UX glossary · engl. Design Thinking
Design Thinking
Design thinking is an approach that helps teams understand a problem from the perspective of the people affected and then develop, try out and improve solutions in quick loops.
Imagine a public library that has been losing members for years. Management wants to commission an app because “everyone has an app now.” One team suggests finding out first why people stay away. After a few conversations, a pattern appears: many visitors never came for the books. They were looking for a quiet place to work, and there are hardly any.
That shift in perspective is the heart of design thinking.
Explained simply
Design thinking is a way of solving problems where, at the start, nobody really knows what the problem is. Instead of building a solution right away, you first look at the people affected, reframe the actual problem and then try out several ideas quickly and cheaply.
Think of a good doctor. She doesn’t prescribe medication the moment you say “headache.” She asks questions, observes, forms a hypothesis and checks whether the treatment works. Design thinking applies the same pattern to products, services and processes.
The approach was shaped mainly by the design firm IDEO and the d.school at Stanford University, which officially opened in 2005 under IDEO founder David Kelley. Tim Brown, then CEO of IDEO, helped popularize it with his 2008 Harvard Business Review article “Design Thinking.” In Germany, the HPI School of Design Thinking in Potsdam has offered courses since 2007.
The five phases
The d.school describes five phases, which it calls “modes”:
- Empathize: Observe people, talk to them and learn about their daily lives, for example through user research.
- Define: Condense what you learned into a clear problem statement, often with the help of a persona.
- Ideate: Collect lots of ideas without judging them right away.
- Prototype: Make the best ideas tangible quickly, for instance as a paper prototype.
- Test: Try the prototypes with real people and learn from what happens.
Keep in mind that the phases are not an assembly line. Nielsen Norman Group stresses that teams keep jumping back, for example from testing to empathizing. It also adds a sixth phase: implementation. A related model with a similar logic is the Double Diamond.
An example
Back to the library. Before: management plans an app with catalog search and loan renewals. The budget and the agency are already lined up.
After: the team holds ten short interviews, defines the problem as “people can’t find a quiet place to work in town” and spends two weeks testing a simple reservation system for reading room seats using a notice board and a form. The seats book up fast. Only then does management decide where digital development is actually worth the money.
Common misconceptions
Design thinking isn’t a two-day workshop full of colorful sticky notes. Without real conversations with the people affected and without testing, it’s just theater. It also isn’t reserved for designers. Mixed teams from engineering, business and design benefit the most. To see how it fits with agile workflows, read How to Easily Use Agile UX in Your Project.
In practice
- Talk to real people. Even five to ten conversations often bring surprises that no office meeting ever will.
- Frame the problem before collecting solutions. A good problem statement describes who wants to achieve what and where they get stuck.
- Test cheaply and early. Paper, a notice board or a clickable draft is enough to check an idea before money goes into building it.
Related terms
Double Diamond, Human-Centered Design, Prototype, User Research