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What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important?

Business team using the design thinking process

  • 18 Jan 2022

In an age when innovation is key to business success and growth, you’ve likely come across the term “design thinking.” Perhaps you’ve heard it mentioned by a senior leader as something that needs to be utilized more, or maybe you’ve seen it on a prospective employee's resume.

While design thinking is an ideology based on designers’ workflows for mapping out stages of design, its purpose is to provide all professionals with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not.

Why is design thinking needed? Innovation is defined as a product, process, service, or business model featuring two critical characteristics: novel and useful. Yet, there’s no use in creating something new and novel if people won’t use it. Design thinking offers innovation the upgrade it needs to inspire meaningful and impactful solutions.

But what is design thinking, and how does it benefit working professionals?

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design . While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review .

Design thinking is different from other innovation and ideation processes in that it’s solution-based and user-centric rather than problem-based. This means it focuses on the solution to a problem instead of the problem itself.

For example, if a team is struggling with transitioning to remote work, the design thinking methodology encourages them to consider how to increase employee engagement rather than focus on the problem (decreasing productivity).

Design Thinking and Innovation | Uncover creative solutions to your business problems | Learn More

The essence of design thinking is human-centric and user-specific. It’s about the person behind the problem and solution, and requires asking questions such as “Who will be using this product?” and “How will this solution impact the user?”

The first, and arguably most important, step of design thinking is building empathy with users. By understanding the person affected by a problem, you can find a more impactful solution. On top of empathy, design thinking is centered on observing product interaction, drawing conclusions based on research, and ensuring the user remains the focus of the final implementation.

The Four Phases of Innovation

So, what does design thinking entail? There are many models of design thinking that range from three to seven steps.

In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation , Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase innovation framework. The phases venture from concrete to abstract thinking and back again as the process loops, reverses, and repeats. This is an important balance because abstract thinking increases the likelihood that an idea will be novel. It’s essential, however, to anchor abstract ideas in concrete thinking to ensure the solution is valid and useful.

Here are the four phases for effective innovation and, by extension, design thinking.

four phases of the design thinking process

The first phase is about narrowing down the focus of the design thinking process. It involves identifying the problem statement to come up with the best outcome. This is done through observation and taking the time to determine the problem and the roadblocks that prevented a solution in the past.

Various tools and frameworks are available—and often needed—to make concrete observations about users and facts gathered through research. Regardless of which tools are implemented, the key is to observe without assumptions or biased expectations.

Once findings from your observations are collected, the next step is to shape insights by framing those observations. This is where you can venture into the abstract by reframing the problem in the form of a statement or question.

Once the problem statement or question has been solidified—not finalized—the next step is ideation. You can use a tool such as systematic inventive thinking (SIT) in this stage, which is useful for creating an innovative process that can be replicated in the future.

The goal is to ultimately overcome cognitive fixedness and devise new and innovative ideas that solve the problems you identified. Continue to actively avoid assumptions and keep the user at the forefront of your mind during ideation sessions.

The third phase involves developing concepts by critiquing a range of possible solutions. This includes multiple rounds of prototyping, testing, and experimenting to answer critical questions about a concept’s viability.

Remember: This step isn’t about perfection, but rather, experimenting with different ideas and seeing which parts work and which don’t.

4. Implement

The fourth and final phase, implementation, is when the entire process comes together. As an extension of the develop phase, implementation starts with testing, reflecting on results, reiterating, and testing again. This may require going back to a prior phase to iterate and refine until you find a successful solution. Such an approach is recommended because design thinking is often a nonlinear, iterative process.

In this phase, don’t forget to share results with stakeholders and reflect on the innovation management strategies implemented during the design thinking process. Learning from experience is an innovation process and design thinking project all its own.

Check out the video about the design thinking process below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!

Why Design Thinking Skills Matter

The main value of design thinking is that it offers a defined process for innovation. While trial and error is a good way to test and experiment what works and what doesn’t, it’s often time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately ineffective. On the other hand, following the concrete steps of design thinking is an efficient way to develop new, innovative solutions.

On top of a clear, defined process that enables strategic innovation, design thinking can have immensely positive outcomes for your career—in terms of both advancement and salary.

Graph showing jobs requiring design thinking skills

As of December 2021, the most common occupations requiring design thinking skills were:

  • Marketing managers
  • Industrial engineers
  • Graphic designers
  • Software developers
  • General and operations managers
  • Management analysts
  • Personal service managers
  • Architectural and engineering managers
  • Computer and information systems managers

In addition, jobs that require design thinking statistically have higher salaries. Take a marketing manager position, for example. The median annual salary is $107,900. Marketing manager job postings that require design thinking skills, however, have a median annual salary of $133,900—a 24 percent increase.

Median salaries for marketing managers with and without design thinking skills

Overall, businesses are looking for talent with design thinking skills. As of November 2021, there were 29,648 job postings in the United States advertising design thinking as a necessary skill—a 153 percent increase from November 2020, and a 637 percent increase from November 2017.

As businesses continue to recognize the need for design thinking and innovation, they’ll likely create more demand for employees with those skills.

Learning Design Thinking

Design thinking is an extension of innovation that allows you to design solutions for end users with a single problem statement in mind. It not only imparts valuable skills but can help advance your career.

It’s also a collaborative endeavor that can only be mastered through practice with peers. As Datar says in the introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation : “Just as with learning how to swim, the best way to practice is to jump in and try.”

If you want to learn design thinking, take an active role in your education. Start polls, problem-solving exercises, and debates with peers to get a taste of the process. It’s also important to seek out diverse viewpoints to prepare yourself for the business world.

In addition, if you’re considering adding design thinking to your skill set, think about your goals and why you want to learn about it. What else might you need to be successful?

You might consider developing your communication, innovation, leadership, research, and management skills, as those are often listed alongside design thinking in job postings and professional profiles.

Graph showing common skills required alongside design thinking across industries

You may also notice skills like agile methodology, user experience, and prototyping in job postings, along with non-design skills, such as product management, strategic planning, and new product development.

Graph showing hard skills required alongside design thinking across industries

Is Design Thinking Right for You?

There are many ways to approach problem-solving and innovation. Design thinking is just one of them. While it’s beneficial to learn how others have approached problems and evaluate if you have the same tools at your disposal, it can be more important to chart your own course to deliver what users and customers truly need.

You can also pursue an online course or workshop that dives deeper into design thinking methodology. This can be a practical path if you want to improve your design thinking skills or require a more collaborative environment.

Are you ready to develop your design thinking skills? Explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation to discover how to leverage fundamental design thinking principles and innovative problem-solving tools to address business challenges.

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How to solve problems using the design thinking process

Sarah Laoyan contributor headshot

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you develop solutions in a human-focused way. Initially designed at Stanford’s d.school, the five stage design thinking method can help solve ambiguous questions, or more open-ended problems. Learn how these five steps can help your team create innovative solutions to complex problems.

As humans, we’re approached with problems every single day. But how often do we come up with solutions to everyday problems that put the needs of individual humans first?

This is how the design thinking process started.

What is the design thinking process?

The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you tackle complex problems by framing the issue in a human-centric way. The design thinking process works especially well for problems that are not clearly defined or have a more ambiguous goal.

One of the first individuals to write about design thinking was John E. Arnold, a mechanical engineering professor at Stanford. Arnold wrote about four major areas of design thinking in his book, “Creative Engineering” in 1959. His work was later taught at Stanford’s Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (also known as d.school), a design institute that pioneered the design thinking process. 

This eventually led Nobel Prize laureate Herbert Simon to outline one of the first iterations of the design thinking process in his 1969 book, “The Sciences of the Artificial.” While there are many different variations of design thinking, “The Sciences of the Artificial” is often credited as the basis. 

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A non-linear design thinking approach

Design thinking is not a linear process. It’s important to understand that each stage of the process can (and should) inform the other steps. For example, when you’re going through user testing, you may learn about a new problem that didn’t come up during any of the previous stages. You may learn more about your target personas during the final testing phase, or discover that your initial problem statement can actually help solve even more problems, so you need to redefine the statement to include those as well. 

Why use the design thinking process

The design thinking process is not the most intuitive way to solve a problem, but the results that come from it are worth the effort. Here are a few other reasons why implementing the design thinking process for your team is worth it.

Focus on problem solving

As human beings, we often don’t go out of our way to find problems. Since there’s always an abundance of problems to solve, we’re used to solving problems as they occur. The design thinking process forces you to look at problems from many different points of view. 

The design thinking process requires focusing on human needs and behaviors, and how to create a solution to match those needs. This focus on problem solving can help your design team come up with creative solutions for complex problems. 

Encourages collaboration and teamwork

The design thinking process cannot happen in a silo. It requires many different viewpoints from designers, future customers, and other stakeholders . Brainstorming sessions and collaboration are the backbone of the design thinking process.

Foster innovation

The design thinking process focuses on finding creative solutions that cater to human needs. This means your team is looking to find creative solutions for hyper specific and complex problems. If they’re solving unique problems, then the solutions they’re creating must be equally unique.

The iterative process of the design thinking process means that the innovation doesn’t have to end—your team can continue to update the usability of your product to ensure that your target audience’s problems are effectively solved. 

The 5 stages of design thinking

Currently, one of the more popular models of design thinking is the model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design (or d.school) at Stanford. The main reason for its popularity is because of the success this process had in successful companies like Google, Apple, Toyota, and Nike. Here are the five steps designated by the d.school model that have helped many companies succeed.

