Generalidades - DT - GPS

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Generalidades -DT -GPS

5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process
Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving

problems. It’s extremely useful in tackling complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown,
by understanding the human needs involved, by re-framing the problem in human-centric
ways, by creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and by adopting a hands-on
approach in prototyping and testing. Understanding these five stages of Design Thinking will
empower anyone to apply the Design Thinking methods in order to solve complex problems
that occur around us — in our companies, our countries, and even our planet.
In his 1969 seminal text on design methods, “The Sciences of the Artificial,” Nobel Prize
laureate Herbert Simon outlined one of the first formal models of the Design Thinking
process. Simon's model consists of seven major stages, each with component stages and
activities, and was largely influential in shaping some of the most widely used Design
Thinking process models today. There are many variants of the Design Thinking process in
use today, and while they may have different numbers of stages ranging from three to
seven, they are all based upon the same principles featured in Simon’s 1969 model.
We will focus on the five-stage model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at
Stanford (d.school). d.school is the leading university when it comes to teaching Design
Thinking. The five stages of Design Thinking, according to d.school, are as follows:
Empathise, Define (the problem), Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Let’s take a closer look at the
five different stages of Design Thinking.
1. Empathise
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the
problem you are trying to solve. This involves consulting experts to find out more about the
area of concern through observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand
their experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the physical
environment to have a deeper personal understanding of the issues involved. Empathy is
crucial to a human-centred design process such as Design Thinking, and empathy allows
design thinkers to set aside his or her own assumptions about the world in order to gain
insight into users and their needs.
Depending on time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at this

stage to use during the next stage and to develop the best possible understanding of the
users, their needs, and the problems that underlie the development of that particular
product.
2. Define (the Problem)

During the Define stage, you put together the information you have created and gathered
during the Empathise stage. You will analyse your observations and synthesise them in
order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this point.
You should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centred manner.
To illustrate, instead of defining the problem as your own wish or a need of the company
such as, “We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by
5%,” a much better way to define the problem would be, “Teenage girls need to eat
nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow.”
The Define stage will help the designers in your team gather great ideas to establish
features, functions, and any other elements that will allow them to solve the problems or, at
the very least, allow users to resolve issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty. In
the Define stage you will start to progress to the third stage, Ideate, by asking questions
which can help you look for ideas for solutions by asking: “How might we… encourage
teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and also involves your company’s
food-product or service?”
3. Ideate
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are ready to start
generating ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathise
stage, and you’ve analysed and synthesised your observations in the Define stage, and
ended up with a human-centered problem statement. With this solid background yourself
and your team members can start to 'think outside the box' to identify new solutions to the
problem statement you’ve created, and you can start to look for alternative ways of viewing
the problem. There are hundreds of Ideation techniques such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite,
Worst Possible Idea, and SCAMPER. Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea sessions are
typically used to stimulate free thinking and to expand the problem space. It is important to
get as many ideas or problem solutions as possible at the beginning of the Ideation phase.
You should pick some other Ideation techniques by the end of the Ideation phase to help
you investigate and test your ideas to find the best way to either solve a problem, or
provide the elements required to circumvent the problem.
4. Prototype
The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the
product or specific features found within the product, so they can investigate the problem
solutions generated in the previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the
team itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team.
This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each
of the problems identified during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented
within the prototypes and, one-by-one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved
and re-examined, or rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences. By the end of this stage,
the design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent within the product, the
problems that are present, and have a better/more informed perspective of how real users
would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.
5. Test
Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions
identified during the prototyping phase. This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in
an iterative process, the results generated during the testing phase are often used
to redefine one or more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions
of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to empathise. Even during this phase,
alterations and refinements are made in order to rule out problem solutions and derive as
deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.
The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

We may have outlined a direct and linear Design Thinking process in which one stage
seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at user testing. However, in practice,
the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion. For example, more than
one stage may be conducted concurrently by different groups within the design team, or
the designers may collect information and prototype during the entire project so as to
enable them to bring their ideas to life and visualise the problem solutions. Also, results
from the testing phase may reveal some insights about users, which in turn may lead to
another brainstorming session (ideation) or the development of new prototypes.
It is important to note that the five stages are not always sequential — they do not have to
follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As
such, the stages should be understood as different modes that contribute to a project, rather
than sequential steps. However, the amazing thing about the five-stage Design Thinking
model is that it systematises and identifies the 5 stages/modes you would expect to carry out
in a design project – and in any innovative problem solving project. Every project will involve
activities specific to the product under development, but the central idea behind each stage
remains the same.
Design Thinking should not be seen as a concrete and inflexible approach to design; the
component stages identified in the image above serve as a guide to the activities that you
would typically find. In order to gain the purest and most informative insights for your
particular project, these stages might be switched, conducted concurrently and repeated
several times in order to expand the solution space, and narrow down on the best possible
solutions.
As you will note from the image above, one of the main benefits of the five-stage model is
the way in which knowledge acquired at the later stages can feedback to earlier stages.
Information is continually used to both inform the understanding of the problem and
solution spaces, and to redefine the problem(s). This creates a perpetual loop, in which the
designers continue to gain new insights, develop new ways of viewing the product and its
possible uses, and develop a greater understanding of the users and the problems they face.
The Take Away

In essence, the Design Thinking process is iterative, flexible and focused on collaboration
between designers and users, with an emphasis on bringing ideas to life based on how real
users think, feel and behave.
Design thinking tackles complex problem by:
1. Empathising: Understanding the human needs involved.

2. Defining: Re-framing and defining the problem in human-centric ways.
3. Ideating: Creating many ideas in ideation sessions.
4. Prototyping: Adopting a hands-on approach in prototyping.
5. Testing: Developing a prototype/solution to the problem.
References & Where to Learn More

Herbert Simon, Sciences of the Artificial (3rd Edition),
1996: https://monoskop.org/images/9/9c/Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artifici
al_3rd_ed.pdf
Gerd Waloszek, Introduction to Design Thinking,

2012: https://experience.sap.com/skillup/introduction-to-design-thinking/
Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process:

Empathise with Your Users
Design Thinking cannot begin without a deeper understanding of the people you are
designing for. To gain those insights, it is important for design thinkers to empathise with the
people they’re designing for to understand their needs, thoughts, emotions and motivations.
The good news is that there are a wide range of methods you can use in order to learn more
about people. Even better news: with enough mindfulness and experience, anyone can become
masters at empathising with people.
"Engaging with people directly reveals a tremendous amount about the way they think and
the values they hold. Sometimes these thoughts and values are not obvious to the people
who hold them. A deep engagement can surprise both the designer and the designee by the
unanticipated insights that are different from what they actually do - are strong indicators
of their deeply held beliefs about the way the world is."
– d. School Bootcamp Bootleg, 2013
Developing Empathy towards People

The first stage (or mode) of the d.school’s Design Thinking process involves developing a
sense of empathy towards the people you are designing for, to gain insights into what they
need, what they want, how they behave, feel, and think, and why they demonstrate such
behaviours, feelings, and thoughts when interacting with products in a real-world setting.
Author/Copyright holder:
Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
The five stages are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order and
they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be
understood as different modes that contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps.
To gain empathy towards people, design thinkers often observe them in their natural
environment passively, or engage with them in interviews. Also, design thinkers should try
to imagine themselves in the people’s environment, or stepping into their shoes as the
saying goes, in order to gain a deeper understanding of users’ situations. The following are
some methods from d.school Bootcamp Bootleg that will allow you to gain empathy
towards your users.
Assuming a Beginner’s Mindset
Author/Copyright holder: Justin Peterson. Copyright terms and licence: CC0 1.0
To empathise with users, designers should try to always adopt the mindset of a beginner.
What this means is that designers (or design thinkers) should always try to leave their own
assumptions and experiences behind when making observations. Our life experiences
create assumptions within us, which we use to explain and make sense of the world around
us. However, this very process affects our ability to truly empathise with the people we
observe. Since it is impossible to completely let go of our assumptions, we should
constantly and consciously remind ourselves to assume a beginner’s mindset. It’s useful to
always remind yourself to not judge what you observe, to question everything, even if you
think you know the answer, and to really listen to what others are saying.
Ask What? How? Why?
Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
By asking the three questions — What? How? Why? — we are able to move from concrete
observations that are free from assumptions to more abstract motivations driving the
actions we have observed. During our observations, for instance, it might be helpful to
separately record the “Whats”, “Hows” and “Whys” of a person’s single observation.
In “What”, we record the details (not assumptions) of what has happened. In “How”, we
analyse how the person is doing what they are doing (is the person exerting a lot of effort?
Does the person have a smile or a frown on their face?). Finally, in “Why”, we make
educated guesses as related to the person’s motivations and emotions. These motivations
can then be tested with users.
Photo and Video User-based Studies
Photographing or recording target users, like other empathising methods, can help you
uncover needs that people have which they may or may not be aware of. It can help guide
your innovation efforts, identify the right end users to design for, and discover emotions
that guide behaviours.
In user camera-based studies, users are photographed or filmed either: (a) in a natural
setting; or (b) during sessions with the design team or consultants you’ve hired to gather
information. For example, you might identify a group of people that possess certain
characteristics that are representative of your target audience. You record them while
they’re experiencing the problem you’re aiming to solve. You can refresh your memory at a
later time with things people said, feelings that were evoked, and behaviours that were
identified. You can then easily share this with the rest of your team.
Author/Copyright holder: chiesADIbeinasco. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
Personal photo and video recordings made by the target group themselves provide designers
with the opportunity to empathise with the users’ personal experiences, while not disturbing
the user with their own presence.
Personal Photo and Video Journals
In this method, you hand over the camera to your users and give them instructions, to take
pictures of, or to video record their activities during a specified period of time. The
advantage is that you don’t interfere or disturb the user with your personal presence, even
though they will adapt and change their normal behaviour slightly as they know that you’ll
watch the video or photo journal later. In a similar way to using personas, by engaging real
people, designers gain invaluable personal experiences and stories that keep the human
aspect of design firmly in mind throughout the whole process.
At IDEO they… “use this method to go beyond an in-person Interview to better understand
a person’s context, the people who surround them, community dynamics, and the journey
through how they use a product or service. Photojournals can help create a foundation for
richer discussion as they prime an individual before an interview which means they start
thinking about the subject a few days in advance.” – IDEO, Designkit.org, Photojournal
Interviews
One-on-one interviews can be a productive way to connect with real people and gain
insights. Talking directly to the people you’re designing for may be the best way to
understand needs, hopes, desires, and goals. The benefits are similar to video and camera-
based studies, but interviews are generally structured and the interviewer will typically
have a set of questions they wish to ask the interviewee. Interviews, therefore, offer the
personal intimacy and directness of other observation methods, while allowing the design
team to target specific areas of information to direct the Design Thinking process.
Most of the work happens before the interviews: team members will brainstorm to
generate questions to ask users and create themes or topics around the interview
questions so they can flow smoothly from one to another.
Engaging with Extreme Users
By focusing on the extremes, the problems, needs, and methods of solving problems are
magnified. First, you must identify the extremes of your potential user base, then you
should engage with this group to establish their feelings, thoughts and behaviours, and
then look at the needs you might find in all users. It is important to note that the purpose of
engaging with extreme users is not to develop solutions for extreme users, but to sieve out
problems that mainstream users might have problems voicing out; however, in many cases,
the needs of extreme users tend to overlap with the needs of the majority of the population.
Analogous Empathy
Using analogies can help the design team to develop new insights. By comparing one
domain with another, different solutions can be conjured that would not necessarily come
to mind when working within the constraints of one discipline. For example, the highly
stressful and time-sensitive procedure of operating on a patient in the emergency room of a
hospital might be analogous to the process of refueling and replacing the tires of a race car
in a pit stop. Some of the methods one might use during analogous empathy include
comparing your problem and another in a different field, creating an 'inspiration board'
with notes and pictures, and focusing on similar aspects between multiple areas.
Sharing Inspiring Stories
Each person in a design team will collect different pieces of information, have different
thoughts, and come up with different solutions. For this reason, you should share your
inspiring stories to collect all of the team members’ research, from field studies, interviews,
etc. By sharing the stories that each member has observed, the team can get up to speed on
progress, draw out meaning from the stories, and capture interesting details of the
observation work.
Bodystorming
Bodystorming is the act of physically experiencing a situation in order to truly immerse

