultural changes required are hard, will piss a lot of people off and take a lot of time.

So is design thinking a complete waste of time?

No, not at all. If your business is used to moving fast and adapting quickly to change, design thinking could make a real difference to how you design and build products.

For everyone else, just thinking about how to better understand the needs of your users and encouraging teams to collaborate and exchange ideas is worth the price of admission alone.