1. Empathize stage

The first stage of the design thinking process is to look at the problem you’re trying to solve in an empathetic manner. To get an accurate representation of how the problem affects people, actively look for people who encountered this problem previously. Asking them how they would have liked to have the issue resolved is a good place to start, especially because of the human-centric nature of the design thinking process. 

Empathy is an incredibly important aspect of the design thinking process.  The design thinking process requires the designers to put aside any assumptions and unconscious biases they may have about the situation and put themselves in someone else’s shoes. 

For example, if your team is looking to fix the employee onboarding process at your company, you may interview recent new hires to see how their onboarding experience went. Another option is to have a more tenured team member go through the onboarding process so they can experience exactly what a new hire experiences.

2. Define stage

Sometimes a designer will encounter a situation when there’s a general issue, but not a specific problem that needs to be solved. One way to help designers clearly define and outline a problem is to create human-centric problem statements. 

A problem statement helps frame a problem in a way that provides relevant context in an easy to comprehend way. The main goal of a problem statement is to guide designers working on possible solutions for this problem. A problem statement frames the problem in a way that easily highlights the gap between the current state of things and the end goal. 

Tip: Problem statements are best framed as a need for a specific individual. The more specific you are with your problem statement, the better designers can create a human-centric solution to the problem. 

Examples of good problem statements:

We need to decrease the number of clicks a potential customer takes to go through the sign-up process.

We need to decrease the new subscriber unsubscribe rate by 10%. 

We need to increase the Android app adoption rate by 20%.

3. Ideate stage

This is the stage where designers create potential solutions to solve the problem outlined in the problem statement. Use brainstorming techniques with your team to identify the human-centric solution to the problem defined in step two. 

Here are a few brainstorming strategies you can use with your team to come up with a solution:

Standard brainstorm session: Your team gathers together and verbally discusses different ideas out loud.

Brainwrite: Everyone writes their ideas down on a piece of paper or a sticky note and each team member puts their ideas up on the whiteboard. 

Worst possible idea: The inverse of your end goal. Your team produces the most goofy idea so nobody will look silly. This takes out the rigidity of other brainstorming techniques. This technique also helps you identify areas that you can improve upon in your actual solution by looking at the worst parts of an absurd solution. 

It’s important that you don’t discount any ideas during the ideation phase of brainstorming. You want to have as many potential solutions as possible, as new ideas can help trigger even better ideas. Sometimes the most creative solution to a problem is the combination of many different ideas put together.

4. Prototype stage

During the prototype phase, you and your team design a few different variations of inexpensive or scaled down versions of the potential solution to the problem. Having different versions of the prototype gives your team opportunities to test out the solution and make any refinements. 

Prototypes are often tested by other designers, team members outside of the initial design department, and trusted customers or members of the target audience. Having multiple versions of the product gives your team the opportunity to tweak and refine the design before testing with real users. During this process, it’s important to document the testers using the end product. This will give you valuable information as to what parts of the solution are good, and which require more changes.

After testing different prototypes out with teasers, your team should have different solutions for how your product can be improved. The testing and prototyping phase is an iterative process—so much so that it’s possible that some design projects never end.

After designers take the time to test, reiterate, and redesign new products, they may find new problems, different solutions, and gain an overall better understanding of the end-user. The design thinking framework is flexible and non-linear, so it’s totally normal for the process itself to influence the end design. 

Tips for incorporating the design thinking process into your team

If you want your team to start using the design thinking process, but you’re unsure of how to start, here are a few tips to help you out. 

Start small: Similar to how you would test a prototype on a small group of people, you want to test out the design thinking process with a smaller team to see how your team functions. Give this test team some small projects to work on so you can see how this team reacts. If it works out, you can slowly start rolling this process out to other teams.

Incorporate cross-functional team members : The design thinking process works best when your team members collaborate and brainstorm together. Identify who your designer’s key stakeholders are and ensure they’re included in the small test team. 

Organize work in a collaborative project management software : Keep important design project documents such as user research, wireframes, and brainstorms in a collaborative tool like Asana . This way, team members will have one central source of truth for anything relating to the project they’re working on.

Foster collaborative design thinking with Asana

The design thinking process works best when your team works collaboratively. You don’t want something as simple as miscommunication to hinder your projects. Instead, compile all of the information your team needs about a design project in one place with Asana. 

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What is human-centered design & how to get started

Two people with laptops speaking together and sitting at a table

Used for countless purposes spanning product development, UX design, process design, and system creation, human-centered design is a creative approach to problem-solving. 

As the name suggests, the defining characteristic of human-centered design is designing solutions that help people at the center of the problem.

When teams don’t involve the people experiencing the issue, you risk creating the wrong solutions, causing product-market fit issues, and opening up a disconnect between what your clients need and the solution you deliver.

However, there’s an easy solution. Bringing the right stakeholders in during the early stages of the solution development process can lead to better solutions and bring empathy, better collaboration, and improved innovation to your problem-solving.

What is human-centered design?

Human-centered design is a framework for creative problem-solving that focuses on understanding the needs, wants, and limitations of the people who will most directly benefit from the solution. Often applied to designing products, services, or systems, human-centered design involves gathering feedback from individuals experiencing the problem throughout the design process, creating prototypes, and testing them to ensure they are intuitive and easy to use. 

At its core, human-centered design is the discipline of developing solutions for people.

The goal of HCD is to create solutions that are not only functional, but also enjoyable for individuals. By focusing on people’s needs, lived experience, and behaviors, HCD helps to create products that are intuitive, efficient, and easy to use.

The guiding principles of human-centered design

  • Empathy : Understanding the user is at the core of human-centered design. Empathy involves putting yourself in the user's shoes and understanding their perspective.
  • Iteration : Human-centered design is an iterative process that involves gathering feedback and iterating on designs until they meet the user's needs.
  • Collaboration : Human-centered design involves collaboration between designers, stakeholders, and users to create products and solutions.
  • User involvement : Users are involved throughout the design process, from initial research to final testing and feedback.
  • Creativity : Human-centered design encourages creativity and innovation by challenging designers to think outside the box and create solutions in new and innovative ways.

Benefits of the human-centered design approach

Improved user satisfaction.

By focusing on the user's needs and behaviors, the human-centered design methodology encourages creating products that are more intuitive and enjoyable to use, leading to higher levels of user satisfaction.

Increased adoption rates

Solutions that are designed with the user in mind are more likely to be adopted and used, leading to higher adoption rates and revenue.

Reduced development costs

By gathering feedback and iterating on designs throughout the design process, human-centered design can help to reduce development costs by catching problems early in the design process.

Improved innovation

Human-centered design encourages creativity and innovation by adopting a creative approach for meeting the user's needs in new and innovative ways.

Stages of human-centered design

Human-centered design is a fluid, non-linear process, but typically follows a similar format. Not every user-centered design iteration will follow these stages — teams will often find themselves jumping around in the process. 

The first, and arguably the most important, stage of the human-centered design process is to observe. This can involve techniques like user research, observation, and interviews . 

The goal of the first step is to uncover insights that will inform the design process and begin to identify, understand, and empathize with the problem the user is facing.

Understanding

Based on the insights gathered and empathy gained in the observing stage, the next step is to define the problem or opportunity. This involves identifying the user’s needs and the goals that the solution should address. 

In this stage, designers may create user personas, user journey maps , empathy maps , or other tools and frameworks to help them identify and define the problem.

As teams come to understand the problem effectively, they should start generating ideas for solutions to the problem or opportunity identified in the define stage. This can involve techniques such as holding brainstorming sessions and sketching. 

The goal is to generate a wide range of ideas, without evaluating them at this stage.

After thoroughly understanding the problem, a design team will move on to build prototypes or mock-ups of proposed solutions. This can involve creating either low-fidelity or high-fidelity prototypes, depending on the complexity of the solution. 

Here, the goal is to create a low-cost representation of the solution where its feasibility can be tested with users, and gather insights that will inform further iterations of the design process. Be sure to test the prototypes with users to gather feedback and identify areas for improvement. This can involve usability testing, A/B testing, and other techniques to assess the effectiveness and efficiency of the potential solutions. Because the human-centered design process is non-linear , this often isn’t the final step. Based on user feedback, designers may go back all the way to the understanding stage if needed. 

Skipping around the steps of the HCD process is common, but one method to reduce this back-and-forth trap and speed up decision-making is to leverage co-design, a process where end-users are included as key stakeholders throughout the whole design process.

Examples of human-centered design

Leveraging human-centered design with visual collaboration at emerson.

Creative collaboration is built into the culture at Emerson, a multinational Fortune 500 company with $18.4 billion in annual sales that helps manufacturers automate and optimize production processes.

Using the LUMA System™ of Innovation , teams at Emerson practice human-centered design to solve problems. They’re supported by Emerson's Human Centered Design Institute, a team who works across business units to empower others within Emerson to adopt the framework. They function much like internal consultants, facilitating workshops and training sessions to help teams at Emerson design solutions that put people first. And ultimately, they empower and train these teams to adopt human-centered design and improve productivity and collaboration in their day-to-day work.

Learn how Emerson scaled visual collaboration

More like this: 4 examples of human-centered design to inspire your team

There is no ‘human-centered design’ without empathy

At its core, human-centered design looks at the way people engage and interact with the world to design effective solutions. Without that context, you risk misalignment, poor solutions, and rising costs as the design process continues to spiral. By leveraging this design and problem-solving approach, you can reach better outcomes and improve collaboration.

