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10 Successful Design Thinking Case Study

Dive into the realm of Successful Design Thinking Case Studies to explore the power of this innovative problem-solving approach. Begin by understanding What is Design Thinking? and then embark on a journey through real-world success stories. Discover valuable lessons learned from these case studies and gain insights into how Design Thinking can transform your approach.

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Design Thinking has emerged as a powerful problem-solving approach that places empathy, creativity, and innovation at the forefront. However, if you are not aware of the power that this approach holds, a Design Thinking Case Study is often used to help people address the complex challenges of this approach with a human-centred perspective. It allows organisations to unlock new opportunities and drive meaningful change. Read this blog on Design Thinking Case Study to learn how it enhances organisation’s growth and gain valuable insights on creative problem-solving.

Table of Contents   

1) What is Design Thinking?

2) Design Thinking process   

3) Successful Design Thinking Case Studies

      a) Airbnb

      b) Apple

      c) Netflix

      d) UberEats

      e) IBM

       f) OralB’s electric toothbrush

      g) IDEO

      h) Tesla

       i) GE Healthcare

       j) Nike

3) Lessons learned from Design Thinking Case Studies

4) Conclusion    

What is Design Thinking ?

Before jumping on Design Thinking Case Study, let’s first understand what it is. Design Thinking is a methodology for problem-solving that prioritises the understanding and addressing of individuals' unique needs.

This human-centric approach is creative and iterative, aiming to find innovative solutions to complex challenges. At its core, Design Thinking fosters empathy, encourages collaboration, and embraces experimentation.

This process revolves around comprehending the world from the user's perspective, identifying problems through this lens, and then generating and refining solutions that cater to these specific needs. Design Thinking places great importance on creativity and out-of-the-box thinking, seeking to break away from conventional problem-solving methods.

It is not confined to the realm of design but can be applied to various domains, from business and technology to healthcare and education. By putting the user or customer at the centre of the problem-solving journey, Design Thinking helps create products, services, and experiences that are more effective, user-friendly, and aligned with the genuine needs of the people they serve.  

Design Thinking process

Design Thinking is a problem-solving and innovation framework that helps individuals and teams create user-centred solutions. This process consists of five key phases that are as follows:  

To initiate the Design Thinking process, the first step is to practice empathy. In order to create products and services that are appealing, it is essential to comprehend the users and their requirements. What are their anticipations regarding the product you are designing? What issues and difficulties are they encountering within this particular context?

During the empathise phase, you spend time observing and engaging with real users. This might involve conducting interviews and seeing how they interact with an existing product. You should pay attention to facial expressions and body language. During the empathise phase in the Design Thinking Process , it's crucial to set aside assumptions and gain first-hand insights to design with real users in mind. That's the essence of Design Thinking.

During the second stage of the Design Thinking process, the goal is to identify the user’s problem. To accomplish this, collect all your observations from the empathise phase and begin to connect the dots.

Ask yourself: What consistent patterns or themes did you notice? What recurring user needs or challenges were identified? After synthesising your findings, you must create a problem statement, also known as a Point Of View (POV) statement, which outlines the issue or challenge you aim to address. By the end of the define stage, you will be able to craft a clear problem statement that will guide you throughout the design process, forming the basis of your ideas and potential solutions.

After completing the first two stages of the Design Thinking process, which involve defining the target users and identifying the problem statement, it is now time to move on to the third stage - ideation. This stage is all about brainstorming and coming up with various ideas and solutions to solve the problem statement. Through ideation, the team can explore different perspectives and possibilities and select the best ideas to move forward with.

During the ideation phase, it is important to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable sharing their ideas without fear of judgment. This phase is all about generating a large quantity of ideas, regardless of feasibility. This is done by encouraging the team to think outside the box and explore new angles. To maximise creativity, ideation sessions are often held in unconventional locations.

It’s time to transform the ideas from stage three into physical or digital prototypes. A prototype is a miniature model of a product or feature, which can be as simple as a paper model or as complex as an interactive digital representation.

During the Prototyping Stage , the primary objective is to transform your ideas into a tangible product that can be tested by actual users. This is crucial in maintaining a user-centric approach, as it enables you to obtain feedback before proceeding to develop the entire product. By doing so, you can ensure that the final design adequately addresses the user's problem and delivers an enjoyable user experience.

During the Design Thinking process, the fifth step involves testing your prototypes by exposing them to real users and evaluating their performance. Throughout this testing phase, you can observe how your target or prospective users engage with your prototype. Additionally, you can gather valuable feedback from your users about their experiences throughout the process.

Based on the feedback received during user testing, you can go back and make improvements to the design. It is important to remember that the Design Thinking process is iterative and non-linear. After the testing phase, it may be necessary to revisit the empathise stage or conduct additional ideation sessions before creating a successful prototype.

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Successful Design Thinking Case Studies  

Now that you have a foundational understanding of Design Thinking, let's explore how some of the world's most successful companies have leveraged this methodology to drive innovation and success:

Case Study 1: Airbnb  

Airbnb’s one of the popular Design Thinking Case Studies that you can aspire from. Airbnb disrupted the traditional hotel industry by applying Design Thinking principles to create a platform that connects travellers with unique accommodations worldwide. The founders of Airbnb, Brian Chesky, Joe Gebbia, and Nathan Blecharczyk, started by identifying a problem: the cost and lack of personalisation in traditional lodging.

They conducted in-depth user research by staying in their own listings and collecting feedback from both hosts and guests. This empathetic approach allowed them to design a platform that not only met the needs of travellers but also empowered hosts to provide personalised experiences. 

Airbnb's intuitive website and mobile app interface, along with its robust review and rating system, instil trust and transparency, making users feel comfortable choosing from a vast array of properties. Furthermore, the "Experiences" feature reflects Airbnb's commitment to immersive travel, allowing users to book unique activities hosted by locals. 

Case Study 2.  Apple    

Apple Inc. has consistently been a pioneer in  Design Thinking, which is evident in its products, such as the iPhone. One of the best Design Thinking Examples from Apple is the development of the iPhone's User Interface (UI). The team at Apple identified the need for a more intuitive and user-friendly smartphone experience. They conducted extensive research and usability testing to understand user behaviours, pain points, and desires.   

The result? A revolutionary touch interface that forever changed the smartphone industry. Apple's relentless focus on the user experience, combined with iterative prototyping and user feedback, exemplifies the power of  Design Thinking in creating groundbreaking products.    

Apple invests heavily in user research to  anticipate what customers want before they even realise it themselves. This empathetic approach to design has led to groundbreaking innovations like the iPhone, iPad, and MacBook, which have redefined the entire industry.  

Case Study 3. Netflix  

Netflix, the global streaming giant, has revolutionised the way people consume entertainment content. A major part of their success can be attributed to their effective use of Design Thinking principles.

What sets Netflix apart is its commitment to understanding its audience on a profound level. Netflix recognised that its success hinged on offering a personalised, enjoyable viewing experience. Through meticulous user research, data analysis, and a culture of innovation, Netflix constantly evolves its platform. Moreover, by gathering insights on viewing habits, content preferences, and even UI, the company tailors its recommendations, search algorithms, and original content to captivate viewers worldwide.

Furthermore, Netflix's iterative approach to Design Thinking allows it to adapt quickly to shifting market dynamics. This agility proved crucial when transitioning from a DVD rental service to a streaming platform. Netflix didn't just lead this revolution; it shaped it by keeping users' desires and behaviours front and centre. Netflix's commitment to Design Thinking has resulted in a highly user-centric platform that keeps subscribers engaged and satisfied, ultimately contributing to its global success.  

Case Study 4. Uber Eats     

Uber Eats, a subsidiary of Uber, has disrupted the food delivery industry by applying Design Thinking principles to enhance user experiences and create a seamless platform for food lovers and restaurants alike.  

One of  UberEats' key innovations lies in its user-centric approach. By conducting in-depth research and understanding the pain points of both consumers and restaurant partners, they crafted a solution that addresses real-world challenges. The user-friendly app offers a wide variety of cuisines, personalised recommendations, and real-time tracking, catering to the diverse preferences of customers.  

Moreover,  UberEats leverages technology and data-driven insights to optimise delivery routes and times, ensuring that hot and fresh food reaches customers promptly. The platform also empowers restaurant owners with tools to efficiently manage orders, track performance, and expand their customer base. 

Case Study  5 . IBM    

IBM is a prime example of a large corporation successfully adopting Design Thinking to drive innovation and transform its business. Historically known for its hardware and software innovations, IBM recognised the need to evolve its approach to remain competitive in the fast-paced technology landscape.   

IBM's Design Thinking journey began with a mission to reinvent its enterprise software solutions. The company transitioned from a product-centric focus to a user-centric one. Instead of solely relying on technical specifications, IBM started by empathising with its customers. They started to understand customer’s pain points, and envisioning solutions that genuinely addressed their needs. 

One of the key elements of IBM's Design Thinking success is its multidisciplinary teams. The company brought together designers, engineers, marketers, and end-users to collaborate throughout the product development cycle. This cross-functional approach encouraged diverse perspectives, fostering creativity and innovation. 