oneself in the users’ environment. This requires a considerable amount of planning and
effort, as the environment must be filled with the artefacts present in the real world
environment, and the general atmosphere/feel must accurately depict the users’ setting.
Bodystorming puts the team in the users’ shoes, which will increase the designers’ feelings
of empathy and help them generate the most fitting solutions.
The Take Away

There are various methods available to the Design Thinking team to enable them to
empathise with users. Collectively, these methods offer us insight into the users’ needs, and
how they think, feel, and behave. Each method attempts to enhance the design team's
understanding of their target user and market, and to appreciate exactly what users need
and want from their product(s). Observation methods will not only enable us to gather raw
data, statistics, and demographics, but will also offer opportunities for us to draw insights
that can be used in designing a solution. Empathising with users is an essential component
of the Design Thinking process; to ignore the benefits of learning from others is to forget
what Design Thinking is truly about.

d.school Bootcamp Bootleg, 2013:
https://dschool.stanford.edu/resources/the-bootcamp-bootleg
IDEO.org: http://www.designkit.org/methods
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Ashton Bingham. Copyright terms and licence: CC0
Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define

the Problem and Interpret the Results
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 Design Thinking process, which is called the Empathise stage.
When you learn how to master the definition of your problem, problem statement, or
design challenge, it will greatly improve your Design Thinking process and result. Why? A
great definition of your problem statement will guide you and your team’s work and kick
start the ideation process in the right direction. It will bring about clarity and focus to the
design space. On the contrary, if you don’t pay enough attention to defining your problem,
you will work like a person stumbling in the dark.
In the Define stage you synthesise your observations about your users from the first stage, the
Empathise stage. A great definition of your problem statement will guide you and your team’s
work and kick start the ideation process (third stage) in the right direction. The five stages
are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order and they can often
occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be understood as
different modes that contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps.
Analysis and Synthesis

Before we go into what makes a great problem statement, it’s useful to first gain an
understanding of the relationship between analysis and synthesis that many design
thinkers will go through in their projects. Tim Brown, CEO of the international design
consultancy firm IDEO, wrote in his book Change by Design: How Design Thinking
Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation, that analysis and synthesis are “equally
important, and each plays an essential role in the process of creating options and making
choices.”
Analysis is about breaking down complex concepts and problems into smaller, easier-to-
understand constituents. We do that, for instance, during the first stage of the Design
Thinking process, the Empathise stage, when we observe and document details that relate
to our users. Synthesis, on the other hand, involves creatively piecing the puzzle together
to form whole ideas. This happens during the Define stage when we organise, interpret,
and make sense of the data we have gathered to create a problem statement.
Although analysis takes place during the Empathise stage and synthesis takes place during
the Define stage, they do not only happen in the distinct stages of Design Thinking. In fact,
analysis and synthesis often happen consecutively throughout all stages of the Design
Thinking process. Design thinkers often analyse a situation before synthesising new
insights, and then analyse their synthesised findings once more to create more detailed
syntheses.
What Makes a Good Problem Statement?

A problem statement is important to a Design Thinking project, because it will guide you
and your team and provides a focus on the specific needs that you have uncovered. It also
creates a sense of possibility and optimism that allows team members to spark off ideas in
the Ideation stage, which is the third and following stage in the Design Thinking process. A
good problem statement should thus have the following traits. It should be:
• Human-centred. This requires you to frame your problem statement according to

specific users, their needs and the insights that your team has gained in the
Empathise phase. The problem statement should be about the people the team is
trying to help, rather than focussing on technology, monetary returns or product
specifications.
• Broad enough for creative freedom. This means that the problem statement
should not focus too narrowly on a specific method regarding the implementation of
the solution. The problem statement should also not list technical requirements, as
this would unnecessarily restrict the team and prevent them from exploring areas
that might bring unexpected value and insight to the project.
• Narrow enough to make it manageable. On the other hand, a problem statement
such as , “Improve the human condition,” is too broad and will likely cause team
members to easily feel daunted. Problem statements should have sufficient
constraints to make the project manageable.
As well as the three traits mentioned above, it also helps to begin the problem statement
with a verb, such as “Create”, “Define”, and “Adapt”, to make the problem become more
action-oriented.
How to Define a Problem Statement

Methods of interpreting results and findings from the observation oriented Empathise
phase include:
Space Saturate and Group and Affinity Diagrams – Clustering and Bundling Ideas and Facts
Author/Copyright holder: Giorgio Montersino. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0
In space saturate and group, designers collate their observations and findings into one
place, to create a collage of experiences, thoughts, insights, and stories. The term 'saturate'
describes the way in which the entire team covers or saturates the display with their
collective images, notes, observations, data, experiences, interviews, thoughts, insights, and
stories in order to create a wall of information to inform the problem-defining process. It
will then be possible to draw connections between these individual elements, or nodes, to
connect the dots, and to develop new and deeper insights, which help define the
problem(s) and develop potential solutions. In other words: go from analysis to synthesis.
Empathy Mapping
An empathy map consists of four quadrants laid out on a board, paper or table, which
reflect the four key traits that the users demonstrated/possessed during the observation
stage. The four quadrants refer to what the users: Said, Did, Thought, and Felt.
Determining what the users said and did are relatively easy; however, determining what
they thought and felt is based on careful observation of how they behaved and responded
to certain activities, suggestions, conversations etc. (including subtle cues such as body
language displayed and the tone of voice used).
Point Of View – Problem Statement
A Point Of view (POV) is a meaningful and actionable problem statement, which will
allow you to ideate in a goal-oriented manner. Your POV captures your design vision by
defining the RIGHT challenge to address in the ideation sessions. A POV involves reframing
a design challenge into an actionable problem statement. You articulate a POV by
combining your knowledge about the user you are designing for, his or her needs and the
insights which you’ve come to know in your research or Empathise mode. Your POV should
be an actionable problem statement that will drive the rest of your design work.
You articulate a POV by combining these three elements – user, need, and insight. You can
articulate your POV by inserting your information about your user, the needs and your
insights in the following sentence:
[User . . . (descriptive)] needs [need . . . (verb)] because [insight. . . (compelling)]

“How Might We” Questions
When you’ve defined your design challenge in a POV, you can start to generate ideas to
solve your design challenge. You can start using your POV by asking a specific question
starting with: “How Might We” or “in what ways might we”. How Might We (HMW)
questions are questions that have the potential to spark ideation sessions such as
brainstorms. They should be broad enough for a wide range of solutions, but narrow
enough that specific solutions can be created for them. “How Might We” questions should
be based on the observations you’ve gathered in the Empathise stage of the Design
Thinking process.
For example, you have observed that youths tend not to watch TV programs on the TV at
home, some questions which can guide and spark your ideation session could be:
• How might we make TV more social, so youths feel more engaged?

