In a rapidly evolving world where innovation is key, problem-solving must be approached with creativity, structure, and empathy. Design thinking offers a dynamic framework for tackling complex challenges.
In this article, we’ll dive into design thinking, specifically why it’s important, how it can help solve problems in various applications, and how to apply it to your work, your organization, and your own life.
What is Design Thinking?
The best definition I have found was from the Data Analysis course offered by Google. Design thinking is a structured user-centric problem-solving approach to a perceived or unknown problem. It is typically applied to developing new products or services, particularly solutions that require innovation and thinking of the end user.
The Voice of the Customer (VOC)
At the heart of design thinking is the end user—whoever that might be. It could be a customer, a patron, a stakeholder, or a learner. In regards to developing or improving a product or service or designing a training experience for a group of learners, a large part of design thinking involves the ability to empathize with the end user or put yourself in their shoes. This is also known as the Voice of the Customer (VOC).
According to Unlocking Lean Six Sigma by Dr. Wesley E. Donahue, “Voice of the Customer (VOC) is a method intended to transform user demands into design quality…” VOC methods consider the following:
- customer needs
- demands
- expectations
- interests
- preferences
- challenges
- aversions
By prioritizing user needs, organizing data into meaningful insights, and embracing iterative testing, design thinking empowers us to break through cognitive biases and uncover new possibilities.
Why is Design Thinking Important?
Understanding the psychology behind how people adopt new ideas and behaviors can enhance the effectiveness of design thinking, making it a powerful tool for both innovation and growth in many applications. Design thinking also addresses cognitive biases and behaviors that can hamper innovation.
Additionally, design thinking and neuroplasticity go hand in hand. Neuroplasticity is the science of what is happening in the brain while it is learning something new. Design thinking provides a framework for creating experiences that are not only effective but also deeply engaging and human-centered.
In addition to problem-solving, design thinking also intersects with learning, habit formation and motivation, and sparking and sustaining change.
When to Use Design Thinking
Design thinking plays a role in a wide variety of applications. Here are some examples:
- Product and service development
- Technology and software development
- Education and learning and development
- Change management
- Process improvement
- Business strategy
- Data analysis
Design thinking is often applied in agile environments. It is best used when the answer to a need or problem isn’t obvious. In many ways, design thinking is an evolution of agile. It focuses on prototyping and testing solutions to progressively elaborate them to find the ideal final product or service.
Here is a graphic illustrating the steps involved in taking a design thinking approach to solving any problem or developing a solution:
Project Management Institute (PMI) delivered by Stefano Setti, PMI-PBA, PMI-RMP, PMP
Founder & CEO, BluPeak Consulting at PMXPO 2024 on March 21st, 2024
Product, Service, Technology, Program and Business Strategy Development
Here are some real-life examples of how organizations apply design thinking:
Analyzing and Organizing Data
An example stated in this article by Harvard Business Review involves a team that is overwhelmed with parsing through disorganized qualitative data. By applying design thinking, the team can make sense of data by organizing it into themes and patterns. This approach enables teams and innovators to gain new insights and possibilities, as well as identify new opportunities. It also plays a role in data analysis, specifically creating visualizations, such as dashboards and charts.
Creating data visualizations involves an important storytelling element. Knowing your audience and creating engaging elements to hold their attention, so they can learn and gather the right insights from the data. This is where data visualizations, design thinking, design principles, and neuro-learning all intersect.
Prototyping
Design thinking is visual and emphasizes prototyping. It requires teams to focus on understanding the user, dive deeply into the business problems that need to be solved, and understand what “success” will look like, even if the users themselves don’t know. This leads to the ability to define the problem in relatively simple terms, to simplify the problem in a way that allows the team to relate to it.
Process Improvement
Design thinking can also be used as a method for transforming business processes, reducing waste, and improving the quality of outputs or solutions. And because AI is often implemented to help streamline and improve processes, design thinking often goes hand in hand with implementing AI.
Continuous Improvement
Design thinking fosters curiosity, openness to failure, collaboration, and empathy—all traits of an “always-learning” organization. Embedding this mindset supports sustainable, people-centered continuous improvement, which is key for achieving organizational goals.