IBM's commitment to Design Thinking is evident in its flagship projects such as Watson, a cognitive computing system, and IBM Design Studios, where Design Thinking principles are deeply embedded into the company's culture. 

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Case Study 6. Oral-B’s electric toothbrush

Oral-B, a prominent brand under the Procter & Gamble umbrella, stands out as a remarkable example of how Design Thinking can be executed in a seemingly everyday product—Electric toothbrushes. By applying the Design Thinking approach, Oral-B has transformed the world of oral hygiene with its electric toothbrushes.  

Oral-B's journey with Design Thinking began by placing the user firmly at the centre of their Product Development process. Through extensive research and user feedback, the company gained invaluable insights into oral care habits, preferences, and pain points. This user-centric approach guided Oral-B in designing electric toothbrushes that not only cleaned teeth more effectively but also made the entire oral care routine more engaging and enjoyable.  

Another of Oral-B's crucial innovations is the integration of innovative technology into their toothbrushes. These devices now come equipped with features like real-time feedback, brushing timers, and even Bluetooth connectivity to sync with mobile apps. By embracing technology and user-centric design, Oral-B effectively transformed the act of brushing teeth into an interactive and informative experience. This has helped users maintain better oral hygiene.  

Oral-B's success story showcases how Design Thinking, combined with a deep understanding of user needs, can lead to significant advancements, ultimately improving both the product and user satisfaction.

Case Study 7. IDEO  

IDEO, a Global Design Consultancy, has been at the forefront of Design Thinking for decades. They have worked on diverse projects, from creating innovative medical devices to redesigning public services.

One of their most notable Design Thinking examples is the development of the "DeepDive" shopping cart for a major retailer. IDEO's team spent weeks observing shoppers, talking to store employees, and prototyping various cart designs. The result was a cart that not only improved the shopping experience but also increased sales. IDEO's human-centred approach, emphasis on empathy, and rapid prototyping techniques demonstrate how Design Thinking can drive innovation and solve real-world problems.   

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Case Study  8 .  Tesla  

Tesla, led by Elon Musk, has redefined the automotive industry by applying Design Thinking to Electric Vehicles (EVs). Musk and his team identified the need for EVs to be not just eco-friendly but also desirable. They focused on designing EVs that are stylish, high-performing, and technologically advanced. Tesla's iterative approach, rapid prototyping, and constant refinement have resulted in groundbreaking EVs like the Model S, Model 3, and Model X.    

From the minimalist interior of their Model S to the autopilot self-driving system, every aspect is meticulously crafted with the end user in mind. The company actively seeks feedback from its user community, often implementing software updates based on customer suggestions. This iterative approach ensures that Tesla vehicles continually evolve to meet and exceed customer expectations .   

Moreover, Tesla's bold vision extends to sustainable energy solutions, exemplified by products like the Powerwall and solar roof tiles. These innovations  showcase Tesla's holistic approach to Design Thinking, addressing not only the automotive industry's challenges but also contributing to a greener, more sustainable future.   

Case Study 9. GE Healthcare 

GE Healthcare is a prominent player in the Healthcare industry, renowned for its relentless commitment to innovation and design excellence. Leveraging Design Thinking principles, GE Healthcare has consistently pushed the boundaries of medical technology, making a significant impact on patient care worldwide.  

One of the key areas where GE Healthcare has excelled is in the development of cutting-edge medical devices and diagnostic solutions. Their dedication to user-centred design has resulted in devices that are not only highly functional but also incredibly intuitive for healthcare professionals to operate. For example, their advanced Medical Imaging equipment, such as MRI and CT scanners, are designed with a focus on patient comfort, safety, and accurate diagnostics. This device reflects the company's dedication to improving healthcare outcomes.  

Moreover, GE Healthcare's commitment to design extends beyond the physical product. They have also ventured into software solutions that facilitate data analysis and Patient Management. Their user-friendly software interfaces and data visualisation tools have empowered healthcare providers to make more informed decisions, enhancing overall patient care and treatment planning.

Case Study 10. Nike 

Nike is a global powerhouse in the athletic apparel and Footwear industry. Nike's journey began with a simple running shoe, but its design-thinking approach transformed it into an iconic brand.

Nike's Design Thinking journey started with a deep understanding of athletes' needs and desires. They engaged in extensive user research, often collaborating with top athletes to gain insights that inform their product innovations. This customer-centric approach allowed Nike to develop ground breaking technologies, such as Nike Air and Flyknit, setting new standards in comfort, performance, and style.

Beyond product innovation, Nike's brand identity itself is a testament to Design Thinking. The iconic Swoosh logo, created by Graphic Designer Carolyn Davidson, epitomises simplicity and timelessness, reflecting the brand's ethos.  

Nike also excels in creating immersive retail experiences, using Design Thinking to craft spaces that engage and inspire customers. Their flagship stores around the world are showcases of innovative design, enhancing the overall brand perception.

Lessons learned from Design Thinking Case Studies

The Design Thinking process, as exemplified by the success stories of IBM, Netflix, Apple, and Nike, offers valuable takeaways for businesses of all sizes and industries. Here are three key lessons to learn from these Case Studies:  

1)   Consider the b ig p icture   

Design Thinking encourages organisations to zoom out and view the big picture. It's not just about solving a specific problem but understanding how that problem fits into the broader context of user needs and market dynamics. By taking a holistic approach, you can identify opportunities for innovation that extend beyond immediate challenges. IBM's example, for instance, involved a comprehensive evaluation of their clients' journeys, leading to more impactful solutions.  

2)  Think t hrough a lternative s olutions   

One of the basic principles of Design Thinking is ideation, which emphasises generating a wide range of creative solutions. Netflix's success in content recommendation, for instance, came from exploring multiple strategies to enhance user experience. When brainstorming ideas and solutions, don't limit yourself to the obvious choices. Encourage diverse perspectives and consider unconventional approaches that may lead to breakthrough innovations.  

3)  Research e ach c ompany’s c ompetitors   

Lastly, researching competitors is essential for staying competitive. Analyse what other companies in your industry are doing, both inside and outside the realm of Design Thinking. Learn from their successes and failures. GE Healthcare, for example, leveraged Design Thinking to improve medical equipment usability, giving them a competitive edge. By researching competitors, you can gain insights that inform your own Design Thinking initiatives and help you stand out in the market.  

Incorporating these takeaways into your approach to Design Thinking can enhance your problem-solving capabilities, foster innovation, and ultimately lead to more successful results.  

Conclusion    

Design Thinking is not limited to a specific industry or problem domain; it is a versatile approach that promotes innovation and problem-solving in various contexts. In this blog, we've examined successful Design Thinking Case Studies from industry giants like IBM, Netflix, Apple, Airbnb, Uber Eats, and Nike. These companies have demonstrated that Design Thinking is a powerful methodology that can drive innovation, enhance user experiences, and lead to exceptional business success.   

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Frequently Asked Questions

Design Thinking Case Studies align with current market demands and user expectations by showcasing practical applications of user-centric problem-solving. These Studies highlight the success of empathetic approaches in meeting evolving customer needs.

By analysing various real-world examples, businesses can derive vital insights into dynamic market trends, creating innovative solutions, and enhancing user experiences. Design Thinking's emphasis on iterative prototyping and collaboration resonates with the contemporary demand for agility and adaptability.

Real-world examples of successful Design Thinking implementations can be found in various sources. For instance, you can explore several Case Study repositories on Design Thinking platforms like IDEO and Design Thinking Institute. Furthermore, you can also look for business publications, such as the Harvard Business Review as well as Fast Company, which often feature articles on successful Design Thinking applications.

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Our Leadership Training blogs covers a range of topics related to Design Thinking, offering valuable resources, best practices, and industry insights. Whether you are a beginner or looking to advance your Design Thinking skills, The Knowledge Academy's diverse courses and informative blogs have you covered.

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50+ Design Thinking Case Study Examples

Design Thinking Case Studies demonstrate the value of the Design Thinking methodology. They show how this Design Thinking methodology helps creatively solve problems and improve the success rate of innovation and increase collaboration in corporations, education, social impact work and the public sector by focusing on the needs of humans.

There are many Design Thinking Case Study examples on the web, but few meet the criteria for a robust case study: a clear description of the methodology, steps undertaken, experimentation through rapid prototypes and testing with people and finally documented results from the process. In this section, we have been selective about the design thinking case study examples that we highlight. We look for Design Thinking Case Studies that demonstrate how a problem was tackled and wherever possible the results or effect that the project produced. Our goal in curating this section of Design Thinking Case Study examples is quality over quantity.

Browse this page to view all Design Thinking Case Study examples, or if you are looking for Design Thinking Case Studies in a specific industry or marketing vertical, then rather start with the Design Thinking Case Studies Index .

If you have an interesting application of Design Thinking that you have a case study for, we would be happy to publish it.

Submit your Design Thinking Case Study for publication here.