• How might we enable TV programs to be watched anywhere, at anytime?
• How might we make watching TV at home more exciting?
The HMW questions open up to Ideation sessions where you explore ideas, which can help
you solve your design challenge in an innovative way.
Why-How Laddering
"As a general rule, asking 'why’ yields more abstract statements and asking 'how’yields
specific statements. Often times abstract statements are more meaningful but not as
directly actionable, and the opposite is true of more specific statements."
– d.school, Method Card, Why-How Laddering
For this reason, during the Define stage designers seek to define the problem, and will
generally ask why. Designers will use why to progress to the top of the so-called Why-How
Ladder where the ultimate aim is to find out how you can solve one or more problems.
Your How Might We questions will help you move from the Define stage and into the next
stage in Design Thinking, the Ideation stage, where you start looking for specific innovative
solutions. In other words you could say that the Why-How Laddering starts with
asking Why to work out How they can solve the specific problem or design challenge.
The Take Away

The second stage in a typical Design Thinking process is called the Define phase. It involves
collating data from the observation stage (first stage called Empathise) to define the
design problems and challenges. By using methods for synthesising raw data into a
meaningful and usable body of knowledge — such as empathy mapping and space
saturate and group — we will be able to create an actionable design problem statement
or Point of View that inspire the generation of ideas to solve it. The How Might
We questions open up to Ideation sessions where you explore ideas, which can help you
solve your design challenge in an innovative way.

d.school: Space Saturate and Group,
2011: https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/65da6/Space_Saturation_and_Grou
p.html
d.school: Empathy Mapping: https://dschool-

old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/3d994/empathy_map.html
d.school: “How might we”

questions: http://crowdresearch.stanford.edu/w/img_auth.php/f/ff/How_might_we.pdf
d.school: Why-How Laddering: https://dschool-

old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/afdc3/HowWhy_Laddering.html
d.school: Point-of-View Madlib: https://dschool-

old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/22e39/POV_Madlibs.html
d.school: Point-of-View Want Ad: https://dschool-

old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/c0cd1/POV_WantAd.html
d.school: Powers of 10: https://dschool-

old.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/faf1d/powers_of_ten.html
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: gdsteam. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate

In the Ideation stage, design thinkers spark off ideas — in the form of questions and solutions
— through creative and curious activities such as Brainstorms and Worst Possible Idea. In
this article, we’ll introduce you to some of the best Ideation methods and guidelines that help
facilitate successful Ideation sessions and encourage active participation from members.
When facilitated in a successful way, Ideation is an exciting process. The goal is to generate
a large number of ideas — ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas — that the
team can then cut down into the best, most practical and innovative ones.
“Ideation is the mode of the design process in which you concentrate on idea generation.
Mentally it represents a process of “going wide” in terms of concepts and outcomes.
Ideation provides both the fuel and also the source material for building prototypes and
getting innovative solutions into the hands of your users.”
– d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE
The main aim of the Ideation stage is to use creativity and innovation in order to develop
solutions. By expanding the solution space, the design team will be able to look beyond the
usual methods of solving problems in order to find better, more elegant, and satisfying
solutions to problems that affect a user's experience of a product.
In the Design Thinking process, the Ideation stage often follows the first two stages, which are
the Empathise stage and Define stage. There is a significant overlap between the Define and
Ideation stages of a typical Design Thinking process. Interpreting information and defining
the problem(s) and ideation both drive the generation of problem solutions. This overlap is
represented in the types of methods design teams employ during these two stages. For
example, Bodystorm and “How Might We” questions are often used in both of these stages.
Ideation Will Help You:

• Ask the right questions and innovate.
• Step beyond the obvious solutions and therefore increase the innovation potential
of your solution.
• Bring together perspectives and strengths of team members.
• Uncover unexpected areas of innovation.
• Create volume and variety in your innovation options.
• Get obvious solutions out of your heads, and drive your team beyond them.
Ideation Methods to Spark Innovative Ideas
There are hundreds of ideation methods. Some methods are merely renamed or slightly
adapted versions of more foundational techniques. Here you’ll get brief overview of some
of the best methods:
• Brainstorm
• Braindump
• Brainwrite
• Brainwalk
• Challenge Assumptions
• SCAMPER
• Mindmap
• Sketch or Sketchstorm
• Storyboard
• Analogies
• Provocation
• Movement
• Bodystorm
• Gamestorming
• Cheatstorm
• Crowdstorm
• Co-Creation Workshops
• Prototype
• Creative Pause
Active Facilitation
Although many of us may have previously participated in a Brainstorm session, it is not
always easy to facilitate a truly fruitful ideation session, which may be the reason why
many of us have had negative experiences in the past. However, Ideation
sessions can indeed be fun and exciting, but they demand a lot of preparation and team
member concentration in order to be fruitful. To sit the team down with a blank piece of
paper and ask them to come up with ideas will likely result in failure. Likewise, to have
everyone shout out their own ideas is likely to result in failure.
People need guidance, inspiration and activities, in a physical and cognitive manner, in
order to get the process started. Ideation is a creative and concentrated process; those
involved should be provided with an environment that facilitates free, open, and the non-
judgemental sharing of ideas.
In Ideation sessions, it’s important to create the right type of environment to help create a
creative work culture with a curious, courageous, and concentrated atmosphere. Instead of
using a boardroom with the CEO sitting at the head of the table, Design Thinking and
Ideation sessions require a space in which everyone is equal. The Ideation room must have
sufficient space for people to feel comfortable, but the atmosphere shouldn't be sterile, and
team members shouldn't have to shout in order to be heard. You should also designate
someone to take down contributors' ideas and draw/write them on the
whiteboard/wall/poster. If the process begins to slow down and people seem to be
running into a dead-end, the facilitator should impose constraints, such as: "what if there
was no top-level navigation bar?" or "How-might-we go about the task if we were 8 years
old?" Alternatively, you might want to set targets, such as filling a brainstorming sheet
within ten minutes. To start understanding what it takes to facilitate a successful Ideation
session, we’ll take a closer look at the best Brainstorming rules.
Brainstorming Rules
At its most basic level, a Brainstorm session involves sprouting related points from a
central idea. Brainstorming is one of the primary methods employed during the Ideation
stage of a typical Design Thinking process. Brainstorming is a great way to generate many
ideas by leveraging the collective thinking of the group, by engaging with each other,
listening, and building on other ideas. This method involves focusing on one problem or
challenge at a time, while team members build on each other’s responses and ideas with
the aim of generating as many potential solutions as possible. These can then be refined
and narrowed down to the best solution(s). Participants must then select the best, the most
practical, or the most innovative ideas from the options they’ve come up with.
We’ve summarised the best practices and brain storming rules from the Institute of Design
at Stanford (d.school) and the successful design company, IDEO who celebrates Design
Thinking.
1. Set a time limit

2. Start with a problem statement, point of view, possible questions, a plan, or a
goal and stay focused on the topic: Identify the core subject or the main aim of the
exercise. For example, what are you trying to achieve? Are you trying to improve a
certain feature? Are you focusing on ways to improve the overall experience?
Condense the main issue into a problem statement and condense it into a short
“How Might We” sentence. You may even be able to synthesise this into single word.
Your ideas should always branch off from this central headline. Stay on Topic: It is
easy to veer off and take lots of different directions during brainstorming sessions,
especially when you are trying to be open-minded and unconstrained in your efforts
to come up with ideas It is important that members stay on topic. Focus is essential;
otherwise, the process can become confusing, or ideas can become muddled and
cross between solutions for other problems. Every effort should be made by the
facilitator to keep members on the central theme and goal. You might even want to
designate a particular brainstormer to maintain the thread and prevent team
members veering off course.
3. Defer judgement or criticism, including non-verbal: The brainstorming
environment is not the time to argue or for question other members’ ideas; each
member has a responsibility to foster relations that advance the session. For this
reason, judgement comes later so rather than blocking an idea, you and your other
team members are encouraged to come up with your own ideas that sprout off from
those provided by the other members of your team.
4. Encourage weird, wacky and wild ideas: Once again, as brainstorming is a
creative activity, each member should try to encourage other members and create
an environment in which they feel comfortable verbalising their ideas. Free thinking
may produce some ideas that are wide off the mark, but brainstorming is about
drawing up as many ideas as possible which are then whittled down until the best
possible option remains.
5. Aim for quantity: Brainstorming is effectively a creative exercise, in which design
thinkers are encouraged to let their imaginations run wild. The emphasis is on
quantity, rather than quality at this stage.
6. Build on each others' ideas: One idea typically leads on from another; by
considering the thoughts, opinions, and ideas of other team members during the
brainstorming session, new insights and perspectives can be achieved, which then
inform one's own ideas. Thus, the team will continue to build ideas which hopefully
become progressively more refined and targeted towards the central issue.
7. Be visual: The physical act of writing something down or drawing an image in order
to bring an idea to life can help people think up new ideas or view the same ideas in
different way. The brainstorming session is more likely to evolve if team members
visualise and bring ideas to life rather than rely on discussion alone.
8. One conversation at a time: Design thinkers (or brainstormers) should focus on
one point or conversation at a time so as not to muddy their thinking and lose sight
of the thread or current objective.
Ideation Methods to Select Ideas

Once the Ideation session is complete, the ideas must be collected, categorised, refined and
narrowed down, so the team is able to select the best solutions, ideas, and strategies from a
shortlist. These methods can help you select the best idea at the end of an Ideation session:
• Post-it Voting or Dot Voting.
• Four Categories Method
• Bingo Selection
• Idea Affinity Maps
• Now Wow How Matrix
• Six Thinking Hats
• Lean Startup Machine Idea Validation Board
• Idea Selection Criteria
In the following section, we’ll provide you with a brief introduction to some of the best
methods.
Post-it Voting or Dot Voting
In post-it voting, all members are given a number of votes (three to four should do) in
order to choose their favorite ideas. Ideas that are generated in the Ideation sessions are
written down on individual post-its, and members can vote by using stickers or a marker to
make a dot on the post-it note corresponding to the ideas they like. This process allows
every member to have an equal say in choosing from the shortlisted ideas.
Four Categories Method
The four categories method involves dividing ideas according to their relative abstractness,
ranging from the most rational choice to the 'long shot' choice. The four categories are: the
rational choice, the most likely to delight, the darling, and the long shot. Members then
decide upon one or two ideas for each of these categories. This method ensures that the
team covers all grounds, from most the practical to those ideas with the most potential to
deliver innovative solutions.
Bingo Selection
Similarly, the Bingo selection method inspires members to divide ideas. However, in this
method, contributors are encouraged to split ideas according to a variety of form factors,
such as their potential application in a physical prototype, a digital prototype, and an
experience prototype.
The Take Away

Ideation is often the most exciting stage in a Design Thinking project because almost
unrestrained free thinking can occur within the given field. In the Ideation stage, the aim is
to generate a large quantity of ideas — ideas that potentially inspire newer, better ideas —
which the team can then filter and narrow down into the best, most practical, or most
innovative ones. There are many great methods that can help the design team during the
Ideation sessions.

