Design Thinking

What is Design Thinking?

I got most of my information from https://www.interaction-design.org/literature/article/what-is-design-thinking-and-why-is-it-so-popular (01/09/20) and added some of my own ideas.

Design thinking is a type of thinking that is useful to find solutions to "unknown" problems. Design thinking includes re-framing the problem, brainstorming to come up with ideas for solutions, and a lot of experiments in order to find the best solution (prototypes, running tests, trying out all ideas, etc.).

Design Thinking Strategies

There are multiple different steps for design thinking, including:

• Finding out what the problem is that you're trying to solve
• Come up with ideas- consider everyone's ideas when working in groups
• Prototype ideas to start making solutions
• Run tests to see what does and doesn't work/to find the best solution you've tried and alter it from there
• "Outside of the box" thinking-some problems have solutions that are completely random and something most people wouldn't think of

These strategies can be in any order and you can do some multiple times, it all depends on the specific project.

Phases of Design Thinking

There are multiple phases/steps of design thinking, as well. These phases don't follow any specific order and can be repeated as many times as needed. There's many different versions of these phases, that all have the same principles. I'll focus on a 5-phase plan created by the Hassoplattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school):

• Empathize with your users
  • Think about the problem you're solving and why it's a problem for people
• Define users' needs, problem, and your insights
• Come up with ideas by making assumptions for innovative solutions
• Prototype your ideas to see what does and doesn't work and what works best
• Test your solutions