Design Thinking Case Study Index

Welcome to the Design Thinking Case Study Index. There are many Design Thinking Case Studies on the internet. Many are retrofitted descriptions of what occurred, rather than evidence of the Design Thinking process in action. In order to bring a higher standard to the practice of Design Thinking, we require stronger evidence and rigor. Only members can post and must provide strong evidence in the Design Thinking Case Study that the Design Thinking process was used to create the original idea for the product or service solution. The criteria that needs to be proved to make your project a Design Thinking Case Study are:

The Guardian: Benefits of Design Thinking

Design thinking helped The Guardian newspaper and publishing group change their funding model, boost revenue and adapt their culture and engage on an emotional level with their readers. In this case study, Alex Breuer, Executive Creative Director and Tara Herman, Executive Editor, Design explain how design thinking was able to achieve these goals for The Guardian.

Read more...

Tackling the Opioid Crisis at the Human and Systems Levels

How the Lummi Tribal clinic used design to address opioid overdoses

Applying Design Thinking Internally

Applying Design Thinking internally, within a group, community or to ourselves. This is a new application of the Design Thinking Methodology.

An internal application in this sense can have two meanings. First, the internal application of design thinking tactics within a group, organization or community, and second, the internal application of design thinking to one’s own self and life.

Can Design Thinking help you solve your own problems?

The Use of Design Thinking in MNCH Programs, Ghana

Responding to growing interest among designers, global health practitioners, and funders in understanding the potential benefits of applying design thinking methods and tools to solving complex social problems, the Innovations for Maternal, Newborn, and Child Health (MNCH) Initiative (Innovations) developed and piloted innovative interventions to address common barriers to improving the effectiveness of basic MNCH health services in low-resource settings.

Société Générale's Time Tracking Nightmare Solved

In 2017, employees, managers, and partners of Société Générale Global Solution Centre agreed that invoices based on time tracking and project allocation were a chronic and painful challenge.

At SG-GSC, customers were billed for the time each assigned employee worked. The process of collecting the time worked by those employees (HCC) was a complicated and difficult ordeal. It consumed 21 days per month for senior employees. These employees had to navigate different systems, many types of contracts, high staff mobility, and a variety of processes between business lines.

How to Stimulate Innovation in Your Organization With Design Thinking

In this use case the cities of Aalborg and Rotterdam share their findings obtained from design thinking initiatives. This is based on empirical research as part of an evaluation. The use case is written for other professionals in the field of design in public organizations.

One of the main targets of the Interreg NSR project Like! is to create a digital innovative culture in which citizens are engaged, and more inclusive services are build. To reach this the municipalities started several initiatives with design thinking. In these initiatives one of the objectives was to find out how design thinking can help us to develop innovative and inclusive services. To research what design thinking contributed, we evaluated the pilots with participants.

The Impact of Design Thinking on Innovation: A Case Study at Scania IT

Organizational culture represents a crucial factor for the introduction of innovation throughout the organization via Design Thinking and agile way of working. Thus, the organization must establish a culture that encompasses a shared vision with values that create a commitment to learn, experiment and accept failure.

Oral B - Putting the User At the Center of Innovation

Oral B wanted to integrate digital technology into their electric toothbrush. The Brands first thoughts were to help users to track how well they were brushing their teeth. Future Facility, a product design firm in the UK suggested a different approach. Focus on the pain points of electric toothbrush users.

This case study discusses the importance of placing the user at the center of your innovation activities.

Design Thinking at Innogy

eCarSharing:   Energy Solutions for the New Generation

In 2015, Itai Ben-Jacob pitched his own ideas for a viable business model and developed the idea for innogy’s eCarSharing project in a design thinking workshop. His goal was to explore one of innogy’s innovation focus areas, ‘urban mobility.’

Together with fellow innovation hub members he organized a series of design thinking workshops to wade through the expansive topic of urban concepts – one of them focusing on mobility: “ We wanted to understand urban mobility – what does it actually entail? What type of business should we start? “

Building Cape Town’s Resilience Qualities Through Design Thinking.

This case study focuses on a Design Thinking Workshop for primary school learners. The aim of the workshops was to provide learners with a new set of skills which they can employ when problem solving for real world challenges.

Building resilience is essential for cities that face increasing uncertainty and new challenges that threaten the well-being of its citizens. This is especially important when looking at the diversity and complexity of potential shocks and stresses. 

Cape Town’s efforts to build skills in design thinking supports the creation of locally-relevant and innovative solutions that contribute to building resilient individuals and communities in Cape Town.

Designing Waste Out of the Food System

The average American  wastes  enough food each month to feed another person for 19 days. Through a number of projects with The Rockefeller Foundation and other organizations, IDEO designers from across the U.S. devised novel ways to tackle food waste.

B2B Design Thinking: Product Innovation when the User is a Network

When B2B companies talk about user experience, they are really considering the aggregated needs of multiple people and roles in a large ecosystem. But what happens when those objectives are vastly different for every individual?

“Humans don’t stop being humans just because they entered an office building.”

Self-Checkout: Improving Scan Accuracy Through Design

In this unique applied research study, academics and designers partnered with four of ECR’s Retailer members to immerse themselves in the self-checkout experience, understanding from the perspectives of the shopper and self-checkout supervisors, their journey from entry to exit, and their design challenges and frustrations.

Co-designing OTP Bank’s Strategic Plan for Growth

This is an example of accelerating a transformation through co-design. Eighty-two professionals gathered, representing OTP’s whole organization. Together, they were able to achieve months of work in just three days.

OTP Bank Romania (OTP) was at a key turning point in late 2018. The organization was undergoing changes in its leadership team. This new team helped them develop an ambitious goal:

OTP Bank will double its market share in 5 years.

They gathered for two Discovery sessions in December 2018. In these sessions, a carefully selected senior team chose three market segments to focus on. Then they built these segments into Personas.

IDEO: Journey to Mastery

While this is not a case study as such, it sits in our case study section as it is an important piece of information from a consultancy that played a large part in popularizing Design Thinking. In their Journey to Mastery section, IDEO discuss and shine a light on the shortcomings of the design thinking term and how it has been applied. I.e that it is not designing and that just knowing and using the practice does not in itself produce amazing solutions to problems.

It is worth a read to understand some of the nuance that is important to successful design thinking work.

Singapore Government: Building Service Platforms Around Moments in Life

In 2017, the product development team at Singapore’s Government Technology Agency (GovTech) was tasked to develop a tool to consolidate citizen-facing services previously delivered by different government agencies onto a single platform. The initiative, Moments of Life, sought to make it easier for citizens to discover and access relevant services during important changes in their lives by reducing fragmentation and being more anticipatory in the delivery of those services.

Organizing the delivery of services around a citizen’s journey, rather than fitting their delivery to existing processes, required extensive interagency collaboration beyond functional silos.

Mayo Clinic: Design Thinking in Health Care – Case Study

In the early 2000s, Mayo Clinic physician Nicholas LaRusso asked himself a question: if we can test new drugs in clinical trials, can we in a similarly rigorous way test new kinds of doctor-patient interactions?  

Consequently, the Mayo Clinic set up a skunkworks outpatient lab called SPARC. Within 6 years it had grown to an enterprise wide department called the Center for Innovation a dedicated research and design-oriented institute that studies the processes of health care provision, from the initial phone call, to the clinic visit, to the diagnosis and treatment of the problem, to follow-up and preventive care.

Design Thinking and Participation in Switzerland: Lessons Learned from Three Government Case Studies

Olivier Glassey, Jean-Henry Morin, Patrick Genoud, Giorgio Pauletto

This paper examines how design thinking and serious game approaches can be used to support participation.

In these case studies the authors discovered the following results.

Perceived usefulness. Based on informal discussions and debriefing sessions following all workshops, it is clear that the vast majority of workshop participants explicitly stated that both the actual outcome of the workshop and the methods used would significantly contribute to enhancing their performance in their work. Some workshops have actually led to follow up workshops or concrete actions based on the outcome.

Asili: Addressing an Entire Ecosystem of Need in a Rural Community

Design Thinking in HR at Deutche Telekom

Reza Moussavian, a senior HR and IT executive at Deutsch Telekom explains the company's journey and how important Design Thinking is as a business strategy for HR. Reza Moussavian's presentation provides great examples of issues tackled in HR and the results achieved. The presenter claims that there is not a singe issue that Deutche Telekom tackles in HR now that does not start with a Design Thinking methodology.

"Design Thinking solves 5% of our problems." says Reza Moussavian, "What we found out was that the magic was really in the implementation phase. We had to learn how to keep the momentum, the spirit and the fire from the co-creation workshops alive through the long implementation phase. Success is really about technology, transformation and leadership skills."

Design Thinking in Education: Perspectives, Opportunities and Challenges

This very informative article discusses design thinking as a process and mindset for collaboratively finding solutions for wicked problems in a variety of educational settings. Through a systematic literature review the article organizes case studies, reports, theoretical reflections, and other scholarly work to enhance our understanding of the purposes, contexts, benefits, limitations, affordances, constraints, effects and outcomes of design thinking in education.

Specifically, the review pursues four questions:

Design Thinking in the Classroom: What can we do about Bullying?

As children move from kindergarten, through middle school, and to high school, instruction shifts from stories to facts, from speculation to specifics, and imagination fades from focus. Design Thinking provides an alternative model to traditional ways of learning academic content by challenging students to find answers to complex, nuanced problems with multiple solutions and by fostering students’ ability to act as change agents.