Human-centered design frequently asked questions

Human-centered design vs design thinking: what’s the difference.

Design thinking and human-centered design are often used interchangeably as problem-solving processes, but they are not the same thing. While both concepts share similarities, they have different focuses and applications.

  • Human-centered design is a problem-solving approach that focuses on the needs and behaviors of the user. The goal is to create products that solve the user’s problems and provide a better user experience overall.
  • Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on understanding and redefining complex problems to find a solution. The design thinking approach not only seeks to understand the user's needs and behaviors, but also considers the larger context in which the problem exists. Design thinking involves empathizing with the user, defining the problem, ideating solutions, prototyping, and testing.

While design thinking can be human-centered and even co-exist with human-centered design, these are different concepts.

What is the goal of human-centered design?

The goal of human-centered design is to create solutions, often in the form of products and services, that are tailored to the people who will use them, ultimately leading to better solutions and outcomes for individuals.

What is co-design?

Co-design is the process of involving multiple stakeholders in the design of solutions (often when developing products, services, or systems) with the goal of creating solutions that are more relevant, effective, and satisfying to the people who will use them.

Now that you understand human-centered design, put it into practice with Mural and the LUMA System™ . With this combination of a powerful collaboration space and guided methods, your teams will be equipped to tackle complex challenges, imagine new possibilities, and keep people at the center of their design processes.

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Design Thinking Defined

—tim brown, executive chair of ideo.

Thinking like a designer can transform the way organizations develop products, services, processes, and strategy. This approach, which is known as design thinking, brings together what is desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It also allows people who aren't trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges.

IDEO did not invent design thinking, but we have become known for practicing it and applying it to solving problems small and large. It’s fair to say that we were in the right place at the right time. When we looked back over our shoulder, we discovered that there was a revolutionary movement behind us.

This design thinking site is just one small part of the IDEO network. There’s much more, including full online courses we've developed on many topics related to design thinking and its applications. We fundamentally believe in the power of design thinking as a methodology for creating positive impact in the world—and we bring that belief into our client engagements as well as into creating open resources such as this.

At IDEO, we’re often asked to share what we know about design thinking. We’ve developed this website in response to that request. Here, we introduce design thinking, how it came to be, how it is being used, and steps and tools for mastering it. You’ll find our particular take on design thinking, as well as the perspectives of others. Everything on this site is free for you to use and share with proper attribution .

(From 2008-2018, designthinking.ideo.com was the home of IDEO's design thinking blog, written by our CEO, Tim Brown . You can find that blog here .)

We live and work in a world of interlocking systems, where many of the problems we face are dynamic, multifaceted, and inherently human. Think of some of the big questions being asked by businesses, government, educational and social organizations: How will we navigate the disruptive forces of the day, including technology and globalism? How will we grow and improve in response to rapid change? How can we effectively support individuals while simultaneously changing big systems? For us, design thinking offers an approach for addressing these and other big questions.

There’s no single definition for design thinking. It’s an idea, a strategy, a method, and a way of seeing the world. It’s grown beyond the confines of any individual person, organization or website. And as it matures, its history deepens and its impact evolves. For IDEO, design thinking is a way to solve problems through creativity. Certainly, it isn’t a fail-safe approach; nor is it the only approach. But based on the impact we are seeing in our work, the relevance of design thinking has never been greater.

Design thinking is maturing. It’s moving from a nascent practice to an established one, and with that comes interest and critique. People are debating its definition, pedigree, and value. As a leading and committed practitioner of design thinking, IDEO has a stake in this conversation—and a responsibility to contextualize its value in the present moment and, importantly, in the future.

We’ve learned a lot over the years, and we’d like to share our insights. We’ve seen design thinking transform lives and organizations, and on occasion we’ve seen it fall short when approached superficially, or without a solid foundation of study. Design thinking takes practice; and as a community of designers, entrepreneurs, engineers, teachers, researchers, and more, we’ve followed the journey to mastery, and developed maps that can guide others.

Designer's mindset

At IDEO, we are a community of designers who naturally share a mindset due to our profession. Our teams include people who've trained in applied fields such as industrial design, environmental architecture, graphic design, and engineering; as well as people from law, psychology, anthropology, and many other areas. Together, we have rallied around design thinking as a way of explaining design's applications and utility so that others can practice it, too. Design thinking uses creative activities to foster collaboration and solve problems in human-centered ways. We adopt a “beginner’s mind,” with the intent to remain open and curious, to assume nothing, and to see ambiguity as an opportunity.

To think like a designer requires dreaming up wild ideas, taking time to tinker and test, and being willing to fail early and often. The designer's mindset embraces empathy, optimism, iteration, creativity, and ambiguity. And most critically, design thinking keeps people at the center of every process. A human-centered designer knows that as long as you stay focused on the people you're designing for—and listen to them directly—you can arrive at optimal solutions that meet their needs.

Anyone can approach the world like a designer. But to unlock greater potential and to learn how to work as a dynamic problem solver, creative confidence is key. For IDEO founder David Kelley, creative confidence is the belief that everyone is creative, and that creativity isn’t the ability to draw or compose or sculpt, but a way of understanding the world.

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What is human-centered design? Everything you need to know

A complete guide explaining what human-centered design is, why it matters, the process it follows, its core principles, and examples.

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Taking a successful product to market requires crafting a solution to an under-served user need. But how do you know what needs are under-served or what products need designing? Ask your customers! 

Using human-centred design principles, such as talking to your customers, will help you level up when designing products and solutions. 

In this guide, we’ll explore what human-centred design is and why it’s important. We’ll outline the principles and processes of human centered design, and then explore the differences—and similarities—between human-centred design and design thinking. Finally, we’ll look at some examples of human-centred design in action. 

What is human-centered design? A definition

Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach to design that places real people at the center of problem-solving. At every phase of the design process , consideration of your customers and their context comes first. This is a step above user-centered design, which tends to focus on the way people use things, not their psychological and emotional needs.

A brief history of human-centered design

HCD as an approach to creative problem-solving is often traced back to the beginning of the Stanford University design program in 1958. There, Professor John E. Arnold first proposed that engineering design should be human-centered. 

In the mid-1960s, design theorist Horst Rittel introduced the term “wicked problems” to describe problems that are difficult to solve, such as homelessness and social injustice, because they consist of requirements that are incomplete or contradictory. Also, solving one wicked problem often reveals another. 

Consequently, wicked problems require a problem-solving approach that is adaptable and centered on human behavior. Thus, HCD emerged to fulfill this need and took off from there.

HCD isn’t just a method; it’s a mindset with people at its center. The process champions new solutions that come from cultivating deep empathy and are built to suit human needs. 

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Why is human-centered design important?

When you cultivate empathy for your customers, as you do in HCD, you can think of products that will really improve people’s lives. Also, you can follow your customers’ needs as they evolve. This can open up new opportunities to diversify for you and to try new products for them.

In addition, HCD gives the people you’re designing for the sense that they’re understood. Not only can this increase customer loyalty, but because they’re part of the process that brought the product to market, they’re likely to feel more invested in using it.

What are the 4 principles of human-centered design?

HCD has four principles: 

1. Be people-centered

Whatever you create, focus on the people who use the product and their context. These are real human beings with real needs, and your product is a tool to help them reach their goals more efficiently. 

2. Find the right problem

Don Norman , a user experience expert and co-founder of the Nielsen-Norman Group, says that usually when people come to him with a problem, it’s not the right one. Instead, he’s approached with symptoms of the problem. But he wants to solve the fundamental problem, the one that will solve the root cause of all the other problems. Solving the fundamental problem is the real goal that companies come to designers with. Otherwise the symptoms will continue to come up. 

3. Think of everything as a system

Always keep the big picture of the user journey in mind, even if you’re only working on a small part of it. Don Norman observes that because optimization at the local level doesn’t mean optimization for the global level, we should keep the whole experience in mind for a smoother system. 

4. Small and simple interventions

Don’t rush into big design solutions. Instead, do iterative work with simple interventions that you can learn from. Slowly, your results will get better and bigger. Also, continuously prototype and test your solutions to make sure they meet the needs of the people you’re designing for.

What is the human-centered design process? The 6 phases of HCD

According to design firm IDEO, these are the six phases of the HCD process.

Phase 1: Observation

From the first phase we foster deep empathy with people. In this phase, our goal is to understand the people we’re designing for by observing and learning about them. We’ll put our assumptions aside and look at pain points and patterns of behaviour to understand how people feel about a given product.

Phase 2: Ideation

Here you and your team will come up with ideas based on what you learned in the previous phase. You’ll want to come up with as many ideas as you can. Even bad ideas can make it to the table as they can always have the root of a good idea in it. Eventually your team’s ideas will evolve in the right direction.

Phase 3: Rapid prototyping

In this phase, you’ll create a simple prototype that will give you something to test with your users. This shouldn’t be a high fidelity prototype but one that has just enough of the idea that people can understand and comment on it.

Phase 4: User feedback

Get your prototype in the hands of the people you’re designing for in this phase. This is the most critical phase of the design process because, without feedback from people, you won’t know if your solution needs to be adjusted and in which directions.

Learn more about how to incorporate user feedback in product design (and why it matters) here .

Phase 5: Iteration

In this phase, use the insights you’ve gained from users to fuel changes to your design. Iterate, test, and iterate some more until your solution is fine-tuned and ready to be used. 