d.school: Brainstorming
Rules: https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/196f3/Brainstorming_Rules.html
d.school: “How might we”

questions: http://crowdresearch.stanford.edu/w/img_auth.php/f/ff/How_might_we.pdf
d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE:

https://dschool-
old.stanford.edu/sandbox/groups/designresources/wiki/36873/attachments/74b3d/Mo
deGuideBOOTCAMP2010L.pdf?sessionID=1b6a96f1e2a50a3b1b7c3f09e58c40a062d7d55
3
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Adriadne. Copyright terms and licence: CC0
Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process:

Prototype
One of the best ways to gain insights in a Design Thinking process is to carry out some form of
prototyping. This method involves producing an early, inexpensive, and scaled down version of
the product in order to reveal any problems with the current design. Prototyping offers
designers the opportunity to bring their ideas to life, test the practicability of the current
design, and to potentially investigate how a sample of users think and feel about a product.
Prototypes are often used in the final, testing phase in a Design Thinking process in order
to determine how users behave with the prototype, to reveal new solutions to problems, or
to find out whether or not the implemented solutions have been successful. The results
generated from these tests are then used to redefine one or more of the problems
established in the earlier phases of the project, and to build a more robust understanding of
the problems users may face when interacting with the product in the intended
environment.
When designers want to determine and understand exactly how users will interact with a
product, the most obvious method is to test how users interact with the product. Prototypes
are built so that designers can think about their solutions in a different way (tangible product
rather than abstract ideas), as well as to fail quickly and cheaply, so that less time and money
is invested in an idea that turns out to be a bad one. The five stages in the Design Thinking
process are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order, they can
often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively. As such, the stages should be understood as
different modes that contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps.
When designers want to determine and understand exactly how users will interact with a
product, the most obvious method is to test how the users interact with the product. It
would be foolhardy and pointless to produce a finished product for the users to test.
Instead, designers can provide simple, scaled down versions of their products, which can
then be used in order to observe, record, judge, and measure user performance levels
based on specific elements, or the users’ general behaviour, interactions, and reactions to
the overall design. These earlier versions are known as prototypes; they are not necessarily
in the medium of the finished product as this may not be cost-effective in terms of time or
money.
Prototypes are built so that designers can think about their solutions in a different way
(tangible product rather than abstract ideas), as well as to fail quickly and cheaply, so that
less time and money is invested in an idea that turns out to be a bad one. Tim Brown, CEO
of the international design and innovation firm IDEO, said it best:
“They slow us down to speed us up. By taking the time to prototype our ideas, we avoid
costly mistakes such as becoming too complex too early and sticking with a weak idea for
too long.”
– Tim Brown
Author/Copyright holder: Rodolphe Courtier. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0
For instance, when developing software, a design team may produce a number of paper
prototypes, as shown in the image above, which the user can gradually work through in
order to demonstrate to the design team or evaluators how they may tackle certain tasks or
problems. When developing tangible devices, such as the computer mouse, designers may
use a number of different materials to enable them to test the basic technology underlying
the product. With advances in 3D printing technology, producing prototypes is now often a
more instant and low cost process, and as a result this has allowed designers to provide
stakeholders with accurate and testable/useable replica models before settling upon a
particular design.
Types of Prototyping
Prototyping methods are generally divided into two separate categories: low- and high-
fidelity prototyping.
Low-Fidelity Prototyping
Low-fidelity prototyping involves the use of basic models or examples of the product being
tested. For example, the model might be incomplete and utilise just a few of the features
that will be available in the final design, or it might be constructed using materials not
intended for the finished article, such as wood, paper, or metal for a plastic product. Low-
fidelity prototypes can either be models that are cheaply and easily made, or simply
recounts or visualisations of them.
Examples of low-fidelity prototypes:
• Storyboarding.
• Sketching (although Bill Buxton, a pioneer of human-computer interaction, argues
sketching is not an example of prototyping).
• Card sorting.
• 'Wizard of Oz'.
Pros of Low-Fidelity Prototyping
• Quick and inexpensive.

• Possible to make instant changes and test new iterations.
• Disposable/throw-away.
• Enables the designer to gain an overall view of the product using minimal time and
effort, as opposed to focusing on the finer details over the course of slow,
incremental changes.
• Available to all; regardless of ability and experience, we are able to produce
rudimentary versions of products in order to test users or canvas the opinions of
stakeholders.
• Encourages and fosters design thinking.
Cons of Low-Fidelity Prototyping
•An inherent lack of realism. Due to the basic and sometimes sketchy nature of low-fi
prototypes, the applicability of results generated by tests involving simple early
versions of a product may lack validity.
• Depending on your product, the production of low-fi prototypes may not be
appropriate for your intended users. For instance, if you are developing a product
bound by a number of contextual constraints and/or dispositional constraints (i.e.
physical characteristics of your user base, such as users with disabilities) then basic
versions that do not reflect the nature, appearance or feel of the finished product
may be of scant use; revealing very little of the eventual user experience.
• Such prototypes often remove control from the user, as they generally have to
interact in basic ways or simply inform an evaluator, demonstrate or write a blow-
by-blow account of how they would use the finished product.
High-Fidelity Prototyping
High-fidelity prototypes are prototypes that look and operate closer to the finished
product. For example, a 3D plastic model with movable parts (allowing users to manipulate
and interact with a device in the same manner as the final design) is high-fi in comparison
to, say, a wooden block. Likewise, an early version of a software system developed using a
design program such as Sketch or Adobe Illustrator is high-fi in comparison to a paper
prototype.
Pros of High-Fidelity Prototyping
• Engaging: the stakeholders can instantly see their vision realised and will be able to
judge how well it meets their expectations, wants and needs.
• User testing involving high-fi prototypes will allow the evaluators to gather
information with a high level of validity and applicability. The closer the prototype is
to the finished product, the more confidence the design team will have in how
people will respond to, interact with and perceive the design.
Cons of High-Fidelity Prototyping
• They generally take much longer to produce than low-fi prototypes.

• When testing prototypes, test users are more inclined to focus and comment on
superficial characteristics, as opposed to the content (Rogers, Preece, and Sharp,
2011).
• After devoting hours and hours of time producing an accurate model of how a
product will appear and behave, designers are often loathed to make changes.
• Software prototypes may give test users a false impression of how good the finished
article may be.
• Making changes to prototypes can take a long time, thus delaying the entire project
in the process. However, low-fi prototypes can usually be changed within hours, if
not minutes, for example when sketching or paper prototyping methods are utilised.
Due to the pros and cons of low-fi and high-fi prototyping, it should be no surprise that
low-fi prototyping is the usual option during the early stages of a Design Thinking project,
while high-fi prototyping is used during the later stages, when the test questions are more
refined.
Author/Copyright holder: Angeline Litvin. Copyright terms and licence: CC0
Guidelines for Prototyping

It is important to remember that prototypes are supposed to be quick and easy tests of
design solutions. Here are a few guidelines that will help you in the Prototyping stage:
• Just start building

Design Thinking has a bias towards action: that means if you have any uncertainties
about you are trying to achieve, your best bet is to just make something. Creating a
prototype will help you to think about your idea in a concrete manner, and
potentially allow you to gain insights into ways you can improve your idea.
• Don’t spend too much time
Prototyping is all about speed; the longer you spend building your prototype, the
more emotionally attached you can get with your idea, thus hampering your ability
to objectively judge its merits.
• Remember what you’re testing for
All prototypes should have a central testing issue. Do not lose sight of that issue, but
at the same time, do not get so bound to it so as to lose sight of other lessons you
could learn from.
• Build with the user in mind
Test the prototype against your expected user behaviours and user needs. Then,
learn from the gaps in expectations and realities, and improve your ideas.
The Take Away

Prototyping can be a quick and effective way of bringing your/your client's ideas to life. A
sample of your intended users or evaluators can then be observed and tested, and their
opinions can be used in order to make improvements during an iterative design process.
Prototyping methods are generally classified under one of two broad categories: low-fi or
high-fi. In the former, simple versions are produced, sometimes with whatever materials
are available, which can be tested immediately. In contrast, high-fi methods are generally
closer to the final product in terms of look, feel, and means of interaction. Whilst hi-fi
prototypes can help the design team gain valuable insights into how the product will be
received when distributed, production of hi-fi prototypes can be time-consuming and can
have the potential to significantly delay a project should changes need to be made.
Therefore, designers have a number of different prototyping methods at their disposal, but
there are drawbacks associated with both of these broad categories of testing methods and
this must be taken into consideration when deciding how best to improve your design
within the allotted time frame and budget.