Design Thinking is all about building creative confidence — a sense that “I can change the world.” In the Bullies & Bystanders Design Challenge, the students discovered that changing themselves might be even more important.

Following One School District's Approach to Innovation for the 21st Century

In her doctoral paper Loraine Rossi de Campos explores the use of Design Thinking in a school district for a 4-5 grade school.

India: Using ‘Design Thinking’ to Enhance Urban Redevelopment.

The discourse on urban planning and development has evolved over the last century with top-down methods of planning urban spaces giving way to bottom-up approaches that involve residents and other stakeholders in the design process. While the notion of participation and user involvement is considered critical to the design of appropriate and acceptable urban forms, there is no clear consensus in the literature on the methodology to be used to involve users and stakeholders in the design process. In this paper, we propose that the use of ‘Design-Thinking’ – a methodology for Human-Centred Design that is often used in product design and related industries – may be an effective methodology for engaging stakeholders in the urban design domain.

E*Trade: From Idea to Investment in 5 Minutes

Why the Financial Services Sector Should Embrace Design Thinking. Financial institutions need to evolve rapidly or risk disruption at the hands of nimble Fintech start-up companies.

In this article Kunal Vaed, The Street, describes how E*Trade used design thinking to enable the company to help investors get smarter by going from the idea of investing to an investment in 5 minutes.

E*Trade's Adaptive Portfolio service offering provides a good example of the work and results that E*Trade achieved with Design Thinking.

Fidelity Labs: Optimizing near-term savings goals

Thanks to providers like Fidelity, people can rely on easy, convenient systems to stay on track with their retirement savings. But when it comes to saving for important near-term goals (think: vacation, house, or wedding), people tend to be less organized. 

Fidelity Labs tackled this problem and defined the challenge as: "How might we improve the experience of saving for near-term goals? How might we make it easier, faster, and better?"

Design for Action: MassMutual and Intercorp Group

How to use design thinking to make great things actually happen by Tim Brown and Roger L. Martin. In this great HBR article, the authors look at design thinking in Finance with two case studies, one from MassMutual and the other from Intercorp. Group of Peru.

In this article highlighting the development of the acceptance of Design Thinking, they discuss how Design Thinking helps to create the artifact that creates the new solution as well as the intervention/s that brings the artifact to life.

How to Use Design Thinking to Make Great Things Actually Happen

Ever since it became clear that smart design led to the success of many products, companies have been employing it in other areas, from customer experiences, to strategy, to business ecosystems. But as design is used in increasingly complex contexts, a new hurdle has emerged: gaining acceptance (for the new solutions).

4 Design Thinking Case Studies in Healthcare: Nursing

The 4 case studies by Penn Nursing illustrate how nurses can be really powerful collaborators and generators of solutions within Healthcare. The videos describe the main attributes that nurses bring to the problem solving table

Philips: Improving the Patient Experience

Philips Ambient Experience service offers hospitals a way to radically improve the patient experience and results that they can achieve from their CT scanning suites. The best way to understand what it is is to watch this video  and this video  discussing the latest addition to the service. The white paper from Philips is also a good source of information on the Ambient Experience Service.

IBM: Design Thinking Adaptation and Adoption at Scale

How IBM made sense of ‘generic design thinking’ for tens of thousands of people. 

Generic design thinking often faces heavy resistance from influential skeptics, gets misunderstood or not understood at all, or less dire, it gets picked up with an unreflected euphoria and is applied as a “silver bullet” to all kinds of problems and projects (the famous “methodology misfit” we also see with Scrum for example). The big hangover often comes after the first experimentation budgets are expended and at worst a blame game starts.

Design Thinking in Public Engagement: Two Case Studies

Dave Robertson presents two case studies with the British Columbia Government (Canada). One with the Ministry of Transportation discussing their (public servant centered website), the other solving the problem of finding a solution to where to place a power substation.

Dave shows how he was stuck working in the public sector as a consultant and how creativity expressed through the Design Thinking methodology helped him to see a different, more effective way of creating solutions.

Bank of America Helps Customers Keep the Change

How do you encourage new customers to open bank accounts? In 2004, Bank of America used the Design Thinking methodology to look at the problem from a human centered perspective when they assigned design agency IDEO to boost their enrollment numbers: a problem that at the time, lacked any user perspective on why it was so hard for customers to save.

Redesigning The Employment Pass Application in Singapore

The Ministry of Manpower’s Work Pass Division (WPD) used design thinking as a tool to develop better ways to support foreigners who choose Singapore as a destination to live, work and set up businesses. The case reveals: Design thinking can potentially transform the perception and meaning of public service.

The team found out that the service redesign process required a better understanding of the decision points of both users and non-users. This involved taking a closer look at the opportunities and difficulties facing users, including those who had succeeded and failed within it, or had encountered problems or avoided it.

The US Tax Forms Simplification Project

This case concerns one of the earliest attempts by design thinkers at designing a large, complex system. It shows that design approaches in the public sector can look back at a long history. And it reveals how design thinking within the organization must include members of the whole organization in the design process.

Design has a long tradition and a rich history in the public sector. Nearly 40 years ago, when the US Congress passed the Paperwork Reduction Act into law, the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) turned to designers in an effort to implement the new policy and to improve its relationship with taxpayers. 

A Tough Crowd: Using Design Thinking to Help Traditional German Butchers

Between 2004 and 2014, more than 4000 butcher shops were forced to shut down in Germany. When last was the butcher shop redesigned? The process started in the 1990s, as supermarkets became the favored spot for meat-shopping. As if a dramatic loss of market share was not enough, the industry as a whole started suffering from a serious image crisis. It was time to apply design Thinking to the traditional German Butcher Shop.

The initial problem statement read “Create the meat shop 2.0, an up-to-date version of the classic butcher business”. 

IDEO: Using Design Thinking to Create a Better Car

The challenge.

Remove roadblocks that can compromise the in-car experience for the Lincoln car company.

The final product, the Lincoln MKC luxury crossover, is credited with helping the Lincoln brand outpace growth in the luxury segment by more than two-to-one over competitors.

THE OUTCOME

A pop-up studio where IDEO designers helped departments communicate and collaborate more effectively.

Transforming Constructivist Learning into Action: Design Thinking in Education

In an ever changing society of the 21st century, there is a demand to equip students with meta competences going beyond cognitive knowledge. Education, therefore, needs a transition from transferring knowledge to developing individual potentials with the help of constructivist learning. A Scheer, C Noweski,  C Meinel , University of Potsdam, Germany.

Design Thinking is the most effective method of teaching constructivist learning.

Scaling Design Thinking in the Enterprise, a 5 Year Study

During Julie Baher's five years at  Citrix  between 2010 to 2015, she was fortunate to gain first-hand experience leading a transformation in product strategy to a customer-centered approach. It began when several senior executives attended the  design thinking boot camp  at Stanford’s d-school, returning with a new vision for the product development processes. Julie goes into detail about how they scaled up the customer centric methodology across the organizations 8,000 employees.

Developing Environmental Sustainability Strategies

Developing environmental sustainability strategies, the Double Diamond method of LCA and design thinking: a case study from aged care. Journal of Cleaner Production, 85, 67-82. Stephen J. Clune*, Simon Lockrey.

Developing an App for Type II Diabetes

Development and testing of a mobile application to support diabetes self-management for people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes: a design thinking case study. Numerous mobile applications have been developed to support diabetes-self-management. However, the majority of these applications lack a theoretical foundation and the involvement of people with diabetes during development. The aim of this study was to develop and test a mobile application (app) supporting diabetes self-management among people with newly diagnosed type 2 diabetes using design thinking. The article was written by Mira Petersen and Nana F. Hempler.

Improving UX in Public Transportation

In this case study the project leaders goal was to  improve the experience of bus users  on Madrid's EMT system by offering a technological solution to  increase the users’ satisfaction with regard to accessibility  during the bus trip as well as when waiting for the bus to arrive.

Transforming Life Insurance through Design Thinking

To some fintechs, non-insurance incumbents, and venture capitalists, the industry’s challenges suggest opportunity. The life insurance value chain is increasingly losing share to these players, who are chipping away at the profit pool. 

How might incumbent life insurers keep pace in today’s fast-moving competitive environment and meet customers’ changing needs?

Deploying the Design Thinking methodology in the insurance sector could be the key to helping save insurance from itself. Here's what McKinsey has to say about design thinking in insurance in their article "Transforming Life Insurance through Design Thinking".

"Better addressing the evolving needs of consumers can help incumbents win their loyalty—and protect against new competitors. 

Bringing Design Thinking to the Insurance World

Pancentric helped  Jelf kick-off a several-year digital transformation journey by getting to know not just their customers better, but their own staff, too. Jelf has dozens of offices around the UK, all with specialties in insuring different kinds of commercial businesses. For our project team trying to determine a roadmap of new developments, there was no easy overview of how each office operated or what the entire customer experience looked like.