Phase 6: Implementation

Here, your design is ready to be put into action and used in the real world. While the design seems finished, though, keep in mind that design is never truly done. Keep learning, keep iterating, and keep testing whenever possible to continue to improve the design.

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Human-centered design vs. design thinking—what’s the difference?

HCD and design thinking are similar concepts. Some people even think of them as synonymous. There are some key differences, though. 

While design thinking is at the root of HCD, it zooms out to look at the problem with a larger scope. That’s because design thinking involves designing solutions and products that are created to solve a problem. With design thinking, you’ll empathize with customers’ needs before coming up with solutions that can immediately be put into use. 

HCD, on the other hand, wants to ensure that the product will enhance consumers’ lives. With HCD, you’ll get to know the objectives of your customers to ensure you and your team are creating products that will improve their lives, not just interest or amuse them. 

Still the two methods do have their similarities. Empathy for people is at the heart of both HCD and design thinking. Both methods are iterative and, since your user base is constantly evolving, your designs will evolve too.

You can learn more about design thinking in this guide: What is design thinking? A definition and examples.

What are some examples of human-centered design?

Here are some examples of HCD:

1. Colgate Electric Toothbrush

Colgate example for human-centred design

Source: Hubspot

While Colgate’s electric toothbrush was innovative in the 1990s, it’s since been surpassed by other competitors, so Colgate hired HCD firm Altitude to design a new toothbrush for them. The team at Altitude extensively researched the audience, asking questions and seeing how people use toothbrushes in their daily lives. 

Then they developed the Motion, a slimmer toothbrush with oscillating heads and an arcing neck. The goal was to serve the user’s needs and, fortunately, this toothbrush solved a problem the industry hadn’t addressed yet: needing a slender electronic toothbrush that still delivered on performance.

2. Samsung FreeStyle Bluetooth Projector   

Source: UserGuiding

Samsung FreeStyle, a Bluetooth projector, isn’t designed for everyone. The company is very specific that it is designed specifically for Gen Z and Millenials. That’s because different generations want different things, and while older generations may not be so keen to have a projector that can project on any surface, no matter what the colour, Gen Z and Millenials express a much greater need for this portable device. 

Though Gen Z and Millenials won’t necessarily have thought of this product before, they’ll want it when they see it. Especially because people now work from home and are educated online more than ever today, these individuals will see the value of a tiny device that they can bring with them anywhere and can be used to project anything.

3. HelloFresh

When HelloFresh was founded in 2011 by Dominik Richter, Tobias Griesel, and Jessica Nilsson with the intention of providing healthy, fresh recipes to everyone, they were meeting a real need. The founders wondered what consumers were having trouble with and what they wanted to change about their own experience acquiring food.

What they found was that people had difficulty finding the time to shop for groceries and creating healthy and affordable meals. They came up with a solution that addressed those very needs—delivering boxes of ingredients that are already measured out, along with healthy recipes the user can follow— and have had a thriving business ever since.

Key takeaways

That’s human-centered design in a nutshell. To summarise: human-centered design (HCD) puts real people at the center of any design solution. It emerged as an approach to problem-solving, encouraging designers to cultivate empathy and define the root problem before seeking solutions. 

As a UX designer, there are many different tools and techniques you can use to step into your users’ shoes and make sure you’re designing with their needs in mind. Check out the following:

  • A complete guide to storyboarding in UX
  • How to design a customer journey map step-by-step
  • How to design accessible and inclusive content (and why it matters)

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Make Things Better

The LUMA System

The most practical, flexible and versatile approach to innovation in the world that anyone can learn and apply., explore the methods.

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Get an overview of the 36 human-centered design methods that comprise the LUMA System, with helpful instructions and tips for using them right away.

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A simpler, easier way to be innovative

Every organization faces problems — big and small. To tackle those problems, we need to devise creative, innovative solutions faster than ever.

But how do individuals and teams actually become more innovative? LUMA believes  any individual, team and organization has the potential to innovate, but may not know how.

We recognized that teams could wield the power of human-centered design: an approach to creative problem-solving that focuses on people above other factors — whether the challenge is making a better product, process, service or anything else.

But there are so many ways to be innovative that identifying the best approach to a certain situation can be overwhelming, eating up precious time.

So LUMA set out to envision a simpler way; we created the LUMA System as a framework for practicing human-centered design that people can apply to tackle problems of all sizes.

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A versatile toolset for any problem

The LUMA System of Innovation is a framework of human-centered design that forms a toolset and shared language for innovation, even across countries and cultures.

The methods are organized into three key design skills:  Looking, Understanding  and  Making.

The flexibility and versatility of the LUMA System delivers powerful results:

  • Each method can be applied individually, for a focused approach to a specific question.
  • Multiple methods can be combined in different ways as needed for more complex challenges.
  • The methods can be used with any type of problem, in any type of setting. 

The LUMA System seamlessly integrates with processes like Sprints, Agile or Lean Six Sigma to supercharge their impact – and it can be used in-person or online.

However you work, LUMA works.

A LUMA project planning sheet with Human-Centered Design methods laid out in sequence as a project roadmap.

The LUMA System is actually helping to change the trajectory of the company. It’s helping us make better decisions at all levels of the company, whether they’re small pivots on any given product or bigger choices we make with leadership of the company. It’s powerful stuff.

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Chief of Staff, Product Development, Autodesk

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New skills to bring about culture change

A key part of building a culture of innovation is teaching people new problem-solving skills to use in their daily work.

Formal instruction is important, but 90 percent of learning happens outside the classroom: people learn by doing.

LUMA offers  training, services and tools for all the ways that people learn. Our goal of helping organizations build a culture of innovation flows directly from our mission:

  • Help individuals become confident and capable problem solvers.
  • Equip teams to collaborate, think differently and deliver impactful solutions.
  • Transform organizations into places where people and innovation flourish.

We’ve done it with teams and organizations large and small around the world, and we can do it with yours, too.

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Ideas Made to Matter

Design thinking, explained

Rebecca Linke

Sep 14, 2017

What is design thinking?

Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled “Design Thinking” by Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO.

Since then, the design thinking process has been applied to developing new products and services, and to a whole range of problems, from creating a business model for selling solar panels in Africa to the operation of Airbnb .

At a high level, the steps involved in the design thinking process are simple: first, fully understand the problem; second, explore a wide range of possible solutions; third, iterate extensively through prototyping and testing; and finally, implement through the customary deployment mechanisms. 

The skills associated with these steps help people apply creativity to effectively solve real-world problems better than they otherwise would. They can be readily learned, but take effort. For instance, when trying to understand a problem, setting aside your own preconceptions is vital, but it’s hard.

Creative brainstorming is necessary for developing possible solutions, but many people don’t do it particularly well. And throughout the process it is critical to engage in modeling, analysis, prototyping, and testing, and to really learn from these many iterations.

Once you master the skills central to the design thinking approach, they can be applied to solve problems in daily life and any industry.

Here’s what you need to know to get started.

Infographic of the design thinking process

Understand the problem 

The first step in design thinking is to understand the problem you are trying to solve before searching for solutions. Sometimes, the problem you need to address is not the one you originally set out to tackle.

“Most people don’t make much of an effort to explore the problem space before exploring the solution space,” said MIT Sloan professor Steve Eppinger. The mistake they make is to try and empathize, connecting the stated problem only to their own experiences. This falsely leads to the belief that you completely understand the situation. But the actual problem is always broader, more nuanced, or different than people originally assume.

Take the example of a meal delivery service in Holstebro, Denmark. When a team first began looking at the problem of poor nutrition and malnourishment among the elderly in the city, many of whom received meals from the service, it thought that simply updating the menu options would be a sufficient solution. But after closer observation, the team realized the scope of the problem was much larger , and that they would need to redesign the entire experience, not only for those receiving the meals, but for those preparing the meals as well. While the company changed almost everything about itself, including rebranding as The Good Kitchen, the most important change the company made when rethinking its business model was shifting how employees viewed themselves and their work. That, in turn, helped them create better meals (which were also drastically changed), yielding happier, better nourished customers.

Involve users

Imagine you are designing a new walker for rehabilitation patients and the elderly, but you have never used one. Could you fully understand what customers need? Certainly not, if you haven’t extensively observed and spoken with real customers. There is a reason that design thinking is often referred to as human-centered design.

“You have to immerse yourself in the problem,” Eppinger said.

How do you start to understand how to build a better walker? When a team from MIT’s Integrated Design and Management program together with the design firm Altitude took on that task, they met with walker users to interview them, observe them, and understand their experiences.  

“We center the design process on human beings by understanding their needs at the beginning, and then include them throughout the development and testing process,” Eppinger said.

Central to the design thinking process is prototyping and testing (more on that later) which allows designers to try, to fail, and to learn what works. Testing also involves customers, and that continued involvement provides essential user feedback on potential designs and use cases. If the MIT-Altitude team studying walkers had ended user involvement after its initial interviews, it would likely have ended up with a walker that didn’t work very well for customers. 

It is also important to interview and understand other stakeholders, like people selling the product, or those who are supporting the users throughout the product life cycle.

The second phase of design thinking is developing solutions to the problem (which you now fully understand). This begins with what most people know as brainstorming.

Hold nothing back during brainstorming sessions — except criticism. Infeasible ideas can generate useful solutions, but you’d never get there if you shoot down every impractical idea from the start.

