What is Design Thinking?

Tim Brown, CEO OF IDEO:

“Design thinking is a human-centred 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.”

Design Thinking = Design + Thinking 

In simple words, design thinking can be a process which is appropriate to all paces of life and generate innovative or/and new ideas and solve problems. The notion being that the upcoming output of this procedure will deliver a better solution than the one already available or even if there is not any available answer for existing problems. In fact, rather than beginning with a problem, design thinking process starts with perception and consideration. It’s informed by a realization of the context and the culture of a problem, instead of the problem.

Although design thinking is a tactic helped several entrepreneurs and engineers develop successful new services, products and businesses, in my idea it is not just limited practices to a particular area of expertise. I think it can also be applied in our daily life to solve personal problems and to build and design our future. 

Dr. Roth, author of the book, “The Achievement Habit.” states that design thinking can assist every person from the kind of lifetime habits that achieve objectives, solve problems and also help us in order to make a better life.

In fact, for being a design thinker in our real life we need to focus on five main steps, however, the first two stages are the most important. The first step is defined as “empathise” — understand what the real problems are that need to be solved. The second step is “define”—  which establishes a point of view for defining the challenge we are facing and try to move toward a solution. The third one is to “ideate” —this stage is a brain dump of ideas and embraces brainstorming, making lists, writing down ideas and generating and focusing on possible solutions. Step 4 is to create a prototype or build a plan; try several solutions. The last step is to test the idea and find the best solution; seek feedback from others.