The Features of Design Thinking in Fast Moving Consumer Goods Brand Development

This paper investigates what features of design thinking are employed in FMCG brand development via stakeholder interviews in three domains: agencies, companies, and retailers. This paper concludes with suggestions of how design thinking can be embraced in FMCG brand development.

A Chain of Innovation The Creation of Swiffer

This is a great case study that underlines the complexity of bringing game changing products to market. It helps to provide an understanding of just how much more is needed that a simple five step process of idea generation.

Read more from Continuum , the Design Firm responsible for the Swiffer

The Guardian: Using Design to Reaffirm Values

The Guardian's redesign, which launched in January 2018, illustrated the business impact when design is valued. The Guardian has a strong culture of design and increasingly, how design thinking can contribute to organizational change and development.

5 Game-Changing Examples of Design Thinking (and What We Can Learn from Them)

Design thinking is a powerful framework with the capacity to revolutionize your approach to just about anything.

Over the last decade, the practice of design thinking has made its way into a variety of other disciplines and industries. In the past, employers may have thought of design as something only for artists or other creative professionals. Nowadays, CEO’s and hiring managers across many disciplines are calling on designers to improve their products or services.

From consumer products, healthcare, travel, non-profit community programs, and even self-improvement, design thinking has proven a useful problem-solving tool for innovators and entrepreneurs alike.

We’ve rounded up five examples of how design thinking can have incredible effects on a company’s success as well as a huge impact on the world around us. For each example, we’ll go over how each organization used the design process to improve their services and what we can learn from their experience. Here’s what we’ll cover:

• What is design thinking?

Braun/Oral B Electric Toothbrush

The good kitchen, bernard roth’s “the achievement habit”.

• Key takeaways

1. What is design thinking?

A designer’s biggest task is to identify and solve existing problems with a product and leave users happier than they were before. At times this task can seem overwhelming and hard to grasp. The process of design thinking consists of five steps that designers use to organize their information and find meaningful and successful solutions to a problem. The design thinking steps go like this:

• Empathize: Understanding the user and the problems they face through conducting user interviews, creating empathy maps, and listening to user stories.
• Define: Organizing and analyzing the research information to produce a concise problem statement and possible solution or hypothesis.
• Ideate: The brainstorming phase. Designers think of a wide variety of possible solutions and evaluate each one.
• Prototype: Turning ideas into a physical representation of the product that will solve the user’s needs, slowly adding greater detail and complexity as designers move between testing and iteration.
• Test: Putting the prototype in the hands of the user and determining whether the product has solved the problem at hand and reduced friction or frustration.

The idea behind design thinking is to keep the user in mind from beginning to end. With the user at the forefront, designers can move between these five design thinking steps to create problem solving products with the potential to change industry standards and even lives.

2. Five awesome examples of design thinking

In 2016, Braun and Oral B recruited the expertise of designers Kim Colin and Sam Hecht, founders of the London-based design studio Industrial Facility, to create a smarter electric toothbrush.

When they initially partnered with Braun and Oral B, the manufacturers suggested Colin and Hecht design an electric toothbrush with a variety of sophisticated data-tracking features including a music player, ways to sense how well the users were brushing every single tooth, and even how sensitive their gums were.

However, Hecht and Colin quickly advised them to think more about the customer’s experience as opposed to their own vision for the product. They suggested how a few simple additions to the brush could solve many of the frictions their users were reporting. Hecht and Colin added on-the-go, USB charging and made it easier for users to order replacement brush heads, both problems that Braun and Oral B consumers had already expressed.

The result was an exceptional product that took user feedback into consideration to boost sales and increase customer loyalty.

Using the design thinking process to find better ways to serve a community can have profound effects on the lives of its members. Take Danish design agency Hatch and Bloom’s creation of The Good Kitchen as an example.

In 2007, Denmark had over 125,000 elderly citizens relying on government-sponsored meals. Hatch and Bloom were called upon by the Municipality of Holstebro to design a new and improved meal delivery service for these citizens. What came to fruition was a service with greater quality, more freedom of meal choice, and more flexibility for not only the elderly citizens receiving the meals but also the chefs and other employees responsible for cooking and delivering them.

How did they create such a superior service? One of the most notable actions Hatch and Bloom took was the decision to interview and prototype with both consumers and chefs. They found the things that meal recipients were desiring were similar to what the chefs requested as well—a more dignified service with a greater variety of food options.

By listening to their concerns, hearing their pain points, and testing out new options, Hatch and Bloom found ways to keep both their customers and employees happy and healthy.

It’s hard to believe that the ever-successful start-up Airbnb was once making less than $200 per week. What grew their revenue and transformed Airbnb into a billion-dollar business? Lots of experimentation, risk, and thinking outside of the norm.

Joe Gebbia and Paul Graham, co-founders of Airbnb, remember going over numerous charts, graphs, and codes with their design team trying to find some clue as to why their growth was nearly zero.

It wasn’t until Gebbia began moving through the app like a user that he realized why no one was wanting to book a stay—the pictures looked terrible! Without any data to back their next decision, Graham and Gebbia decided to rent a camera, travel to New York, and spend some time with their customers to replace the amateur photos with more professional-looking ones.

A week later, their revenue nearly doubled. By taking a risk on a non-scalable solution, Graham and Gebbia witnessed their dwindling start-up transform into a thriving enterprise that revolutionized the travel industry.

The design team at UberEats is constantly accessing design thinking principles to fuse modern, state-of-art technology with the antiquated and fundamental act of enjoying a meal.  And it’s safe to say that they’ve had a pretty successful project.

One thing that really stands out about the UberEats design team is their adherence to the design thinking process. They seek to empathize with their user’s experience so much that they’ve implemented The Walkabout Program—a quarterly event where UberEats designers are sent to a city to learn about it’s transportation infrastructure, delivery and restaurant industry, and it’s overall food culture.

In addition to this immersive design technique, UberEats designers iterate quickly and innovate constantly. They participate in rapid field testing, where designers are interviewing and prototyping with the people who will be using the product the most: restaurant workers, delivery drivers, and meal recipients.

The UberEats team also holds innovation workshops where team members from many disciplines gather to brainstorm possible improvements. These same designers also attend numerous out-of-office conferences, meetups, and talks related to the restaurant industry, cuisine trends, and food technology.

You can even apply design thinking to your own personal development!

In this book by Bernard Roth, academic director and professor of Engineering at the Hasso Plattner Institute Design at Stanford University, the design thinking process is used to encourage individuals to accomplish the things they’ve always wanted to but never could.

Whether you need help breaking bad habits or creating positive ones, Roth says the design process can help people make meaningful changes in their lives. Many individuals have attested to this method with their success stories using the design thinking process to lose weight, battle anxiety, or even start a new business.

Roth encourages people wanting to make a change in their lives to first empathize with themselves and ask questions like, “How would I feel if I solved this problem? What would it do for me?” He then says to use the answers to these questions to define the problem at hand, much like the second step in the design thinking process.

Next, Roth urges people to brainstorm solutions to their problem and not to be shy when trying them out. Instead of just thinking about your problem and how it could be solved, Roth encourages the use of the design thinking process to turn your ideas into actions and enter into an iterative cycle within your own life—tweaking and testing solutions until you find what works for you.

3. Key takeaways

These examples of design thinking show just how impactful this methodology can be when solving problems.

Whether it’s a new app, a community service, or a physical product, the best thing you can do to innovate successfully is to keep your user in mind at every step in the design process. It can be tempting to create a flashy, high-tech product.

Instead, focus on what your users are asking for.

It’s easy for designers to become disconnected from their user. Don’t be afraid to take risks and immerse yourself in the lives of the people who will actually interact with your product. Then implement their feedback and test your results. Eventually, you’ll land on that final iteration with the potential to change the world around you.

If you’d like to learn more about design thinking, check out these other articles:

• 5 design thinking exercises every UX designer should know
• How to get a design thinking certification: the best programs and courses
• How to run an awesome design thinking workshop
• 3 Examples of interaction design at its best

• Reviews / Why join our community?
• For companies
• Frequently asked questions

Design Thinking (DT)

What is design thinking (dt).

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It is most useful to tackle ill-defined or unknown problems and involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

• Transcript loading…

Why Is Design Thinking so Important?

“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.”

— Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO

Design thinking fosters innovation . Companies must innovate to survive and remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment. In design thinking, cross-functional teams work together to understand user needs and create solutions that address those needs. Moreover, the design thinking process helps unearth creative solutions.

Design teams use design thinking to tackle ill-defined/unknown problems (aka wicked problems ). Alan Dix, Professor of Human-Computer Interaction, explains what wicked problems are in this video.

Wicked problems demand teams to think outside the box, take action immediately, and constantly iterate—all hallmarks of design thinking.

Don Norman, a pioneer of user experience design, explains why the designer’s way of thinking is so powerful when it comes to such complex problems.

Design thinking offers practical methods and tools that major companies like Google, Apple and Airbnb use to drive innovation. From architecture and engineering to technology and services, companies across industries have embraced the methodology to drive innovation and address complex problems. 