“One of the key principles of brainstorming is to suspend judgment,” Eppinger said. “When we're exploring the solution space, we first broaden the search and generate lots of possibilities, including the wild and crazy ideas. Of course, the only way we're going to build on the wild and crazy ideas is if we consider them in the first place.”

That doesn’t mean you never judge the ideas, Eppinger said. That part comes later, in downselection. “But if we want 100 ideas to choose from, we can’t be very critical.”

In the case of The Good Kitchen, the kitchen employees were given new uniforms. Why? Uniforms don’t directly affect the competence of the cooks or the taste of the food.

But during interviews conducted with kitchen employees, designers realized that morale was low, in part because employees were bored preparing the same dishes over and over again, in part because they felt that others had a poor perception of them. The new, chef-style uniforms gave the cooks a greater sense of pride. It was only part of the solution, but if the idea had been rejected outright, or perhaps not even suggested, the company would have missed an important aspect of the solution.

Prototype and test. Repeat.

You’ve defined the problem. You’ve spoken to customers. You’ve brainstormed, come up with all sorts of ideas, and worked with your team to boil those ideas down to the ones you think may actually solve the problem you’ve defined.

“We don’t develop a good solution just by thinking about a list of ideas, bullet points and rough sketches,” Eppinger said. “We explore potential solutions through modeling and prototyping. We design, we build, we test, and repeat — this design iteration process is absolutely critical to effective design thinking.”

Repeating this loop of prototyping, testing, and gathering user feedback is crucial for making sure the design is right — that is, it works for customers, you can build it, and you can support it.

“After several iterations, we might get something that works, we validate it with real customers, and we often find that what we thought was a great solution is actually only just OK. But then we can make it a lot better through even just a few more iterations,” Eppinger said.

Implementation

The goal of all the steps that come before this is to have the best possible solution before you move into implementing the design. Your team will spend most of its time, its money, and its energy on this stage.

“Implementation involves detailed design, training, tooling, and ramping up. It is a huge amount of effort, so get it right before you expend that effort,” said Eppinger.

Design thinking isn’t just for “things.” If you are only applying the approach to physical products, you aren’t getting the most out of it. Design thinking can be applied to any problem that needs a creative solution. When Eppinger ran into a primary school educator who told him design thinking was big in his school, Eppinger thought he meant that they were teaching students the tenets of design thinking.

“It turns out they meant they were using design thinking in running their operations and improving the school programs. It’s being applied everywhere these days,” Eppinger said.

In another example from the education field, Peruvian entrepreneur Carlos Rodriguez-Pastor hired design consulting firm IDEO to redesign every aspect of the learning experience in a network of schools in Peru. The ultimate goal? To elevate Peru’s middle class.

As you’d expect, many large corporations have also adopted design thinking. IBM has adopted it at a company-wide level, training many of its nearly 400,000 employees in design thinking principles .

What can design thinking do for your business?

The impact of all the buzz around design thinking today is that people are realizing that “anybody who has a challenge that needs creative problem solving could benefit from this approach,” Eppinger said. That means that managers can use it, not only to design a new product or service, “but anytime they’ve got a challenge, a problem to solve.”

Applying design thinking techniques to business problems can help executives across industries rethink their product offerings, grow their markets, offer greater value to customers, or innovate and stay relevant. “I don’t know industries that can’t use design thinking,” said Eppinger.

Ready to go deeper?

Read “ The Designful Company ” by Marty Neumeier, a book that focuses on how businesses can benefit from design thinking, and “ Product Design and Development ,” co-authored by Eppinger, to better understand the detailed methods.

Register for an MIT Sloan Executive Education course:

Systematic Innovation of Products, Processes, and Services , a five-day course taught by Eppinger and other MIT professors.

  • Leadership by Design: Innovation Process and Culture , a two-day course taught by MIT Integrated Design and Management director Matthew Kressy.
  • Managing Complex Technical Projects , a two-day course taught by Eppinger.
  • Apply for M astering Design Thinking , a 3-month online certificate course taught by Eppinger and MIT Sloan senior lecturers Renée Richardson Gosline and David Robertson.

Steve Eppinger is a professor of management science and innovation at MIT Sloan. He holds the General Motors Leaders for Global Operations Chair and has a PhD from MIT in engineering. He is the faculty co-director of MIT's System Design and Management program and Integrated Design and Management program, both master’s degrees joint between the MIT Sloan and Engineering schools. His research focuses on product development and technical project management, and has been applied to improving complex engineering processes in many industries.

Read next: 10 agile ideas worth sharing

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Problem Solving, Human-Centered Design, and Strategic Processes (October 2015)

Paul Brest, Nadia Roumani, Jason Bade

Creating solutions with people in mind.

This essay sets out a framework for integrating conventional problem solving and strategic planning techniques with human centered design (HCD) to help foundations improve their understanding of the problems they are trying to solve and increase their creativity in developing solutions.

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Design Thinking, Essential Problem Solving 101- It’s More Than Scientific

The term “ Design Thinking ” dates back to the 1987 book by Peter Rowe; “Design Thinking.” In that book he describes the way that architects and urban planners would approach design problems. However, the idea that there was a specific pattern of problem solving in “design thought” came much earlier in Herbert A Simon’s book, “The Science of the Artificial” which was published in 1969. The concept was popularized in the early 1990s by Richard Buchanan in his article “ Wicked Problems in Design Thinking”.

Ralph Caplan, the design consultant, sums up the need for design thinking with; “Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous.”

human design problem solving

Author/Copyright holder: Christine Prefontaine. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 2.0

A simple overview of design thinking as a problem solving process.

Problem-Solving and Two Schools of Thought

Design thinking is concerned with solving problems through design. The idea being that the future output of the process will provide a better answer than the one already available or if nothing is available – something entirely new.

It is an unconstrained methodology where it is possible that the designer (or design team) will work on many possible solutions at once. It enables designers to consider the problem in many different ways and speculate on both the past and future of the problem too.

This is in contrast to the scientific method of problem solving which requires a highly-defined problem which focuses on delivering a single solution.

This difference was first noted by Brian Lawson, a psychologist, in 1972. He conducted an experiment in which scientists and architects were asked to build a structure from colored blocks. He provided some basic rules for the project and observed how they approached it. The scientists looked to move through a simple series of solutions based on the outcome and entire rule set. The architects, in contrast, simply focused on the desired end-state and then tested to see if the solution they had found met the rules.

This led to the idea that scientists solve problems by a process of analysis, whilst designers solve problems by synthesis. However, later evidence suggests that designers apply both forms of problem solving to attain “design thinking”.

They do this via a process of divergent thinking . A designer will examine as many possible solutions at the beginning of a process as they can think of – then they will apply the scientific side ( convergent thinking ) to narrow these solutions down to the best output.

human design problem solving

Design thinking can be as simple or as complex as the business and users require. This IDEO process can be seen as a 3 part process or a 9 part process .

The Design Thinking Process

Design thinking is essentially a process which moves from problem to solution via some clear intermediate points. The classic approach, as proposed by Herbert A Simon, is offered here:

  • Definition – where the problem is defined as best as possible prior to solving it
  • Research – where the designers examine as much data as they feel necessary to be able to fully contribute to the problem solving process
  • Ideation – where the designer commences creating possible solutions without examining their practicality until a large number of solutions has been proposed. Once this is done, impractical solutions are eliminated or played with until they become practical.
  • Prototyping – where the best ideas are simulated in some means so that their value can be explored with users
  • Choosing – where the best idea is selected from the multiple prototypes
  • Implementing – where that idea is built and delivered as a product
  • Testing – where the product is tested with the user in order to ensure that it solves the original problem in an effective manner

There are many other design thinking processes outlined in literature – most of which are a truncated version of the above process combining or skipping stages.

human design problem solving

Here we see a more complex interpretation of the design thinking process and how it fits into the larger business sphere.

The Principles of Design Thinking

In the book, Design thinking: Understand, Improve Apply, Plattner and Meinel offer four underlying principles for design thinking:

  • Human – all design is of a social nature
  • Ambiguity – design thinking preserves and embraces ambiguity
  • Re-design – all design processes are in fact re-design of existing processes
  • Tangibility – the design process to make something tangible will facilitate communication of that design

It is also worth noting that design thinking functions independently of the design methods employed in any given design process. Design methods are the tools employed (such as interviews, user research , prototypes, etc.) and the assumption is that there are many paths that may be used (e.g. different sets of methods applied) to reach the same “best” result.

Visuals and Design Thinking

Firstly, it is important to acknowledge that design thinking is not about graphic design per se. However, designers are often used to communicating their thinking visually and drawings, sketches, prototypes, etc. are often used to convey the ideas created within a design thinking process.

In fact, ideas which are hard to express easily in words are often given shape in the form of visual metaphors. Design thinking thus easily incorporates abstract thought processes – something that scientific thinking may find more challenging to accommodate.

human design problem solving

Visual representations of how those involved in the design process might be thinking about a problem.

The Take Away

Design thinking is a process by which designers approach problem solving. It incorporates analytical, synthetic, divergent and convergent thinking to create a wide number of potential solutions and then narrow these down to a “best fit” solution. There are many ways to use a design thinking process to incorporate different methodologies to still reach the same end point. Designers must solve problems in order to add value through design.

Richard Buchanan’s original article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking," was published in Design Issues , vol. 8, no. 2, Spring 1992.

