Design Thinking
Design Thinking is an inherently experiential process in which designers work closely with those for whom they are designing, even (literally) immersing themselves in their community, to understand their needs, motivations, and values. According to Tim Brown of IDEO, the well-known design firm that coined the term, “Design thinking is a human-centered approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
The Stanford d.school describes the five stages of the design thinking process as follows:
EMPATHIZE: Work to fully understand the experience of the user for whom you are designing. Do this through observation, interaction, and immersing yourself in their experiences.
DEFINE: Process and synthesize the findings from your empathy work in order to form a user point of view that you will address with your design.
IDEATE: Explore a wide variety of possible solutions through generating a large quantity of diverse possible solutions, allowing you to step beyond the obvious and explore a range of ideas.
PROTOTYPE: Transform your ideas into a physical form so that you can experience and interact with them and, in the process, learn and develop more empathy.
TEST: Try out high-resolution products and use observations and feedback to refine prototypes, learn more about the user, and refine your original point of view.
To better understand this human centered approach to design, watch this short video from IDEO.org
In this module we will focus on the empathy and ideate stages of the design thinking process. In the next section you’ll learn about cognitive biases and the impact of these biases on our design work. In the following design activities, you and your students will have an opportunity to experience how we can benefit from design thinking, in particular empathy and ideation techniques, to help us overcome these biases.