Learning and Development
Design thinking is about empathy, iteration, and problem-solving, all of which are essential when teaching someone something new or helping them grow.
What do learners actually need?
Rather than relying solely on traditional models of memorization and passive instruction, design thinking invites educators and facilitators to think more holistically. It involves asking the question: What do learners actually need? How can we design learning environments and activities that meet them where they are and help them make meaningful progress? Again, this goes back to VOC.
Emotional Context
Emotional context also plays a major role in this process. If learners feel connected to what they’re learning, or if the material is presented in a way that’s personally relevant or stimulating, they’re far more likely to retain it. This is where design thinking becomes indispensable: it helps learning designers craft emotionally resonant, relevant, and engaging experiences that support deeper learning.
Whenever possible, use storytelling when delivering new content, doing a software demo, or developing data visualizations. The active and visual learners in your audience will thank you for it.
What Good Design Looks Like
Ultimately, a strong design helps learners become active participants in their own development. When we offer activities that connect to real-life scenarios, prompt learners to identify and apply concepts themselves, and create moments of challenge with timely feedback, we promote engagement and deeper understanding.
How to Apply Design Thinking in Your Everyday Life
Design thinking can be a powerful approach for continuously improving organizations and life. It puts human needs at the center of problem-solving and emphasizes experimentation, learning, and iteration—all key elements of improvement cycles.
Here’s how the principles of design thinking map onto continuous improvement efforts:
1. Empathize and Understand Stakeholder Needs
Design thinking begins with empathy, deeply understanding the people you’re designing for. This means gathering insights from users, employees, customers, or learners about pain points and challenges surrounding processes, tools, or experiences.
Application: Interviews, observations, shadowing, or journey mapping to uncover what’s not working and why.
2. Clarify the Problem
Design thinking means clearly articulating a problem from the user’s perspective before making assumptions, succumbing to cognitive biases, forming your own opinions, and jumping to solutions, all of which introduce risk.
Why is this important? Poorly defined problems often lead to “band-aid” fixes, which don’t really solve the root of the problem and increase the risk of repeat failures.
Application: Use root cause analysis techniques to drill down to the true cause of a problem. This will allow you to build a better design and better focus improvement efforts.
3. Generate Creative Solutions
Rather than settling for the first idea, design thinking encourages generating many possibilities. This is where divergent thinking and design thinking intersect. This expands potential solutions and reduces reliance on quick fixes.
Application: Host collaborative brainstorming or other working sessions to generate ideas.
4. Test Changes Quickly
Design thinking promotes prototyping—creating low-risk versions to visualize and test ideas to learn for future iterations. Piloting small changes before full implementation minimizes disruption and reveals what works. It also allows teams to witness some “quick wins”.
Application: Run small-scale trials of process changes, policy updates, or tool tweaks.
5. Learn, Iterate, and Improve
The iterative nature of design thinking complements Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA), a common approach to continuous improvement.
Application: Gather feedback, collect other types of qualitative data, analyze results, and refine improvements based on real-world outcomes.
The Future of Design Thinking
Design thinking is VISUAL and helps solve perceived problems. For example, it is typically applied to developing new products or services, particularly where those solutions need to be innovative and with the user in mind. Design thinking is your ability to empathize with the end user, or put yourself in their shoes, which can help you solve a problem and ultimately drive change.
Design thinking is more than a methodology—it’s a mindset. By integrating empathy, structured problem-solving, and iterative testing, it paves the way for transformative innovation. But its power extends beyond product development; when applied to learning and habit formation, it reveals the intricate relationship between motivation, emotional rewards, and behavioral change.
So what is the whole point of this blog? Design thinking will become more important as time marches on. Organizations will focus more on change management, agile, and applying design thinking.
Additionally, as organizations increasingly embrace agile methodologies and AI-driven solutions, design thinking will be crucial in shaping the future of work, learning, and business transformation. The key is not just to understand the process but to leverage it to drive meaningful and lasting change.
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