Peter Rowe’s book from 1987 Design Thinking was published byCambridge: The MIT Press. ISBN 978-0-262-68067-7.

Herbert A Simon’s book from 1969 The Sciences of the Artificial . Was published by Cambridge: MIT Press.

Plattner, Hasso; Meinel, Christoph; Leifer, Larry J., eds. (2011). Design thinking: understand, improve, apply . Understanding innovation . Berlin; Heidelberg: Springer-Verlag. pp. xiv–xvi.doi:10.1007/978-3-642-13757-0. ISBN 3642137563.

This fascinating case study looks at how IBM plans to bring design thinking to large scale businesses - http://www.wired.com/2016/01/ibms-got-a-plan-to-bring-design-thinking-to-big-business/

See how Pepsi’s CEO, Indra Nooyi, implemented design thinking in her organization - https://hbr.org/2015/09/how-indra-nooyi-turned-design-thinking-into-strategy

Harvard Business Review examines design thinking and how it translates into action here - https://hbr.org/2015/09/design-for-action

Hero Image: Author/Copyright holder: Wikimedia Deutschland e. V. Copyright terms and licence: CC BY-SA 4.0

Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide

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human design problem solving

Design Thinking Takes a Human-Centered Approach to Problem-Solving

Action-oriented approach tolerates risk, with the goal of improving human experiences..

Omary

Design thinking, a creative and innovative process that puts people at the center of problem solving, is a tool being readily used to encourage radiologists to focus on the patient experience from beginning to end.

“Humanizing the imaging process involves a lot of people and a lot of touch points,” said Achala Vagal, MD, vice chair of research and associate professor of radiology at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. “Design thinking can help identify challenges and create solutions that result in a better experience for patients and staff.”

Dr. Vagal presented the human-centered design approach during RSNA 2018’s Fast Five session and will cover it again in an educational course at RSNA 2019.

Design thinking is a human-centered, problem-solving approach that at its core uses empathy to tackle complex problems. Instead of traditional problem solving, where a problem is identified and then various solutions are applied until one works, design thinking gathers multidisciplinary teams and asks them to understand the problem from the point of view of those who are most affected. The team typically also includes the people who are affected by the problem, who, in many cases, are patients and their families and caregivers.

This process of defining a problem can take upwards of several weeks or months. It can involve detailed observations of a process, surveys, interviews and focus groups with patients, caregivers or other health care delivery specialists, all designed to help better understand the pain points facing patients.

“As radiology shifts from volume to value, the value is all about the patient experience,” said Mary C. Mahoney, MD, the Benjamin Felson Endowed Chair and Professor of Radiology at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine in Cincinnati, Ohio, and RSNA Board Chair. “Radiologists need to think about the discussions their patients are having in the car on the way to and following an imaging appointment. Is the patient confused about why they need this test and do they know what will happen next? Also, did they feel valued during every step of the process, from the scheduling to the interactions in the exam room? These are questions that design thinking can answer when tackling a specific problem.”

“In design thinking, we learn by doing and understand that failure is an opportunity to learn,” said Reed Omary, MD, the Carol D. & Henry P. Pendergrass Professor and chair of the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences and director, Medical Innovators Development Program, at Vanderbilt University Medical Center & School of Medicine, Nashville, TN. “Design thinking encourages us to try ideas, weed out the ones that don’t work and improve upon the ones with potential.”

Learn about the projects that the University of Cincinnati and Vanderbilt University addressed with design thinking in the June print issue of RSNA News. Check your mailbox now.

Watch Dr. Vagal’s RSNA 2018 Fast 5 presentation on design thinking. 

Watch Dr. Omary’s presentation, Designing for the Patient Experience.

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Cultivating a human-centered approach to problem-solving

If you've ever ordered a poke bowl from UberEats, grabbed a Pepsi from a touch-screen soda fountain, laced up a pair of Nikes, or tracked your workout on an Apple Watch, you've benefited from a human-centered approach to design. For success in today's business world, it's essential to be deeply versed in this design-based problem-solving process that's revolutionizing business creativity.

Agile. Lean. Design thinking. You've heard these buzzwords, but what do they really mean? "They are all just different labels for a human-centered approach to solving business problems," says Justin Lokitz, interim chair of the MBA in Design Strategy at California College of the Arts (CCA) .

This mindset—borrowed from the design world—has transformed how businesses innovate. Inclusive, collaborative, and iterative, human-centered design is being put into practice across industries, from technology to healthcare to fashion. In fact, some of today's most iconic companies—Airbnb, Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Nike, PepsiCo, Samsung, Toyota, Uber—are using this method to develop or reinvent business models, processes, and products. And they are looking to hire MBAs with a deep understanding of human-centered approaches to problem-solving to join their teams.

But what exactly is a human-centered approach to solving business problems? And how can you gain these design-thinking skills that are rapidly changing how we do business?

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Empathy, co-creation, and iteration: The 3 elements of a human-centered approach to problem-solving

No matter what name it goes by, the human-centered approach to business innovation can be boiled down to three main components: empathy, co-creation, and iteration.

Listening to all stakeholders and understanding their wants and needs—practicing empathy —is the starting point of a human-centered approach to solving business problems. In essence, it's putting people first. An education centered in design strategy instills research methods that reveal how people think and live. Cultivating this on-the-ground understanding of customers and potential customers prevents companies from imposing their own biases and preconceptions and leads to ideas for products and services that people want—and will buy.

Co-creation is another crucial element of the human-centered approach to problem-solving. "Involving groups with diverse points of view in the problem-solving process is the best way to create value," says Lokitz. "We sometimes envision a solitary designer, probably with cool eyeglasses, coming up with solutions out of thin air, but the real way to innovate is to assemble teams of individuals with different skills and life experiences, of multiple ethnicities, races, and genders." Lokitz points out that the studio model of a design school like CCA, versus the classroom model of traditional MBA programs, fosters this kind of collaboration: team members build upon one another’s ideas, finding solutions that no single one of them could land on by themselves. And when these teams also bring in potential users as co-creators, it leads to a steep rise in business creativity.

Developing ideas through iteration is the third aspect of a human-centered approach to business problem-solving. This means designing and testing, then redesigning and re-testing, and then redesigning and re-testing again, possibly for the entire lifespan of the product or business. Designers have long understood that embracing failure is central to the creative process—you can learn a lot when something doesn’t work as expected. "I tell my students, 'It's never one and done,'" says Lokitz. "You need to have the mindset that everything is a prototype. Even after you go to market with a product, you need to continually improve it in order to increase value over time."

MBAs trained in human-centered design transform business models

Business consulting is a popular career path for MBAs with this skill set of empathy, co-creation, and iteration. Companies large and small, as well as nonprofit organizations and government agencies, are increasingly looking to consultants to help them transform their workplace cultures to embrace a human-centered approach.

A student wearing a denim jacket holds up a piece of paper with post-its of drawings neatly arranged.

This is the route Lokitz followed after earning his MBA degree from CCA. He joined an international consulting firm and worked with large, legacy companies that had lost touch with their customer base over time. He was able to import the ethos of CCA’s Design MBA into existing companies that had become used to making decisions based on "executive whimsy," as Lokitz puts it, rather than real-world research. "Bringing a human-centered approach into these companies meant getting them to talk to actual users and potential users, not just experts," he says. "They learned that listening to real people rather than pitching to them was the best way to evolve their brands."

Lokitz put to use the empathetic skills he learned at CCA when consulting for a German automotive company that was seeking to connect with younger drivers. In addition to doing secondary research—looking at demographic studies and market trends—he did deep primary research. "At CCA, I learned to go beyond customer surveys to listen to actual people, on the street and in their homes," he says. CCA MBAs also learn to evaluate the questions they ask after each encounter, and then refine them through an iterative process. "Using this approach to primary research, we were able to answer the car company's question, "Who are our next users and what do they need or want?'"

A human-centered approach leads to innovative products and services

Many graduates of MBA programs with robust curricula in design thinking become entrepreneurs. In fact, schools themselves often become incubators as student teams develop ideas for innovative products and services that respond to what people want and need.

One example is the successful nut milk company JOI (Just One Ingredient) , which came out of CCA’s Design MBA capstone Venture Studio. The team of Tony Jimenez, Dave Korstad, and Izzy Shu set out to solve the problem, "How can we meet the current desire to go beyond animal-based milk in an affordable and sustainable way?"

The team had researched market trends and found that many people were interested in exploring non-dairy milk options. But these products were often prohibitively expensive and sold in large containers that resulted in waste in the form of unused milk, excessive packaging, and a large transportation carbon footprint. So they came up with the idea of designing a home appliance for people to make their own almond milk at home, sustainably and at a lower price. But this is where empathy and iteration came into play. While doing primary user research in people's homes, they found that potential customers did not want another appliance taking up space on their kitchen countertops. The team went back to the drawing board.

The trio abandoned the idea for an appliance and came up with another solution: a concentrated base, kind of like a nut butter, that people could mix with water in an appliance they already owned—a blender—to make almond milk. The packaging for the concentrate would be minimal compared to the milk sold in large, heavy cartons and jugs in supermarkets. The environmental cost of shipping would decrease. And users could make just the amount they needed, leading to less food waste. "Through empathy— listening to consumers—co-creating as a team, and iterating, they solved the problem, albeit in a completely different way than they first anticipated," says Lokitz. “That’s the essence of human-centered design.”