The End Goal of Design Thinking: Be Desirable, Feasible and Viable

The design thinking process aims to satisfy three criteria: desirability (what do people desire?), feasibility (is it technically possible to build the solution?) and viability (can the company profit from the solution?). Teams begin with desirability and then bring in the other two lenses.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0

Desirability: Meet People’s Needs

The design thinking process starts by looking at the needs, dreams and behaviors of people—the end users. The team listens with empathy to understand what people want, not what the organization thinks they want or need. The team then thinks about solutions to satisfy these needs from the end user’s point of view.

Feasibility: Be Technologically Possible

Once the team identifies one or more solutions, they determine whether the organization can implement them. In theory, any solution is feasible if the organization has infinite resources and time to develop the solution. However, given the team’s current (or future resources), the team evaluates if the solution is worth pursuing. The team may iterate on the solution to make it more feasible or plan to increase its resources (say, hire more people or acquire specialized machinery).

At the beginning of the design thinking process, teams should not get too caught up in the technical implementation. If teams begin with technical constraints, they might restrict innovation.

Viability: Generate Profits

A desirable and technically feasible product isn’t enough. The organization must be able to generate revenues and profits from the solution. The viability lens is essential not only for commercial organizations but also for non-profits. 

Traditionally, companies begin with feasibility or viability and then try to find a problem to fit the solution and push it to the market. Design thinking reverses this process and advocates that teams begin with desirability and bring in the other two lenses later.

The Five Stages of Design Thinking

Stanford University’s Hasso Plattner Institute of Design, commonly known as the d.school, is renowned for its pioneering approach to design thinking. Their design process has five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. These stages are not always sequential. Teams often run them in parallel, out of order, and repeat them as needed.

Stage 1: Empathize —Research Users' Needs

The team aims to understand the problem, typically through user research. Empathy is crucial to design thinking because it allows designers to set aside your assumptions about the world and gain insight into users and their needs.

Stage 2: Define—State Users' Needs and Problems

Once the team accumulates the information, they analyze the observations and synthesize them to define the core problems. These definitions are called problem statements . The team may create personas to help keep efforts human-centered.

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas

With the foundation ready, teams gear up to “think outside the box.” They brainstorm alternative ways to view the problem and identify innovative solutions to the problem statement.

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem. The team produces inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the ideas. This may be as simple as paper prototypes .

Stage 5: Test—Try the Solutions Out

The team tests these prototypes with real users to evaluate if they solve the problem. The test might throw up new insights, based on which the team might refine the prototype or even go back to the Define stage to revisit the problem.

These stages are different modes that contribute to the entire design project rather than sequential steps. The goal is to gain a deep understanding of the users and their ideal solution/product.

Design Thinking Frameworks

There is no single definition or process for design thinking. The five-stage design thinking methodology described above is just one of several frameworks.

Hasso-Platner Institute Panorama

Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, CC BY-SA 3.0 , via Wikimedia Commons

Innovation doesn’t follow a linear path or have a clear-cut formula. Global design leaders and consultants have interpreted the abstract design process in different ways and have proposed other frameworks of design thinking.

Head, Heart and Hand by the American Institution of Graphic Arts (AIGA)

The Head, Heart, and Hand approach by AIGA (American Institute of Graphic Arts) is a holistic perspective on design. It integrates the intellectual, emotional, and practical aspects of the creative process.

More than a process, the Head, Heart and Hand framework outlines the different roles that designers must perform to create great results.

© American Institute of Graphic Arts, Fair Use

“ Head ” symbolizes the intellectual component. The team focuses on strategic thinking, problem-solving and the cognitive aspects of design. It involves research and analytical thinking to ensure that design decisions are purposeful.

“ Heart ” represents the emotional dimension. It emphasizes empathy, passion, and human-centeredness. This aspect is crucial in understanding the users’ needs, desires, and experiences to ensure that designs resonate on a deeper, more personal level.

“ Hand ” signifies the practical execution of ideas, the craftsmanship, and the skills necessary to turn concepts into tangible solutions. This includes the mastery of tools, techniques, and materials, as well as the ability to implement and execute design ideas effectively.

Inspire, Ideate, Implement by IDEO

IDEO is a leading design consultancy and has developed its own version of the design thinking framework.

IDEO’s design thinking process is a cyclical three-step process that involves Inspiration, Ideation and Implementation.

© IDEO, Public License

In the “ Inspire ” phase, the team focuses on understanding users’ needs, behaviors, and motivations. The team empathizes with people through observation and user interviews to gather deep insights.

In the “ Ideate ” phase, the team synthesizes the insights gained to brainstorm a wide array of creative solutions. This stage encourages divergent thinking, where teams focus on quantity and variety of ideas over immediate practicality. The goal is to explore as many possibilities as possible without constraints.

In the “ Implement ” phase, the team brings these ideas to life through prototypes. The team tests, iterates and refines these ideas based on user feedback. This stage is crucial for translating abstract concepts into tangible, viable products, services, or experiences.

The methodology emphasizes collaboration and a multidisciplinary approach throughout each phase to ensure solutions are innovative and deeply rooted in real human needs and contexts.

The Double Diamond by the Design Council

In the book Designing Social Systems in a Changing World , Béla Heinrich Bánáthy, Professor at San Jose State University and UC Berkeley, created a “divergence-convergence model” diagram. The British Design Council interpreted this diagram to create the Double Diamond design process model.

As the name suggests, the double diamond model consists of two diamonds—one for the problem space and the other for the solution space. The model uses diamonds to represent the alternating diverging and converging activities.

© Design Council, CC BY 4.0

In the diverging “ Discover ” phase, designers gather insights and empathize with users’ needs. The team then converges in the “ Define ” phase to identify the problem.

The second, solution-related diamond, begins with “ Develop ,” where the team brainstorms ideas. The final stage is “ Deliver ,” where the team tests the concepts and implements the most viable solution.

This model balances expansive thinking with focused execution to ensure that design solutions are both creative and practical. It underscores the importance of understanding the problem thoroughly and carefully crafting the solution, making it a staple in many design and innovation processes.

With the widespread adoption of the double diamond framework, Design Council’s simple visual evolved.

In this expanded and annotated version, the framework emphasizes four design principles:

Be people-centered.

Communicate (visually and inclusively).

Collaborate and co-create.

Iterate, iterate, iterate!

The updated version also highlights the importance of leadership (to create an environment that allows innovation) and engagement (to connect with different stakeholders and involve them in the design process).

Common Elements of Design Thinking Frameworks

On the surface, design thinking frameworks look very different—they use alternative names and have different numbers of steps. However, at a fundamental level, they share several common traits.

Start with empathy . Focus on the people to come up with solutions that work best for individuals, business, and society.

Reframe the problem or challenge at hand . Don’t rush into a solution. Explore the problem space and look at the issue through multiple perspectives to gain a more holistic, nuanced understanding.

Initially, employ a divergent style of thinking (analyze) . In the problem space, gather as many insights as possible. In the solution space, encourage team members to generate and explore as many solutions as possible in an open, judgment-free ideation space.

Later, employ a convergent style of thinking (synthesize) . In the problem space, synthesize all data points to define the problem. In the solution space, whittle down all the ideas—isolate, combine and refine potential solutions to create more mature ideas.

Create and test prototypes . Solutions that make it through the previous stages get tested further to remove potential issues.

Iterate . As the team progresses through the various stages, they revisit different stages and may redefine the challenge based on new insights.

Design thinking is a non-linear process. For example, teams may jump from the test stage to the define stage if the tests reveal insights that redefine the problem. Or, a prototype might spark a new idea, prompting the team to step back into the ideate stage. Tests may also create new ideas for projects or reveal insights about users.

Design Thinking Mindsets: More than a Process

A mindset is a characteristic mental attitude that determines how one interprets and responds to situations . Design thinking mindsets are how individuals think , feel and express themselves during design thinking activities. It includes people’s expectations and orientations during a design project.

Without the right mindset, it can be very challenging to change how we work and think.

The key mindsets that ensure a team can successfully implement design thinking are.

Be empathetic: Empathy is the ability to place yourself, your thinking and feelings in another person’s shoes. Design thinking begins from a deep understanding of the needs and motivations of people—the parents, neighbors, children, colleagues, and strangers who make up a community. 

Be collaborative: No one person is responsible for the outcome when you work in a team. Several great minds are always stronger than just one. Design thinking benefits from the views of multiple perspectives and lets others’ creativity bolster your own.

Be optimistic: Be confident about achieving favorable outcomes. Design thinking is the fundamental belief that we can all create change—no matter how big a problem, how little time, or how small a budget. Designing can be a powerful process no matter what constraints exist around you.

Embrace ambiguity: Get comfortable with ambiguous and complex situations. If you expect perfection, it is difficult to take risks, which limits your ability to create radical change. Design thinking is all about experimenting and learning by doing. It gives you the confidence to believe that new, better things are possible and that you can help make them a reality. 

Be curious: Be open to different ideas. Recognize that you are not the user.

Reframe: Challenge and reframe assumptions associated with a given situation or problem. Don’t take problems at face value. Humans are primed to look for patterns. The unfortunate side effect of these patterns is that we form (often false and sometimes dangerous) stereotypes and assumptions. Design thinking aims to help you break through any preconceived notions and biases and reframe challenges.