Bill Buxton, What Sketches (and Prototypes) Are and Are
Not: https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bam/uicourse/Buxton-SketchesPrototypes.pdf
d.school: Wizard of Oz
Prototyping: http://futureofstuffchallenge.org/download/prototype/bootleg-
wizardofoz.pdf
d.school:
Prototyping: https://dschool.stanford.edu/groups/k12/wiki/c0be1/Prototype.html
d.school Bootcamp Bootleg, 2013: http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Annie Mole. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test
There are a wide range of testing methods available to designers during a Design Thinking
project; many of which stem from the methodologies typically used during Human-computer
interaction (HCI) and User-centered design (UCD) tests. At the heart of these methods, during
the Design Thinking process, there is a need to test out the solutions implemented within the
current design. If users experience difficulties, then the design team must revisit their list of
potential solutions and strategies in order to establish new ways of solving the same
problems. User feedback is priceless; without an understanding of what users need in order to
carry out specific activities and tasks, the iterative process will fail. Each stage should provide
new insights to inform your understanding and help you define or redefine the various
problems that the users might face. Therefore, you must seek feedback whenever possible, use
real people for testing purposes, and analyse results in order to determine what is right and
what is wrong with the product.
Testing can be undertaken throughout the progress of a Design Thinking project, although
it is most commonly undertaken concurrently with the Prototyping stage. Testing, in
Design Thinking, involves generating user feedback as related to the prototypes you have
developed, as well as gaining a deeper understanding of your users. When undertaken
correctly, the Testing stage of the project can often feed into most stages of the Design
Thinking process: it allows you to Empathise and gain a better understanding of your users;
it may lead to insights that change the way you Define your problem statement; it may
generate new ideas in the Ideation stage; and finally, it might lead to an iteration of
your Prototype.
The Iterative, Flexible (and Messy) Design Thinking Process
Testing can be undertaken throughout the progress of a Design Thinking project, although it
is most commonly undertaken concurrently with the Prototyping stage.
The five stages of Design Thinking — Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test — are
not meant to be sequential steps to be taken as the project progresses. Instead, they are
“modes” that you can take on during each phase of your project (sometimes in parallel or in
iterative loops), as and when they would facilitate the most learning and value.
For instance, prototyping can be undertaken early on in the project — ahead of ideation —
in order to discover more about the users. Simple prototypes can be developed, not just to
test ideas, but to understand more about how users operate on a daily basis. For example,
the Prototyping stage could feed into the Empathise stage.
Another example relates to the manner in which the Testing stage could feed into the
Define stage. For instance, your observations of users in tests may reveal crucial insights
that could change the way you frame the problem statement.
Design Thinking is a flexible and iterative process that can be messy and disorienting to
those who are unfamiliar. While there are no fixed, sequential steps to follow, there are
nonetheless basic building blocks behind each stage that help you build human-centred
solutions to the problems your users face.
Conducting a User Test

When conducting a user test on your prototype, it is ideal to utilise a natural setting (i.e.,
the normal environment in which your users would use the prototype). If testing in a
natural setting proves difficult, try to get users to perform a task, or play a role, when
testing the prototype. The key is to get users to be using the prototype as they would in real
life, as much as possible.
Improve Your Test Results
Conducting a test is not as simple as getting the user and the prototype in the same room
and watching what happens. In order to achieve the best learning results from each test,
here are some areas of a test that you should take into consideration:
• The prototype
Remember that you are testing the prototype, not the user. Your prototype should be
designed with a central question in mind — a question that you will put to the test
in the testing stage.
• Context and scenario
As much as possible, try to recreate the scenario in which your users are most likely
to be using the product. This way, you can learn more about the interaction (or
disruptions) between the user, the prototype and the environment, as well as how
problems might arise as a result of that interaction.
• How you interact with the user
Make sure your users know what the prototype and test are about, but do not over-
explain how the prototype works.
• How you observe and capture feedback
While collecting feedback, make sure you are not disrupting the user’s interaction
with the prototype. Find a way to collect feedback in a way that freely allows you to
observe what is happening (for example, by having a partner in the test, or by
recording an audio or video of the test).
By being deliberate about those four aspects of a test, you will be able to maximise your
learning experience. Considering the above points, here are a few things you can do to help
you properly plan your tests. We’ve summed these things up in the guidelines outlined
below.
5 Guidelines when Planning a Test

• 1.Let your users compare alternatives
Create multiple prototypes, each with a change in variable, so that your users can
compare prototypes and tell you which they prefer (and which they don’t). Users
often find it easier to elucidate what they like and dislike about prototypes when
they can compare, rather than if there was only one to interact with.
• 2.Show, don’t tell: let your users experience the prototype
Avoid over-explaining how your prototype works, or how it is supposed to solve
your user’s problems. Let the users’ experience in using the prototype speak for
itself, and observe their reactions.
• 3.Ask users to talk through their experience
When users are exploring and using the prototype, ask them to tell you what they’re
thinking. This may take some getting used to for most users, so it may be a good idea
to chat about an unrelated topic, and then prompt them by asking them questions
such as, “What are you thinking right now as you are doing this?”
• 4.Observe
Observe how your users use — either “correctly” or “incorrectly” — your prototype,
and try to resist the urge to correct them when they misinterpret how it’s supposed
to be used. User mistakes are valuable learning opportunities. Remember that you
are testing the prototype, not the user.
• 5.Ask follow up questions
Always follow up with questions, even if you think you know what the user means.
Ask questions such as, “What do you mean when you say ___?”, “How did that make
you feel?”, and most importantly, “Why?”
Remember that you are testing the prototype, not the user. Your prototype should be designed
with a central question in mind — a question that you will put to the test during the testing
stage. Make sure your users know what the prototype and test is about, but do not over-
explain how the prototype works.
Negative Feedback is Your Way to Learn and Improve
If users experience difficulties, the design team must revisit their list of potential solutions
and strategies in order to establish new ways to solve the same problems. Testing can also
help identify previously unconsidered problems. Testing sessions are most fruitful when
they are carefully planned and organized. The users’ feedback is priceless; without an
understanding of what users need in order to carry out their activities and tasks, the
iterative design process and solution will fail. As with each stage in a Design Thinking
process, testing should provide new insights to inform your understanding and to help you
define or redefine the various problems that the users might face. Therefore, you must seek
feedback wherever possible, conduct tests using real people, and analyse the results to
determine what is working well and what is causing problems. And always remember that:
The End Goal: Desirable, Feasible, and Viable Solutions

Design Thinking is a human-centred design process that may not have a fixed sequence of
steps, but will certainly have an ideal end point. The end goal of every Design Thinking
project is to design a solution that satisfies the tests of desirability, feasibility, and viability.
• Desirability relates to the focus on people; it’s what puts the “human” in human-
centred design. If a solution is to be desirable, it has to appeal to the needs,
emotions, and behaviours of the people we are designing for.
• Feasibility is about technology. Is your design solution technically possible, or
does it depend on a technology that’s yet to be invented (or good enough for regular
use)? While we should never base designs on technical specifications, our design
solutions need to be practical and implementable without incurring huge costs.
• The last test is (commercial) viability: will your design solution work as a
business? Is there an appropriate business model behind your solution, or would it
collapse after a few years without investor or donor contributions? Design Thinking
is not about making a profit, but good design solutions should always be self-
sustaining — Design Thinking is a long-term process that should ideally continue
supporting and improving itself way beyond the project deadline.
When you are able to create a prototype (or finished product or service) that satisfies the
desirability, feasibility, and viability tests, pat yourself on the back, congratulate your team,
or even do a small dance if you like: you’ve designed a solution that will impact people
around you for the better, and one that will continue to improve lives in the years to come.
The Take Away

Testing is the fifth stage in the five-stage Design Thinking process. Testing is often
undertaken concurrently with Prototyping, and performed well, it can provide many
learning opportunities to help you learn more about the user, and opportunities to refine
your prototype and even the problem statement. When conducting tests, you should pay
attention to the prototype, the context and scenario in which you are testing, how you
interact with the user, and how you observe and collect feedback. To help you plan a test,
there are a number of guidelines you can follow:
1. Let your users compare alternatives

2. Show, don’t tell: let your users experience the prototype
3. Ask users to talk through their experience
4. Observe
5. Ask follow up questions
And finally, the Design Thinking process is fluid, iterative and flexible: the different stages
often feed into one another and form iterative loops, and don’t necessarily follow any
sequence in a project. That said, the ideal end point of Design Thinking (when you know
you’ve done a great job) is when the product or service satisfies the three tests of
desirability, feasibility, and viability.

IDEO: Human-Centered Design Toolkit, 2009: https://www.ideo.com/work/human-
centered-design-toolkit/
John Caroll, Human Computer Interaction, https://www.interaction-

design.org/literature/book...
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Loy9. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY 2.0
2.7: Design Thinking Methods

Estimated time to complete: 2 mins
Design Thinking uses many practical methods to help you arrive at innovative design
solutions. We’ve created this table to help you get an overview of the various methods you can
apply in any Design Thinking process – and in any Human-centered Design process. Design
Thinking methods and Human-centered Design methods help you put the people you serve at
the center of your design process and come up with innovative solutions to difficult problems.
The amazing thing about Design Thinking is that it systematises and identifies the 5
stages/modes as well as methods you would expect to carry out in a design project.
To begin with it may make sense to think of these methods as a step-by-step guide which
can help you unleash your creativity. However, you’ll soon be able to pick and choose the
methods you need in your current design project.
Design Thinking: A Non-Linear Process
It is important to note that the five stages in Design Thinking are not always sequential —
they do not have to follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be
repeated iteratively. As such, you should understand the stages as different modes that
contribute to a project, rather than sequential steps.
The Take Away

The amazing thing about the five-stage Design Thinking model and methods are that they
systematise and identify the 5 stages/modes as well as methods you would expect to carry
out in a design project – and in any innovative problem solving project. Every project will
involve methods and activities specific to the product under development, but the central
idea behind each stage remains the same.

d.school Bootcamp Bootleg, 2013: http://dschool.stanford.edu/wp-
content/uploads/2013/10/METHODCARDS-v3-slim.pdf
IDEO: Human-Centered Design Toolkit, 2009: https://www.ideo.com/work/human-

centered-design-toolkit/
John Caroll, Human Computer Interaction, https://www.interaction-

design.org/literature/book...
Design Thinking: Select the Right Team Members

and Start Facilitating
If we apply the analogy of Design Thinking as a journey, having good travel partners is
important to safely and successfully arriving at your desired destination. The process of
Design Thinking takes you into unknown and sometimes uncomfortable territory. Members of
a Design Thinking team need to be open minded, curious, collaborative and allow their
assumptions to be challenged, ready for change, and be adaptable. Yes, that’s a lot, but it’s
worth the effort as it creates a great team spirit, work ethic – and ditto end product.
Who to Take on the Ride

Team sizes may vary depending upon the challenge at hand, and may even comprise
multiple teams working in tandem to tackle various parts of a more complex problem, or
people or teams working alone sometimes and merging together at other times.
Cross-disciplinary teams will provide you with the best results. Teams may consist of
people unfamiliar with each other, with external members brought on board either as
specialists or facilitators depending on the availability of skills. Navigating the people
dynamics will most likely be one of the toughest parts of a Design Thinking process,
although it is also the most rewarding as it involves the coming together of many different
minds and personalities, whilst adding richness to the experience.
Build the Right Kind of Team