After graduation, the team attracted venture capital and was able to launch the product. JOI now sells bases for almond, cashew, and oat milks, as well as hazelnut creamer, in reusable glass jars and compostable pouches directly to consumers through their website. "It’s a real success story," says Lokitz.

Another innovative product launched out of a recent CCA Venture Studio using a human-centered approach is the app Native Chats . Inspired by the international, multilingual student body at CCA, a diverse team of Design MBA students created a chat engine that allows seamless communication between people who speak different languages by using real-time translation on the back end. "Co-creation by an international team really spurred the development of Native Chats," says Lokitz. Launched in 2020, the AI-powered app is now translating chats among users speaking more than 100 languages, bringing people and businesses together across language barriers.

Sustainability must be a part of a human-centered approach to design

One criticism you sometimes hear about the human-centered approach is that it is, well, too centered on humans. But CCA alum Jo Marini, founder of the venture and social impact foundry Mother Superior, says that what she learned in CCA's Design Strategy MBA program is that “human-centered” must be broadly defined.

"I understand that it is my responsibility to design products and processes through the lenses of all stakeholders, from people to animals to the planet," she says. "We need to be aware of how our choices impact the entire system."

At Mother Superior, Marini supports founders who want to create sustainable businesses and make a social impact. She is currently working with a woman-owned cradle-to-cradle business that creates consumer hardware for cannabis and another venture that is using biotechnology to formulate sustainable skincare products.

Marini now teaches the Sustainability Studio in the Design MBA program as adjunct faculty. “The human-centered approach is the lens through which all problems are approached at CCA, but sustainability is the umbrella,” she says.

In the Sustainability Studio, the concept is broadly conceived to include social and economic equity in addition to environmental sustainability. Students examine the social and environmental impacts of material choices, supply chains, and organizational effectiveness across all stakeholders, including the planet, through the human-centered lens. Even the course syllabus is subject to human-centered design—it's a living document, meant to be iterated throughout the semester through a collaborative process between Marini and her students.

A human-centered approach is woven throughout CCA's Design MBA program

Today you'll find courses on design thinking or human-centered approaches to innovation in many MBA programs. But CCA's Design MBA is the only independent MBA program in an art and design school and the first with a focus on design strategy. "Here the design thinking courses aren't just satellites," says Lokitz. "The human-centered approach is woven into every aspect of the program."

CCA’s MBA in Design Strategy is a two-year, low residency MBA program that puts human needs at the center of decision-making. Students gain extensive experience in applying a human-centered approach to a range of business problems even before they earn their MBA degrees. Empathy, co-creation, and iteration are practiced in every CCA Design MBA class, from Managerial Economics to Market Insights to Business Models and Stakeholders. The program culminates in the capstone Venture Studio in the final semester, where diverse student teams engage in empathetic research and listening and iterate until they develop a plan for a financially viable, scalable, and sustainable business model or product.

"CCA's Design MBA is not bogged down with the investigation of outdated historical business models, but nor is it too ‘blue sky,’" says Marini. "You learn design skills that empower you to use business creativity to solve any challenge." And MBA degrees that emphasize design skills, tools, and mindsets are especially valuable in times like ours, when change, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity rule the day.

Marini points out that many of her fellow CCA MBAs have gone on to work in big tech companies, where their training in a human-centered approach is highly valued. "It's important to have someone with a design thinking background in the room when decisions are being made," says Marini. "Raising questions from a human-centered mindset can move companies toward more empathetic, more sustainable decision-making. It can make them more thoughtful about the implications of their decisions."

Earning an MBA that stresses a human-centered approach gives you a foundation to build profitable and human-centered businesses. "At CCA, we teach that the goal is not just to create a better product," says Lokitz. "Using a human-centered approach, we always keep the 'triple bottom line' front of mind—people, planet, and profit."

And CCA doesn’t just teach design thinking: it practices what it preaches. The program itself is constantly reinventing itself using a human-centered approach. Founded in 2008, the Design MBA was intentionally structured to change with the times, and it is continually being re-created through an iterative process based on empathetic listening and co-creation. The result is that CCA’s Design MBA is always on the cutting edge of innovation in business education.

Learn more about how you can cultivate a human-centered approach to solving business problems in CCA’s Design MBA program

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Human Design – 5/1 Profile (Heretic/Investigator)

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Understanding the 5/1 Profile in Human Design

The 5/1 profile in Human Design is a blend of the 5th line Heretic and the 1st line Investigator. These individuals are characterized by their need to make sense of the world and their ability to influence others through their practical insights and solutions. Understanding the dynamics of this profile can provide valuable insights into how 5/1 profiles navigate their life experiences and relationships.

The 5th line, or Heretic, is the most transpersonal line in the hexagram. It’s about being universal – being for everyone. Those with this line in their profile often feel a calling to be of practical use to others, solving problems, and addressing needs. They are naturally seen by others as problem solvers and may often find themselves in situations where they are called to provide practical solutions.

The 1st line in this profile, the Investigator, adds a foundation of depth and curiosity. It drives the 5/1 profile to understand how things work and to delve deep into their interests. This line is about getting to the foundations of things, searching for security through knowledge. In the context of the 5/1 profile , it is this deep understanding that underpins their problem-solving ability.

The interaction between the 5th and 1st lines in the 5/1 profile creates an interesting dynamic. The drive to investigate (1st line) feeds the practical problem-solving ability (5th line), and in turn, the recognition and demand from others (5th line) can steer the focus of the investigation (1st line). This cycle can make the 5/1 profile highly effective in roles where deep understanding and practical solutions are needed.

However, this profile also comes with its challenges. Because 5th line individuals are often projected upon by others, they may sometimes struggle with unrealistic expectations or misunderstandings. Balancing their need for solitude (1st line) with the demand from others (5th line) can also be a challenge for 5/1 profiles.

The Heretic’s Call and the Investigator’s Depth

The 5/1 profile brings together two unique aspects of Human Design – the practical, problem-solving Heretic and the depth-seeking Investigator. This combination can make these individuals dynamic and influential in their interactions, backed by a deep and thorough understanding of their interests or fields of expertise.

The 5th line, represented by the Heretic, has a practical orientation towards life. These individuals often carry a sense of responsibility to be of use to others and to address needs or problems they perceive in their environment. Others often see them as people who can offer solutions or strategies to address practical concerns, which can make them influential and respected in their communities or fields.

The 1st line, represented by the Investigator, adds a depth of understanding and curiosity to the 5/1 profile. These individuals are driven to understand the world around them deeply, often delving into topics of interest with great enthusiasm and dedication. This deep understanding provides a solid foundation for their practical problem-solving abilities.

The interaction between the Heretic and Investigator energies can lead 5/1 profiles to positions of influence and respect in their communities or fields. Their ability to delve deep into subjects and to offer practical solutions to problems can make them valuable contributors in many contexts.

However, it’s important to note that the 5th line’s influence often comes with projections from others. People may expect the 5/1 individuals to have solutions for all problems, which can lead to misunderstandings or pressure. Balancing these external demands with their inner need for depth and understanding can be a crucial challenge for 5/1 profiles.

The Investigator aspect of this profile also underscores the importance of a strong foundation. It’s essential for 5/1 individuals to have a solid understanding of a subject before they feel comfortable offering practical solutions. This need can drive them to continuous learning and exploration.

Human Design Types and the 5/1 Profile

How the 5/1 profile manifests in an individual’s life can also be influenced by their Human Design type . Each type (Manifestor, Generator, Projector, and Reflector) interacts with the profile in a unique way, influencing how the 5/1 characteristics are expressed.

For instance, a 5/1 Manifestor might use their depth of understanding (1st line) and ability to effect change (Manifestor) to come up with innovative solutions (5th line) to problems. They might be seen as a pioneering force in their field or community, offering new approaches backed by a thorough understanding of the topic.

A 5/1 Generator , on the other hand, might use their natural responsiveness (Generator) to identify where their problem-solving abilities (5th line) are needed and appreciated. Their depth of understanding (1st line) can make their contributions particularly valuable and effective.

For a 5/1 Projector , their ability to guide and manage others (Projector) might be particularly pronounced. They might be recognized and invited to offer their deep understanding (1st line) and practical solutions (5th line) in specific fields or situations.

Lastly, a 5/1 Reflector might offer unique insights and solutions (5th line) based on their ability to reflect their environment (Reflector). Their depth of understanding (1st line) could be particularly focused on people and dynamics, making them valuable contributors in social or community contexts.

As with all profiles, it’s essential to remember that the 5/1 profile is just one piece of the Human Design puzzle. The full chart, including the type, centers, channels, and gates, offers a more complete picture of an individual’s unique design.

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The Role of Centers in the 5/1 Profile

The centers in a Human Design chart also play a significant role in how the 5/1 profile is expressed. The definition within the centers can influence the way the investigative and practical qualities of this profile are utilized.

If the Throat Center is defined, for instance, the 5/1 individual might be particularly skilled at communicating their insights and solutions. If the Ajna Center is defined, they might have a consistent way of processing information that supports their investigative nature.

A defined Sacral Center could mean that a 5/1 Generator has a lot of energy for delving deep into their interests and for practical problem solving. A defined G Center might lead a 5/1 profile to be particularly influential in their identity or direction in life.

However, undefined centers can also influence the 5/1 profile. An undefined Head Center , for instance, could lead the individual to be particularly open to new ideas or perspectives, enhancing their investigative nature. An undefined Solar Plexus Center might make the individual sensitive to the emotional states of others, potentially influencing their problem-solving focus.

