The Process

The Design Thinking Process

All phases of the Design Thinking process work together to help you: understand the root causes of a problem, get to know the needs and experiences of your users, develop ideas, test aspects of your ideas through prototypes, and test your ideas with your users to gain feedback that you can apply to your work. The resources on this page offer a simplified breakdown of each phase. Keep in mind that many designers use all parts of the Design Thinking process in tandem, looping back and forth between the phases rapidly throughout their work.

Goals of Each Design Thinking Phase

Read a fantastic overview article, 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process from the Interaction Design Foundation.

Explore the Phases of Design Thinking

Empathize

• Design Thinking 1: Empathy Based Prototyping by Harrison Metal (3:08). The funnel illustrates how all ideas should begin with what you learn about the user.
• Empathy by IDEO.org (1:25). An IDEO designer explains the way in which empathy is immersion in experiences outside of your own self.
• Level Up with EP - Gain Empathy by Observing Users! By ExperiencePoint (1:00). User observations help you gain insights into the problem.
• Level Up With EP - Discover Customer Needs Through Deep Empathy By ExperiencePoint (0:59). Understanding how your users experience can result in new solutions.

Define

• Defining the Problem by Potential (1:25). The importance of defining the problem correctly.
• Level Up with EP - How Might We? By ExperiencePoint (1:14). What is a How Might We Question?

Ideate

• Ideation doesn’t waste time, it saves time (Aurora Harley) by NNgroup (2:13). The importance of not stopping at your first idea.
• Ideation as a System by Todd Reily (3:40). How ideas come from intent and need.

Prototype

• What is a Prototype? | Low-Fidelity Prototypes & User Research | Rapid Prototyping | Udacity by Udacity (1:06). Overview of the purpose of prototyping.
• DIY Toolkit | Prototype Testing Plan by DIY Toolkit (2:41). Overview of early and later stage prototyping using hypotheses.
• A Google X Co-Founder’s Ingenious Technique to Rapid Prototype Socially Responsible Products by Mike Del Ponte, Fast Company (article). Includes Tom Chi’s TED Talk (14:14) on the purpose of prototyping to learn quickly. This video includes great insights into what prototyping is and isn't!
• Design Thinking: Get Started with Prototyping by Rikke Dam and Teo Siang. Overview of the purpose of prototyping.

Test

• FHIL | Stages of Design Thinking | TESTING by FHIL Channel (1:49). Very simple overview of the testing process.
• Test Early and Often by Eli Woolery (article in interactive book). Importance of testing often with your users.

Key Insights

• The Design Thinking process is a non-linear process where multiple stages occur and overlap continuously
• Empathize: Design Thinking always begins with the user’s experience. Set aside your own assumptions and biases and fall in love with the problem in a way that enables you to understand every aspect of it, as well as how it affects your user.
• Define: Defining the correct problem to solve is hard. Many designers fail to define a challenge correctly. Designers use the “How might we…” starter to frame their questions in order to make them open, collaborative, and reflective.
• Ideate: Ideation is about coming up with as many different (and sometimes radical) solutions as you can. After coming up with multiple solutions, designers select the ones they want to create and test.
• Prototype: Designers create prototypes based on specific hypotheses they want to test. The purpose of prototyping is NOT to build a mini version of your solution. It IS to learn whether the most important aspects of your proposed solution work for your users.
• Test: Designers share their prototypes with their users to see how they interact with them, and to gather feedback. They use what they learn to make changes at every step of the Design Thinking process.

Explore Case Studies

• Read the OLS Canmore High School case study. What do you notice about how they integrated the overall design thinking process into their work?
• Read the University of Calgary iGEM Team case study. What do you notice about how they prototyped and tested their solution? How did they learn quickly?

Questions to Discuss

• Many designers agree that Empathy is the most important part of the Design Thinking process. Why do you think this is the case?
• Many designers consider Defining The Problem as the most challenging phase of the Design Thinking process. Why do you think this is the case?
• What phase of the Design Thinking process do you feel will be the most difficult for your team to undertake? Why?