The right kinds of specialisations are important, but specialisation is not the only quality
required. To make a Design Thinking project successful, we need T-shaped people. T-shaped
people have a depth of knowledge and experience in their own fields but they can
also reach out and connect with others horizontally and create meaningful collaborations.
A Design Thinking team should ideally be a cross/multi-disciplinary team consisting of a
mix of specialisations, including specialists associated with problem areas contributing but
not dominating the journey. While specialists may have vast knowledge on a technical level,
they are working towards solutions targeted towards non-specialists in many cases and
require outside perspectives in addition to what they already know.
Taking a cross section of an organisation, one will soon realize that individuals within
specific departments with specialist skills in specific business functions tend to approach
problem solving on their own level of experience, using the skill set they feel most
comfortable with. Sales, marketing, IT, product development, customer service and HR
departments all view challenges they face through the lens of their departmental functions.
Bringing together teams that provide a wider view of things is important, but even more so
is to encourage them to look outside their own spheres of influence to allow
more holistically framed problems to be uncovered.
All too often, solutions are conceptualised by account managers and merely handed down
to creative teams for execution and decoration. Often, this results in a team tackling the
wrong problems. Individuals who are able to see the bigger picture in a situation are
considered valuable assets, as are those who are able to connect with real people outside
the organisational structures in order to understand the challenge from a market
perspective.
Build The Right Team Culture

Choosing the perfect team may not always be possible, especially in situations where there
is a limited pool of candidates. Within startup environments everyone needs to be
involved in everything, so it may be more of a case of developing the appropriate team
culture, or even project culture, in order to move forward with the Design Thinking
process. Encouraging empathy, experimentation, curiosity, courage, open-mindedness,
holistic thinking, stripping away biases, and favouring ambiguity over rational clarity, are
great places to start.
It is important to set some rules and encourage individuals to think big-picture thoughts
before getting stuck on the executional nitty gritty. All team members should be
encouraged to respect each other's inputs, in order to dig deeper and to build upon each
other's findings, as opposed to trying to dominate and score with the winning idea as a solo
effort. The following attributes or characteristics of Design Thinking will help you to choose
and select team members for a given Design Thinking work project. Ask yourself questions
such as: Which team members already possess these characteristics? Who would be open
to them? Which team members possess the core expert skills required? You should, of
course, practice these qualities yourself in your own leading style, but you should also print
and hand out this illustration to each of the team members and explain the attributes
featured therein. This will help to develop a great working culture.
The above attributes or characteristics of Design Thinking will help you choose and select
team members for a given Design Thinking work project. Ask yourself questions such as:
Which team members already possess these characteristics? Who would be open to them?
Which team members possess the core expert skills required? You should of course practice
these qualities yourself in your own leading style, but you should also print and hand out this
illustration to each of the team members and explain the attributes featured therein. This will
help to develop a great working culture.
Level the Playing Field

While you may already have experts in certain fields or specialists working alongside
generalists or less experienced individuals, something to stipulate clearly is the flat
hierarchy, which is needed in Design Thinking projects. The more senior team players’
knowledge and experience will definitely be important and will be necessary in order to
steer the ship in the right direction so the team avoids becoming completely lost. However,
this should not prevent less experienced individuals from sharing their ideas, putting
forward alternative ways of seeing things, or flagging something that everyone else may
have missed. The whole purpose of a multi-faceted team is to encourage wider
perspectives. No one within the team should purposely be allowed to narrow things to suit
his or her specific view. This illustrates how design-led innovation differs significantly from
processes used in traditional business or corporate settings. For instance, just a mere
insinuation a senior player may make towards a less experienced team member could
result in a closed mindset and prevent ideas from flowing.
The Importance of a Good Facilitator

Having a leader to spearhead the mission is important, as there is always a tendency for
team members to resort to familiar patterns, which may not suit the needs of Design
Thinking. Hierarchies may set in quickly and management styles may subvert the mission.
A leader who is experienced in maintaining the right mix of mindsets is essential. An ideal
leader is someone who can maintain high levels of energy and enthusiasm, someone who
can steer the group around obstacles, and someone who has at least some grounding in
running Design Thinking or similar projects.
A Design Thinking Team Manifesto

Venturing into the unknown can make some team members feel uncomfortable, especially
the business executive who has been trained to base decisions and actions on what has
worked in the past. Basing decisions, strategies, and even attempts at innovation on past
data means churning out much of the same, possibly with just a variation in colour or
flavour.
If it's clear that the process won't be respected upfront by some of your team members,
more orientation may be required or buy-in sought before getting started. In order to
ensure that there is enough divergence in thinking, it is important to set some ground rules
right from the start and display these on the wall. You can find inspiration in the Attributes
of Design Thinking illustration above. You can actually easily turn this into your Design
Thinking Team Manifesto. However, we strongly encourage you to develop your own
manifesto with your team members in order to involve and engage all members in the
Design Thinking process from the beginning. It is important to allow and encourage anyone
on the team to call up rules. Do so without malice and in the good positive spirit of
exploration and experimentation.
The design process leader should keep the ship steering towards its goals with the help
from a Design Thinking Team Manifesto. Having a guide who is not a person who can be
blamed may be a good alternative for teams who are not quite ready to be led into the
unknown by someone they don't yet know and trust.
The Effects of Design Thinking on Teams

Design Thinking is structured in such a way so as to set the scene for specific qualities to be
unleashed within the team and to overcome obstacles that innovation teams typically face.
Some of the aims of Design Thinking's approach are to create:
• greater inclusiveness
• better team cohesion
• higher levels of collaboration and interaction
• increased creative confidence
Everyone thinks, feels, and experiences things differently. Differences are what we need.
Knowing that certain activities are not natural for everyone means that some preparation,
explanation, and trust-building, before the launch, can go a long way towards preventing
people from jumping ship.
Some of the obstacles the process aims to overcome:
• Fear of failure
• Intimidation
• Low self esteem
• Hierarchy
• Creative blocks
• Blind spots
• Specialisation bias
In most cases, newcomers to Design Thinking will feel intimidated, confused, and
disoriented by its seemingly chaotic approach. In order to break through this negative
tension, a few short exercises can be implemented to loosen things up and get people
feeling positive and excited about the project.
Facilitation Step 1: Tell your Team Members about the

Overall Process of Design Thinking
• Explain the five stages in the Design Thinking Process.
• Explain that the five stages of Design Thinking are not sequential steps, but
different modes you can put yourself in, to iterate on your problem definition, ideas,
or prototype, or to learn more about your users at any point in the project.
• Explain how Design Thinking builds a third way – combining the analytical and
information-driven approach of science with the holistic, empathic and creative ways
of thinking in ethnography and design.
• Explain that there are lots of proven methods that you’ll apply along the way, like
user interviews, brainstorm sessions, affinity clustering, sketching, user testing, etc.
• Knowing the background and underlying structure will help your team members to
feel safer as they know that there’s a solid background, and that chaos is not the goal
even though it may feel chaotic from time to time during the process. You could
remind your team members that innovation demands courage and an open mind
while progressing towards the goal:
“One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star.
– Friedrich Nietzsche
Provide your team members with printed out models of the Design Thinking process and
modes to help them understand and recognise the benefits of the Design Thinking work
process.
Facilitation Step 2: Break the Ice
Icebreakers are important for breaking through barriers when teams need to start working
on something new, or when people don't know or trust each other well enough. Each
setting is unique and the ice that needs to be broken will be different for each situation. It
may be as simple as introducing people properly, or explaining the process they are about
to engage in, though at times it may require more intervention.
A few icebreaker tips
• Consider barriers that may exist in the team and design your icebreakers based on
these.
• Ensure that the icebreakers don't alienate anyone or create any further obstacles.
• The idea is not to embarrass but to build confidence and make people comfortable
going forward.
• Icebreakers are not meant to produce winners and losers but are meant to level the
playing field.
• Choose activities which suit the people and setting.
Facilitation Step 3: Get People into the Creative Mood

Co-create a story
A great way to get your Design Team members to relax and enjoy co-creation is the act of
group story telling. You may begin with a completely unrelated story, maybe even
something familiar to the team or something related to the challenge space being explored.
Start the story off with a brief intro and move it around the team in a circle, with team
members adding on their sentences as it passes on.
A set of story aids like Rory's Story Cubes may help even further, especially with those who
may be too shy to suggest something different. The story cubes come with a range of
objects, actions, and themes that can be mixed and matched to create or encourage
randomised story telling. It's also an excellent tool for getting people in the mood for
brainstorming.
Visual telephone
Another similar activity which encourages visualisation rather than spoken stories is the
visual telephone. The team starts off with the first player drawing a simple picture in
secret, and then passing it on to the person beside her/him, who will then look at the image
without showing the others, and will write down her/his interpretation of what the image
relates to. The next person will then take that explanation and draw an image to show it,
and so on, until the telephone has moved through the entire team. The entire team will
then review the end results to find out how each person interpreted the message they
received.
• Mindtools provides a good icebreaker outline with some examples for icebreakers
in different settings
• Gamestorming is a book and method by Dave Gray, Sunni Brown and James
Macanufo, which contains a wealth of ideas for encouraging visual thinking and
action-orientated problem solving. It contains tons of advice on how to get people
out of their seats and comfort zones.
• The icebreakers above are merely ways of getting people ready, but it definitely
doesn't end there. Have a look at the An Introduction to Gamestorming - Video by
XPLANE for a glimpse of what lies ahead.
The Take Away

• Bring together a diverse team with different thinking styles and specialisations.
• Develop an innovative team culture, which embraces inclusiveness, collaboration,
and co-creation.
• Level the playing field to allow for a diverse set of perspectives to influence the
process.
• Ensure the right person is in charge.
• Break the ice with some creative exercises to loosen things up.
References & Where to Learn more