Remember, the 5/1 profile and the centers are just two parts of the larger Human Design system. Each part plays a role in the overall dynamic, influencing how an individual experiences life and interacts with the world.

Authority and Strategy in the 5/1 Profile

The authority and strategy in Human Design provide guidance on how to make decisions that are correct for you. For the 5/1 profile, these elements can help manage the pressures and expectations that can come with the 5th line, and provide a reliable way to navigate the investigative process of the 1st line.

For instance, a 5/1 Sacral Generator with sacral authority would be advised to listen to their gut responses to determine whether a particular problem or investigation is correct for them. A 5/1 Emotional Projector , on the other hand, would be advised to wait for emotional clarity before offering their solutions or delving into a new field of investigation.

The strategy for each type – to initiate (Manifestor), to respond (Generator), to wait for the invitation (Projector), or to wait for a lunar cycle ( Reflector ) – can also guide the 5/1 profile in how and when to offer their insights and solutions.

Understanding one’s authority and strategy can be particularly helpful for 5/1 profiles in managing the expectations and projections they might encounter. It can provide a reliable way to navigate life, backed by their deep understanding and practical problem-solving abilities.

Gates and Channels in the 5/1 Profile

The gates and channels in a Human Design chart can provide further insights into the unique characteristics of a 5/1 individual. These elements can show where the investigative energy of the 1st line and the problem-solving capacity of the 5th line might be particularly focused.

For example, a 5/1 profile with the Channel of The Prodigal (gate 13 and gate 33) might have a particular talent for investigating past experiences or histories, and providing practical insights or solutions based on that understanding. A 5/1 with the Channel of Structure (gate 15 and gate 5) might be particularly skilled at understanding patterns and rhythms, and offering practical strategies for harmonious living.

It’s important to note that every gate and channel in the Human Design system carries a unique potential, and the expression of that potential can vary widely. As with all aspects of Human Design, the gates and channels should be viewed in the context of the whole chart, including the profile, type, centers, and other elements.

5/1 Profile and the Life Journey

The journey of the 5/1 profile in Human Design is one of deep investigation and practical solutions. It can be a path of profound understanding and impactful contributions, but it can also come with pressures and challenges associated with the expectations of the 5th line.

A vital part of the journey for the 5/1 profile is to learn to navigate these pressures, to understand that they cannot fulfill everyone’s expectations, and that it’s okay to set boundaries. It’s also crucial for them to honor their investigative nature, to delve deep into the things that truly interest them, and to use their understanding in a practical way that aligns with their unique design.

Over time, the 5/1 individual can become a beacon of wisdom and a practical problem-solver, guiding others through the complexities of life with their unique insight. As they embrace their design, they can find satisfaction, success, peace, or surprise (depending on their type) in being exactly who they are meant to be.

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COMMENTS

  1. What Is Human-Centered Design?

    Human-centered design is a problem-solving technique that puts real people at the center of the development process, enabling you to create products and services that resonate and are tailored to your audience's needs. The goal is to keep users' wants, pain points, and preferences front of mind during every phase of the process.

  2. What Is Design Thinking & Why Is It Important?

    Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design. While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review .

  3. What is Design Thinking?

    Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps teams better identify, understand, and solve business and customer problems. ... Design thinking is a broader framework that borrows methods from human-centered design to approach problems beyond the design discipline. It encourages people with different backgrounds and expertise to ...

  4. Human-centered design

    Human-centered design (HCD, also human-centred design, as used in ISO standards) is an approach to problem-solving commonly used in process, product, service and system design, management, and engineering frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. Human involvement typically takes place in initially observing ...

  5. Human-Centered Design Explained: 3 Phases of HCD

    Human-Centered Design Explained: 3 Phases of HCD. Written by MasterClass. Last updated: Nov 2, 2021 • 2 min read. Human-centered design is a problem-solving design approach that considers a human's needs and perspectives to improve the user experience. Human-centered design is a problem-solving design approach that considers a human's ...

  6. Solve Problems Using the Design Thinking Process [2024] • Asana

    The design thinking process is a problem-solving design methodology that helps you develop solutions in a human-focused way. Initially designed at Stanford's d.school, the five stage design thinking method can help solve ambiguous questions, or more open-ended problems. Learn how these five steps can help your team create innovative solutions ...

  7. The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

    The Design Thinking process is a human-centered, iterative methodology that designers use to solve problems. It has 5 steps—Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. ... Empathy is crucial to problem solving and a human-centered design process as it allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world and gain real ...

  8. What is human-centered design & how to get started

    Human-centered design is a problem-solving approach that focuses on the needs and behaviors of the user. The goal is to create products that solve the user's problems and provide a better user experience overall. Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that focuses on understanding and redefining complex problems to find a solution.

  9. Human-centered design explained with examples

    What is Human-centered Design? It is an approach of problem-solving mostly used in design and management sectors by defining human perspectives in all steps of problem-solving. Of course the above is just a definition. In simple terms, it is the approach for designing solutions for human problems that will not distract the cognitive bias of our ...

  10. IDEO Design Thinking

    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. ... IDEO did not invent design thinking, but we have become known for practicing it and applying it to solving problems small and large ...

  11. What is human-centered design? A complete guide

    A definition. Human-centered design (HCD) is an approach to design that places real people at the center of problem-solving. At every phase of the design process, consideration of your customers and their context comes first. This is a step above user-centered design, which tends to focus on the way people use things, not their psychological ...

  12. What is Design Thinking and Why Is It So Popular?

    "Design thinking taps into capacities we all have but that are overlooked by more conventional problem-solving practices. It is not only human-centered; it is deeply human in and of itself. Design thinking relies on our ability to be intuitive, to recognize patterns, to construct ideas that have emotional meaning as well as functionality, to ...

  13. Human-centered design framework

    A versatile toolset for any problem. The LUMA System of Innovation is a framework of human-centered design that forms a toolset and shared language for innovation, even across countries and cultures. The methods are organized into three key design skills: Looking, Understanding and Making. The flexibility and versatility of the LUMA System ...

  14. Design thinking, explained

    Design thinking is an innovative problem-solving process rooted in a set of skills.The approach has been around for decades, but it only started gaining traction outside of the design community after the 2008 Harvard Business Review article [subscription required] titled "Design Thinking" by Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO.

  15. Human-Centered Design: What It Is And How Is It Different From Other

    In human-centred design, solving a problem from the human perspective by applying human logic is more important than aesthetics. Both design principles are basically focused on solving problems for the people. It's just that UX stays within the boundaries of a product.

  16. Design Thinking. Design thinking is a human-centered and…

    Design Thinking is an approach used for practical and creative problem-solving. It is based heavily on the methods and processes that designers use (hence the name), but it has actually evolved ...

  17. Design Thinking: A Creative Approach to Problem Solving

    Abstract. Design thinking—understanding the human needs related to a problem, reframing the problem in human-centric ways, creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing—offers a complementary approach to the rational problem-solving methods typically emphasized in business schools.

  18. Problem Solving, Human-Centered Design, and Strategic Processes

    This essay sets out a framework for integrating conventional problem solving and strategic planning techniques with human centered design (HCD) to help foundations improve their understanding of the problems they are trying to solve and increase their creativity in developing solutions. Unexpected server response (403) while retrieving PDF ...

  19. 4 Principles of Human-Centered Design

    Human-centered design (HCD, also human-centred design, as used in ISO standards) is an approach to problem-solving commonly used in process, product, service and system design, management, and engineering frameworks that develops solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process. — Wikipedia. As a designer or a participant in the tech space ...

  20. Design Thinking, Essential Problem Solving 101- It's More Than

    The term "Design Thinking" dates back to the 1987 book by Peter Rowe; "Design Thinking." In that book he describes the way that architects and urban planners would approach design problems. However, the idea that there was a specific pattern of problem solving in "design thought" came much earlier in Herbert A Simon's book, "The Science of the Artificial" which was published ...

  21. Design Thinking Takes a Human-Centered Approach to Problem-Solving

    Dr. Vagal presented the human-centered design approach during RSNA 2018's Fast Five session and will cover it again in an educational course at RSNA 2019. Design thinking is a human-centered, problem-solving approach that at its core uses empathy to tackle complex problems. Instead of traditional problem solving, where a problem is identified ...

  22. Cultivating a human-centered approach to problem-solving

    Co-creation is another crucial element of the human-centered approach to problem-solving. "Involving groups with diverse points of view in the problem-solving process is the best way to create value," says Lokitz. "We sometimes envision a solitary designer, probably with cool eyeglasses, coming up with solutions out of thin air, but the real way to innovate is to assemble teams of individuals ...

  23. Design Thinking Vs Human-Centred Design: What's the difference?

    Design Thinking is a problem-solving process: First we begin understanding and scoping a clear problem. ... It focused on innovation and creating products or services that solve problems. Human ...

  24. Human Design

    The 5/1 profile brings together two unique aspects of Human Design - the practical, problem-solving Heretic and the depth-seeking Investigator. This combination can make these individuals dynamic and influential in their interactions, backed by a deep and thorough understanding of their interests or fields of expertise.

  25. The 3 capabilities designers need to build for the AI era

    Prerequisites: An ability to evolve user testing methods for AI functionality; An ability to define the criteria surrounding a successful interaction (see Google's approach to Interaction Policies); An understanding of emerging best practices for interactions (see IBM's GenAI design principles); Capability 3: Model Design