Embrace diversity: Work with and engage people with different cultural backgrounds, experiences, and ways of thinking and working. Everyone brings a unique perspective to the team. When you include diverse voices in a team, you learn from each other’s experiences, further helping you break through your assumptions.

Make tangible: When you make ideas tangible, it is faster and easier for everyone on the team to be on the same page. For example, sketching an idea or enacting a scenario is far more convenient and easy to interpret than an elaborate presentation or document.

Take action: Run experiments and learn from them.

Design Thinking vs Agile Methodology

Teams often use design thinking and agile methodologies in project management, product development, and software development. These methodologies have distinct approaches but share some common principles.

Similarities between Design Thinking and Agile

Iterative process.

Both methodologies emphasize iterative development. In design thinking, teams may jump from one phase to another, not necessarily in a set cyclical or linear order. For example, on testing a prototype, teams may discover something new about their users and realize that they must redefine the problem. Agile teams iterate through development sprints.

User-Centered

The agile and design thinking methodologies focus on the end user. All design thinking activities—from empathizing to prototyping and testing—keep the end users front and center. Agile teams continually integrate user feedback into development cycles.

Collaboration and Teamwork

Both methodologies rely heavily on collaboration among cross-functional teams and encourage diverse perspectives and expertise.

Flexibility and Adaptability

With its focus on user research, prototyping and testing, design thinking ensures teams remain in touch with users and get continuous feedback. Similarly, agile teams monitor user feedback and refine the product in a reasonably quick time.

In this video, Laura Klein, author of Build Better Products , describes a typical challenge designers face on agile teams. She encourages designers to get comfortable with the idea of a design not being perfect. Notice the many parallels between Laura’s advice for designers on agile teams and the mindsets of design thinking.

Differences between Design Thinking and Agile

While design thinking and agile teams share principles like iteration, user focus, and collaboration, they are neither interchangeable nor mutually exclusive. A team can apply both methodologies without any conflict.

From a user experience design perspective, design thinking applies to the more abstract elements of strategy and scope. At the same time, agile is more relevant to the more concrete elements of UX: structure, skeleton and surface. For quick reference, here’s an overview of the five elements of user experience.

Design thinking is more about exploring and defining the right problem and solution, whereas agile is about efficiently executing and delivering a product.

Here are the key differences between design thinking and agile.

Design Sprint: A Condensed Version of Design Thinking

A design sprint is a 5-day intensive workshop where cross-functional teams aim to develop innovative solutions.

The design sprint is a very structured version of design thinking that fits into the timeline of a sprint (a sprint is a short timeframe in which agile teams work to produce deliverables). Developed by Google Ventures, the design sprint seeks to fast-track innovation.

In this video, user researcher Ditte Hvas Mortensen explains the design sprint in detail.

Learn More about Design Thinking

Design consultancy IDEO’s designkit is an excellent repository of design thinking tools and case studies.

To keep up with recent developments in design thinking, read IDEO CEO Tim Brown’s blog .

Enroll in our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide —an excellent guide to get you started on your design thinking projects.

Questions related to Design Thinking

You don’t need any certification to practice design thinking. However, learning about the nuances of the methodology can help you:

Pick the appropriate methods and tailor the process to suit the unique needs of your project.

Avoid common pitfalls when you apply the methods.

Better lead a team and facilitate workshops.

Increase the chances of coming up with innovative solutions.

IxDF has a comprehensive course to help you gain the most from the methodology: Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Anyone can apply design thinking to solve problems. Despite what the name suggests, non-designers can use the methodology in non-design-related scenarios. The methodology helps you think about problems from the end user’s perspective. Some areas where you can apply this process:

Develop new products with greater chances of success.

Address community-related issues (such as education, healthcare and environment) to improve society and living standards.

Innovate/enhance existing products to gain an advantage over the competition.

Achieve greater efficiencies in operations and reduce costs.

Use the Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide course to apply design thinking to your context today.

A framework is the basic structure underlying a system, concept, or text. There are several design thinking frameworks with slight differences. However, all the frameworks share some traits. Each framework: 

Begins with empathy.

Reframes the problem or challenge at hand.

Initially employs divergent styles of thinking to generate ideas.

Later, it employs convergent styles of thinking to narrow down the best ideas,

Creates and tests prototypes.

Iterates based on the tests.

Some of the design thinking frameworks are:

5-stage design process by d.school

7-step early traditional design process by Herbert Simon

The 5-Stage DeepDive™ by IDEO

The “Double Diamond” Design Process Model by the Design Council

Collective Action Toolkit (CAT) by Frog Design

The LUMA System of Innovation by LUMA Institute

For details about each of these frameworks, see 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .

IDEO’s 3-Stage Design Thinking Process consists of inspiration, ideation and implementation:

Inspire : The problem or opportunity inspires and motivates the search for a solution.

Ideate : A process of synthesis distills insights which can lead to solutions or opportunities for change.

Implement : The best ideas are turned into a concrete, fully conceived action plan.

IDEO is a leader in applying design thinking and has developed many frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .

Design Council's Double Diamond diagram depicts the divergent and convergent stages of the design process.

Béla H. Bánáthy, founder of the White Stag Leadership Development Program, created the “divergence-convergence” model in 1996. In the mid-2000s, the British Design Council made this famous as the Double Diamond model.

The Double Diamond diagram graphically represents a design thinking process. It highlights the divergent and convergent styles of thinking in the design process. It has four distinct phases:

Discover: Initial idea or inspiration based on user needs.

Define: Interpret user needs and align them with business objectives.

Develop: Develop, iterate and test design-led solutions.

Deliver: Finalize and launch the end product into the market.

Double Diamond is one of several design thinking frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .

There are several design thinking methods that you can choose from, depending on what stage of the process you’re in. Here are a few common design thinking methods:

User Interviews: to understand user needs, pain points, attitudes and behaviors.

5 Whys Method: to dig deeper into problems to diagnose the root cause.

User Observations: to understand how users behave in real life (as opposed to what they say they do).

Affinity Diagramming: to organize research findings.

Empathy Mapping: to empathize with users based on research insights.

Journey Mapping: to visualize a user’s experience as they solve a problem.

6 Thinking Hats: to encourage a group to think about a problem or solution from multiple perspectives.

Brainstorming: to generate ideas.

Prototyping: to make abstract ideas more tangible and test them.

Dot Voting: to select ideas.

Start applying these methods to your work today with the Design Thinking template bundle .

For most of the design thinking process, you will need basic office stationery:

Pen and paper

Sticky notes

Whiteboard and markers

Print-outs of templates and canvases as needed (such as empathy maps, journey maps, feedback capture grid etc.) You can also draw these out manually.

Prototyping materials such as UI stencils, string, clay, Lego bricks, sticky tapes, scissors and glue.

A space to work in.

You can conduct design thinking workshops remotely by:

Using collaborative software to simulate the whiteboard and sticky notes.

Using digital templates instead of printed canvases.

Download print-ready templates you can share with your team to practice design thinking today.

Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps teams better identify, understand, and solve business and customer problems.

When businesses prioritize and empathize with customers, they can create solutions catering to their needs. Happier customers are more likely to be loyal and organically advocate for the product.

Design thinking helps businesses develop innovative solutions that give them a competitive advantage.

Gain a competitive advantage in your business with Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

The evolution of Design Thinking can be summarised in 8 key events from the 1960s to 2004.

© Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-SA 4.0.

Herbert Simon’s 1969 book, "The Sciences of the Artificial," has one of the earliest references to design thinking. David Kelley, founder of the design consultancy IDEO, coined the term “design thinking” and helped make it popular.

For a more comprehensive discussion on the origins of design thinking, see The History of Design Thinking .

Some organizations that have employed design thinking successfully are:

Airbnb: Airbnb used design thinking to create a platform for people to rent out their homes to travelers. The company focused on the needs of both hosts and guests . The result was a user-friendly platform to help people find and book accommodations.

PillPack: PillPack is a prescription home-delivery system. The company focused on the needs of people who take multiple medications and created a system that organizes pills by date and time. Amazon bought PillPack in 2018 for $1 billion .

Google Creative Lab: Google Creative Lab collaborated with IDEO to discover how kids physically play and learn. The team used design thinking to create Project Bloks . The project helps children develop foundational problem-solving skills "through coding experiences that are playful, tactile and collaborative.”

See more examples of design thinking and learn practical methods in Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Innovation essentially means a new idea. Design thinking is a problem-solving methodology that helps teams develop new ideas. In other words, design thinking can lead to innovation.

Human-Centered Design is a newer term for User-Centered Design

“Human-centred design is an approach to interactive systems development that aims to make systems usable and useful by focusing on the users, their needs and requirements, and by applying human factors/ergonomics, and usability knowledge and techniques. This approach enhances effectiveness and efficiency, improves human well-being, user satisfaction, accessibility and sustainability; and counteracts possible adverse effects of use on human health, safety and performance.”