Rory's Story Cubes:
http://www.storycubes.com/
MindTools.com. Ice Breakers by Mindtools:

http://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/newLDR_76.h....
Dave Gray, Sunni Brown, James Macanufo, Gamestorming: A Playbook for Innovators,
Rulebreakers, and Changemakers:
http://www.amazon.com/Gamestorming-Playbook-Innova...
An Introduction to Gamestorming - Video by XPLANE
Design Thinking: Get a Quick Overview of the

History
To understand almost anything, we need at least some appreciation of its roots and origins,
and how it came to be as it is. Design Thinking emerged from an exploration of theory and
practice, in a range of disciplines and sciences, as a means of addressing the human, the
technological and strategic innovation needs of our time. Let us take a look at a short (and
incomplete) history of Design Thinking.
Listing all of the influential factors that have led to the contemporary understanding of
Design Theory, Process, and Practice is almost impossible. Business analysts, engineers,
scientists and creative individuals have been focused on the methods and processes of
innovation for decades. Early glimpses and references to Design Thinking date back to the
50's and 60's, although more within the context of architecture and engineering fields,
struggled to grapple with the rapidly changing environment in those times. New
approaches to solving complex problems had their roots in the thinking applied to World
War II, an event that had a profound effect on strategic thinking in the modern world and
fundamentally changed the way we apply ourselves to management, production and
industrial design.
The 1960's Attempts to Scientise Design

In the struggle to fully understand every aspect of design, it's influences, processes and
methodology, in the 60’s, efforts were made to develop a science out of the field of design,
by applying scientific methodology and processes to understanding how design functions.
Nigel Cross, Emeritus Professor of Design Studies at The Open University, UK, in the
paper Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design science (2001), unpicks
the struggle that began to unfold in the early 1960s when attempts were made to
“scientise” design, and bring the field within the objective of rational sciences. This cross
highlights statements from the radical technologist Buckminster Fuller, in which he refers
to the “design science decade”.
"[Fuller] called for a ‘design science revolution', based on science, technology and
rationalism, to overcome the human and environmental problems that he believed could
not be solved by politics and economics"
– Nigel Cross
Wicked Problems
Horst Rittel, a Design Theorist known for coining the term "Wicked Problems" (i.e.
extremely complex/multi-dimensional problems) in the mid 1960's, wrote and spoke
extensively on the subject of problem-solving in design. In particular, Rittel focussed on the
application of design methodologies in tackling Wicked Problems and how they were
influential in the work of many design practitioners and academics of the time.
Wicked problems are at the very heart of Design Thinking, because it is precisely these
complex and multi-dimensional problems that require a collaborative methodology that
involves gaining a deep understanding of humans.
The 1970s
Computer scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon was the first to mention
design as a science or way of thinking in his 1969 book, Sciences of the Artificial. The
notion also appeared in Emeritus Professor of Mechanical Engineering Robert H. McKim's
1973 book, Experiences in Visual Thinking.
Cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate for economics, Herbert Simon, has contributed
many ideas that are now regarded as tenets of Design Thinking in the 1970s. He is noted to
have spoken of rapid prototyping and testing through observation, concepts which form
the core of many design and entrepreneurial processes right now. This also forms one of
the major phases of the typical Design Thinking process. Simon touched on the subject of
prototyping as early as 1969, stating in Sciences of the Artificial:
"To understand them, the systems had to be constructed, and their behaviour observed."
– Herbert Simon
A large portion of his work was focused on the development of artificial intelligence and
whether human forms of thinking could be synthesized.
Robert H. McKim, best described as an artist and engineer, focused his energies more on
the impact visual thinking had on our understanding of things and our ability to solve
problems. McKim’s book unpicks various aspects of visual thinking and design methods for
solving problems with an emphasis on combining the left and right brain modes of
thinking, to bring about a more holistic form of problem solving. The ideas discussed in his
book underpin the Design Thinking methodology.
The 1980s
In 1982, Nigel Cross discussed the nature of designers problem-solving in his seminal
paper Designerly ways of knowing (not to be confused with his later series of articles and
papers similarly titled “Designerly ways of knowing”, published in the 2000s). In his 1982
paper, Cross compared designers’ problem solving to the non-design related problem
solutions we develop in our everyday lives.
Bryan Lawson, professor at the School of Architecture of the University of Sheffield, United
Kingdom, also discussed the insights gathered from a series of tests which looked at the
comparative methods used by scientists and architects when attempting to solve the same
ambiguous problem.
Author/Copyright holder: Counselling. Copyright terms and licence: CC0
Lawson conducted a series of tests on postgraduate architectural students (i.e. the

“designers”) and postgraduate science students (the “scientists”). For each group, he set a
problem involving arranging coloured blocks, in which the student had to abide by a set of
rules, some of which were not known to the student. Lawson realised that the scientists
tended to systematically explore every possible combination of blocks, to formulate a
hypothesis about the fundamental rule they should follow to produce the optimal
arrangement of blocks. In other words, scientists were problem-focused problem solvers.
On the other hand, the designers tended to quickly create multiple arrangements of
coloured blocks, then tested to see if they fit the requirements of the problem. They
designers were solution-focused problem solvers who chose to generate a large number of
solutions and eliminate those which did not work.
The latter solution-focused problem solving method is what Cross finds to be a core
concept of a “designerly” way of solving problems. According to Cross:
"A central feature of design activity, then, is its reliance on generating fairly quickly a
satisfactory solution, rather than on any prolonged analysis of the problem. In [Herbert]
Simon’s inelegant term, it is a process of ‘satisficing’ rather than optimising; producing any
one of what might well be a large range of satisfactory solutions rather than attempting to
generate the one hypothetically-optimum solution. This strategy has been observed in
other studies of design behaviour, including architects, urban designers, and engineers."
– Nigel Cross, 1982
1987
Peter Rowe, then Director of Urban Design Programs at Harvard, published his book Design
Thinkingin 1987, which focuses on the way the architectural designer approaches his task
through the lens of the inquiry.
"This book is an attempt to fashion a generalized portrait of design thinking. A principal

aim will be to account for the underlying structure and focus of inquiry directly associated
with those rather private moments of “seeking out,” on the part of designers, for the
purpose of inventing or creating buildings and urban artifacts."
– Peter Rowe (1987)
As you can see, the progression of Design "Thinking" as a subject made its journey through
various fields of specialisation over time, as thinkers in those fields explored the cognitive
processes within their own fields and later became something which moved into a space of
its own.
The 1990s to Present

1991
IDEO was formed and showcased its design process modelled on the work developed at the
Stanford Design School. IDEO is widely accepted as one of the companies that brought
Design Thinking to the mainstream; developing their own customer-friendly terminology,
steps, and toolkits over the years, they have allowed those not schooled in design
methodology to quickly and easily become oriented with the process.
1992
In 1992, the Head of Design at Carnegie Mellon University, Richard Buchanan, published his
article, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking, which discussed the origins of Design Thinking.
In the article, he discussed how the sciences developed over time from the Renaissance and
formalised in the specialisations and processes they used, becoming more and more cut off
from each other. He further clarified that Design Thinking has formed as a means of
integrating these highly specialised fields of knowledge, so that they can be jointly applied
to the new problems we are faced with from a holistic perspective.
2005
Design Thinking is taught at the Stanford School of Design, or the d.school. The d.school,
known today as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, has made the development, teaching
and implementation of Design Thinking one of its own central goals since its inception.
At present, the Design Thinking movement is gaining ground rapidly, with pioneers like
IDEO and d.school formalising a path ahead for others to follow. Other prestigious
universities, business schools and forward thinking companies have adopted the
methodology to varying degrees, sometimes re-interpreting it to suit their specific context
or brand values.
The Take Away

We experienced the industrial revolution and World War II pushing the boundaries of what
we thought was technologically possible, and what we required to deal with by way of
Wicked Problems. Engineers, architects and industrial designers, as well as cognitive
scientists, all began to converge on the issues of collective problem solving, driven by the
significant societal changes that had taken place at the time. Design Thinking leaders,
theorists, and practitioners began to formulate new ways of leveraging their existing
(design-centric) problem-solving, innovation-focussed activities and processes towards
finding solutions to broader problems.
Design Thinking emerged, or should we say converged, out of the muddy waters of this
chaos to combine the human, the technological and the strategic needs of our times, in a
synthesis, which is still being explored today by those at the forefront of the field.

Nigel Cross, Designerly ways of knowing,
1982: http://www.makinggood.ac.nz/media/1255/cross_1982_designerlywaysofknowing.
pdf
Nigel Cross, Designerly ways of knowing: design discipline versus design

science, 2001: http://oro.open.ac.uk/3281/1/Designerly-_DisciplinevScience.pdf
Peter Rowe, Design Thinking, 1987: https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/design-thinking
Richard Buchanan, Wicked Problems in Design Thinking,

1992: http://web.mit.edu/jrankin/www/engin_as_lib_art/Design_thinking.pdf
Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation.
Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0
Design Thinking: A Quick Overview
If you have just started embarking your journey through the Design Thinking process, things
might seem a little overwhelming. This is why we have prepared a useful overview of the
Design Thinking process, as well as some of the popular Design Thinking frameworks
commonly used by global design firms and national design agencies.
To begin, let’s have a quick overview of the fundamental principles behind Design
Thinking:
• Design Thinking starts with empathy, a deep human focus, in order to gain insights
which may reveal new and unexplored ways of seeing, and courses of action to
follow in bringing about preferred situations for business and society.
• It involves reframing the perceived problem or challenge at hand, and gaining
perspectives, which allow a more holistic look at the path towards these preferred
situations.
• It encourages collaborative, multi-disciplinary teamwork to leverage the skills,
personalities and thinking styles of many in order to solve multifaceted problems.
• It initially employs divergent styles of thinking to explore as many possibilities,
deferring judgment and creating an open ideations space to allow for the maximum
number of ideas and points of view to surface.
• It later employs convergent styles of thinking to isolate potential solution
streams, combining and refining insights and more mature ideas, which pave a path
forward.
• It engages in early exploration of selected ideas, rapidly modelling potential
solutions to encourage learning while doing, and allow for gaining additional
insight into the viability of solutions before too much time or money has been spent
• Tests the prototypes which survive the processes further to remove any potential
issues.
• Iterates through the various stages, revisiting empathetic frames of mind and then
redefining the challenge as new knowledge and insight is gained along the way.
• It starts off chaotic and cloudy steamrolling towards points of clarity until a
desirable, feasible and viable solution emerges.
As we have seen from the definitions and descriptions, Design Thinking means many things
to many people, and this theme persists into the practical implementation as well. There
are a wide variety of process breakdowns and visualisations ranging typically between 3
and 7 steps. Each process step or phase embodies one or more of the core ingredients of
design thinking that being, reframing, empathy, ideation, prototyping and testing. These
different implementation frameworks or models might have different names and number
of stages, but they embody the same principles laid out in the bullet points above.
Modelled on Early Traditional Design Processes

The earliest process expressions of Design Thinking were almost exact replications of the
traditional Design Process, with the later addition of deeper empathy and more specific
forms multidisciplinary collaboration. Taken from Herbert Simon's 1969 seminal work The
Sciences of the Artificial, the design process: define, research, ideate, prototype, choose,
implement, and learn has been the cornerstone of design process for decades.
Popular Design Thinking Frameworks

Heart, Head and Hand
The Design Thinking Process is a blend of Heart, Head and Hand. This means the process
is based on vision, need, emotion and feeling to begin with, continuing on to the cognitive
processing for ideation and evaluation and then diving into practical creation by hand. It's a
holistic process and demands input from all of our faculties in order to be successful.
Deep-Dive
The Deep-Dive was IDEO'S first expression of this process, which they aired LIVE on ABC
Nightline back in the late 90's. Deep-Dive Dive process comprises of the following steps:
• Understand
• Observe
• Visualise
• Evaluate
• Implement
Deloitte acquired the Deep-Dive process in 2006.

d.school’s 5 Stage Process
The Stanford Design School (d.school), now known as the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design
began teaching a design thinking process with the following 3 steps:
• Understand
• Improve
• Apply
They have since moved on to formulate and open source their famous 5 stage process
below which is widely used. This is the process we also recommend:
1. Empathise
2. Define
3. Ideate
4. Prototype
5. Test
The d.school represents the 5 stage process by their hexagonal Design Thinking Lenses.
The lenses are purposely defined as such so they will be seen more as enablers or modes of
thinking, rather than concrete linear steps.
IDEO’s Design Thinking Process
IDEO uses a different process, and while it has only three stages, covers pretty much the
same ground as the other processes covered here. The three stages are
• Inspire: The problem or opportunity that motivates the search for solution
• Ideate: The process of generating ideas
• Implement: The path that leads form the project room to the market
IDEO have also released a deck of IDEO Method Cards covering the modes Learn, Look,
Ask, Tryeach with their own collection of methods for an entire innovation cycle.
HCD - Human Centred Design
IDEO has also developed contextualised toolkits, which repackaged the Design Thinking
processes. One such iteration focuses on the social innovation setting in developing
countries. For this context the terminology needed to be simplified, made memorable and
restructured for the typical kinds of challenges faced. The HCD process (Human Centred
Design) was re-interpreted as an acronym to mean Hear, Create, Deliver.
H: Hear
Similar to early phases in other Design Thinking processes, the Hear stage is about
developing an empathic understanding of users, as well as defining the problem that the
team is trying to solve. It serves the purpose of gaining a solid foundation in the context of
the problem and sufficiently reframing it in order to progress. In this phase of the process,
design thinkers need to
• identify their challenge,

• recognise existing knowledge in the challenge space,
• identify people to engage with to understand the deeper human side of the
challenge,
• engage in a range of ethnographic research activities to uncover sufficient human
insight, and
• develop Points of view or stories to guide the creation phase.
C: Create
Similar to the Ideate and Prototype phases in d.school’s 5-stage approach, the Create stage
here is concerned with exploration, experimentation and learning through making. It
involves pinpointing potential areas of exploration and then engaging those closest to the
problem to co-create solutions. This allows design teams to maintain the highest levels of
empathy during early design phases as well as weed out potential problematic assumptions
made by designers who do not sufficiently understand the context.
• Highlight Opportunities to explore from insights gained in the Hear Phase

• Recruit participants for the co-design task from a diverse pool of those affected
• Maintain awareness of sensitivities by avoiding judgements
• Encouraging storytelling and expression
• Facilitate action orientated creation of tangible solution
D: Deliver
The Deliver phase of the HCD process is centred around logistical implementation and
overcoming any obstacles which may exist when rolling out a solution within the required
context. Though solutions arrived at may provide a functional patch to a problem, getting
by in communities and bypassing any other roadblocks on the path of implementation is
essential for the process to be completed successfully.
Design Council of the UK: 4 D’s
The Design Council of the UK has settled on 4 D's, Discover, Define, Develop, Deliver. They
make use of a Double Diamond process diagram to indicate 2 cycles of divergent and
convergent thinking and activities.
Frog Design
Frog Design's 3 D's Discover, Design Deliver has been replaced with Explore, Converge,
Support, indicating a focus on more than just finite projects or products but an ongoing
relationship with their clients well after delivery date.
What x 4
Jeanne Liedtka and Tim Ogilvie's book, Designing for Growth, puts forward a unique spin on
the same journey, reframing the terminology into a more inquisitive and intuitive 4 W's.
Jeanne Liedtka is a professor of business administration at the Darden School of the
University of Virginia, while Tim Ogilvie is the founder of innovative consultancy firm Peer
Insight, and both are experts in design thinking and strategic thinking. Their 4 W’s process
involves asking:
• What is? Exploring the current reality

• What if? Envisioning Alternative Futures
• What wows? Getting users to help us make some tough choices
• What works? Making it work in-market, and as a business
Author/Copyright holder: Christine Prefontaine. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0
What if—one of the most powerful phrases in the English language, and for good reason.
The LUMA System
The LUMA Institute, a global firm that teaches innovation and human-centred design, has
its own expression of Design Thinking modes: Looking, Understanding and Making. This
unfolds through a series of steps per mode completed with a proprietary user manual and
method cards. The modes allow for remixing a wide range of processes through the 3
modes using methods specific to your needs.
The Take Away

We could spend weeks exploring the Design Thinking Processes, their differences and
similarities and the merits of variety or conformity. It is important for us to peel away the
facade in order to understand the foundations. To the first timer, at first sight, the Design
Thinking process is mysterious, chaotic, and at many times complex. However, it's a
discipline, which will grow on you with direct practice. You will learn things in a practical
manner, which no theory can adequately cover growing in confidence with each new
experience. You may even be tempted to develop your own expression of these steps,
modes, and phases to suite a completely new context, and that's part of the beauty of
Design Thinking.

Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial,
1969: https://monoskop.org/images/9/9c/Simon_Herbert_A_The_Sciences_of_the_Artifici
al_3rd_ed.pdf
Deloitte, Deep diving for innovation,

2011: http://globalblogs.deloitte.com/deloitteperspectives/2011/10/deep-diving-for-
innovation.html
d.school, The Design Thinking

Process: http://dschool.stanford.edu/redesigningtheater/the-design-thinking-process/
Tim Brown, Design Thinking for Social Innovation,

2010: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/design_thinking_for_social_innovation
IDEO, Method Cards: https://www.ideo.com/post/method-cards
IDEO, Design Kit: The Human-Centered Design Toolkit: https://www.ideo.com/post/design-

kit
Design Council of UK, Eleven lessons: managing design in eleven global

brands: http://www.designcouncil.org.uk/sites/default/files/asset/document/ElevenLess
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Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Paris-Est d.school at Ecole des Ponts. Copyright
terms and licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Generalidades - DT - GPS

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Generalidades - DT - GPS

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Generalidades -DT -GPS

Design Thinking is a design methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving

Depending on time constraints, a substantial amount of information is gathered at this

2. Define (the Problem)

The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

The Take Away

Design thinking tackles complex problem by:

1. Empathising: Understanding the human needs involved.

References & Where to Learn More

Gerd Waloszek, Introduction to Design Thinking,

Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process:

Developing Empathy towards People

Photo and Video User-based Studies

Personal Photo and Video Journals

Bodystorming is the act of physically experiencing a situation in order to truly immerse

The Take Away

References & Where to Learn More

Stage 2 in the Design Thinking Process: Define

Analysis and Synthesis

What Makes a Good Problem Statement?

• Human-centred. This requires you to frame your problem statement according to

How to Define a Problem Statement

[User . . . (descriptive)] needs [need . . . (verb)] because [insight. . . (compelling)]

• How might we make TV more social, so youths feel more engaged?

The Take Away

References & Where to Learn More

d.school: Empathy Mapping: https://dschool-

d.school: “How might we”

d.school: Why-How Laddering: https://dschool-

d.school: Point-of-View Madlib: https://dschool-

d.school: Point-of-View Want Ad: https://dschool-

d.school: Powers of 10: https://dschool-

Stage 3 in the Design Thinking Process: Ideate

Ideation Will Help You:

1. Set a time limit

Ideation Methods to Select Ideas

Post-it Voting or Dot Voting

The Take Away

References & Where to Learn More

d.school: “How might we”

d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE:

Stage 4 in the Design Thinking Process:

Examples of low-fidelity prototypes:

Pros of Low-Fidelity Prototyping

• Quick and inexpensive.

Cons of Low-Fidelity Prototyping

Pros of High-Fidelity Prototyping

Cons of High-Fidelity Prototyping

• They generally take much longer to produce than low-fi prototypes.

Author/Copyright holder: Angeline Litvin. Copyright terms and licence: CC0

Guidelines for Prototyping

• Just start building

The Take Away

References & Where to Learn More

Stage 5 in the Design Thinking Process: Test

The Iterative, Flexible (and Messy) Design Thinking Process

Conducting a User Test

Improve Your Test Results

5 Guidelines when Planning a Test

Negative Feedback is Your Way to Learn and Improve

The End Goal: Desirable, Feasible, and Viable Solutions

The Take Away