— ISO 9241-210:2019(en), ISO (the International Organization for Standardization)  

User experience expert Don Norman describes human-centered design (HCD) as a more evolved form of user-centered design (UCD). The word "users" removes their importance and treats them more like objects than people. By replacing “user” with “human,” designers can empathize better with the people for whom they are designing. Don Norman takes HCD a step further and prefers the term People-Centered Design.

Design thinking has a broader scope and takes HCD beyond the design discipline to drive innovation.

People sometimes use design thinking and human-centered design to mean the same thing. However, they are not the same. HCD is a formal discipline with a specific process used only by designers and usability engineers to design products. Design thinking borrows the design methods and applies them to problems in general.

Design Sprint condenses design thinking into a 1-week structured workshop

Google Ventures condensed the design thinking framework into a time-constrained 5-day workshop format called the Design Sprint. The sprint follows one step per day of the week:

Monday: Unpack

Tuesday: Sketch

Wednesday: Decide

Thursday: Prototype

Friday: Test

Learn more about the design sprint in Make Your UX Design Process Agile Using Google’s Methodology .

Systems Thinking is a distinct discipline with a broader approach to problem-solving

“Systems thinking is a way of exploring and developing effective action by looking at connected wholes rather than separate parts.”

— Introduction to Systems thinking, Report of GSE and GORS seminar, Civil Service Live

Both HCD and Systems Thinking are formal disciplines. Designers and usability engineers primarily use HCD. Systems thinking has applications in various fields, such as medical, environmental, political, economic, human resources, and educational systems.

HCD has a much narrower focus and aims to create and improve products. Systems thinking looks at the larger picture and aims to change entire systems.

Don Norman encourages designers to incorporate systems thinking in their work. Instead of looking at people and problems in isolation, designers must look at them from a systems point of view.

In summary, UCD and HCD refer to the same field, with the latter being a preferred phrase.

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 work together and apply the designer’s way of thinking to generate innovative solutions to problems.

Systems thinking is another approach to problem-solving that looks at the big picture instead of specific problems in isolation.

The design sprint is Google Ventures’ version of the design thinking process, structured to fit the design process in 1 week.

There are multiple design thinking frameworks, each with a different number of steps and phase names. One of the most popular frameworks is the Stanford d.School 5-stage process.

Design thinking is an iterative and non-linear process. It contains five phases: 1. Empathize, 2. Define, 3. Ideate, 4. Prototype and 5. Test. It is important to note the five stages of design thinking are not always sequential. They do not have to follow a specific order, and they can often occur in parallel or be repeated iteratively. The stages should be understood as different modes which contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps.

For more details, see The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process .

IDEO is a leading design consultancy and has developed its own version of the design thinking framework and adds the dimension of implementation in the process.

IDEO’s framework uses slightly different terms than d.school’s design thinking process and adds an extra dimension of implementation. The steps in the DeepDive™ Methodology are: Understand, Observe, Visualize, Evaluate and Implement.

IDEO’s DeepDive™ Methodology includes the following steps:

Understand: Conduct research and identify what the client needs and the market landscape

Observe: Similar to the Empathize step, teams observe people in live scenarios and conduct user research to identify their needs and pain points.

Visualize: In this step, the team visualizes new concepts. Similar to the Ideate phase, teams focus on creative, out-of-the-box and novel ideas.

Evaluate: The team prototypes ideas and evaluates them. After refining the prototypes, the team picks the most suitable one.

Implement: The team then sets about to develop the new concept for commercial use.

IDEO’s DeepDive™ is one of several design thinking frameworks. Find out more in 10 Insightful Design Thinking Frameworks: A Quick Overview .

Literature on Design Thinking (DT)

Here’s the entire UX literature on Design Thinking (DT) by the Interaction Design Foundation, collated in one place:

Learn more about Design Thinking (DT)

Take a deep dive into Design Thinking (DT) with our course Design Thinking: The Ultimate Guide .

Some of the world’s leading brands, such as Apple, Google, Samsung, and General Electric, have rapidly adopted the design thinking approach, and design thinking is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. What is design thinking, and why is it so popular and effective?

Design Thinking is not exclusive to designers —all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering and business have practiced it. So, why call it Design Thinking? Well, that’s because design work processes help us systematically extract, teach, learn and apply human-centered techniques to solve problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, businesses, countries and lives. And that’s what makes it so special.

The overall goal of this design thinking course is to help you design better products, services, processes, strategies, spaces, architecture, and experiences. Design thinking helps you and your team develop practical and innovative solutions for your problems. It is a human-focused , prototype-driven , innovative design process . Through this course, you will develop a solid understanding of the fundamental phases and methods in design thinking, and you will learn how to implement your newfound knowledge in your professional work life. We will give you lots of examples; we will go into case studies, videos, and other useful material, all of which will help you dive further into design thinking. In fact, this course also includes exclusive video content that we've produced in partnership with design leaders like Alan Dix, William Hudson and Frank Spillers!

This course contains a series of practical exercises that build on one another to create a complete design thinking project. The exercises are optional, but you’ll get invaluable hands-on experience with the methods you encounter in this course if you complete them, because they will teach you to take your first steps as a design thinking practitioner. What’s equally important is you can use your work as a case study for your portfolio to showcase your abilities to future employers! A portfolio is essential if you want to step into or move ahead in a career in the world of human-centered design.

Design thinking methods and strategies belong at every level of the design process . However, design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it. What’s special about design thinking is that designers and designers’ work processes can help us systematically extract, teach, learn, and apply these human-centered techniques in solving problems in a creative and innovative way—in our designs, in our businesses, in our countries, and in our lives.

That means that design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees , freelancers , and business leaders . It’s for anyone who seeks to infuse an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective and broadly accessible, one that can be integrated into every level of an organization, product, or service so as to drive new alternatives for businesses and society.

You earn a verifiable and industry-trusted Course Certificate once you complete the course. You can highlight them on your resume, CV, LinkedIn profile or your website .

All open-source articles on Design Thinking (DT)

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Empathy Map – Why and How to Use It

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The Ultimate Guide to Understanding UX Roles and Which One You Should Go For

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What Are Wicked Problems and How Might We Solve Them?

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What is design thinking?

Discover what is design thinking and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Deep dive into a few case studies and learn how to apply design thinking.

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Design thinking is a mindset that breeds innovation. While it’s based on the design process, anyone in any profession can use it when they’re trying to come up with creative solutions to a problem. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what design thinking is and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Then we’ll present a couple of design thinking case studies and wrap up with a primer on how to apply design thinking. And don’t worry, this guide is broken down into easily digestible chunks, as follows:

Let’s get started!

What is design thinking? A definition

Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it’s anchored by human-centred design.

Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics. 

Design thinking is also solution-based, looking for effective solutions to problems, not problem-based, which looks at the problem itself and tends to focus on limitations. 

Design thinking is all about getting hands-on with solutions. The aim is to quickly turn your ideas into testable products so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

[GET CERTIFIED IN UX]

Why is design thinking important? 

Design thinking is important because it challenges assumptions and fosters innovation. While many ways of thinking rely on the habits and experiences we’ve formed, they can limit us when it comes to thinking of design solutions. Design thinking, however, encourages us to explore new ideas. 

It’s an actionable technique that allows us to tackle “wicked problems,” or problems that are ill-defined. For example, achieving sustainable growth or maintaining your competitive edge in business count as wicked problems, and on a broader scale, poverty and climate change are wicked problems too. Design thinking uses empathy and human-centred thinking to tackle these kinds of problems.

Who uses design thinking?

The short answer? Everyone! Design thinking can help you in whatever your role or industry. People in business, government, entertainment, health care, and every other industry can benefit from using design thinking to come up with innovative solutions. 

The most important thing design thinking does is help people focus on their customers or end users. Instead of focusing on problems to fix, design thinking keeps things user-centric, which boosts customer engagement. 

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

According to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (known as d-school), the five stages of design thinking are: 

Although these stages appear to be linear, following one after the other, design thinking isn’t a linear process. Stages are often run in parallel or out of order, or repeated when necessary.

Phase 1: Empathise 

Your goal here is to research your users’ needs to gain an empathic understanding of the problems they face. You’ll get to know your users and their wants and needs so you can make sure your solutions put them front and centre. This means setting aside your own assumptions and getting to know your users on a psychological and emotional level. You’ll observe, engage, watch and listen. 

Phase 2: Define

Here you state your users’ needs by compiling the information you gathered during the Empathise phase and then analysing it until you can define the core problem your team has identified. 

You do this by asking questions like: what patterns do you see in the data? What user issues need to be resolved? The conclusion of this phase comes when you’ve figured out a clear problem statement that is defined by the users’ needs. For example, “Bank customers in Glasgow need…”

You can learn more about how to write a problem statement in this guide.

Phase 3: Ideate

In this phase, you’ll generate ideas and solutions. You and your team will hold ideation sessions where you can come up with as many ideas as possible. No idea is too silly for this stage. The important thing is getting all ideas out on the table. There are a variety of techniques you can use, like brainstorming and mind mapping, to come up with solutions. This phase ends when you’ve managed to narrow down your ideas to just a few of the best ones.

Phase 4: Prototype

Your goal in this phase is to find the best solution to the problem by prototyping —that is, producing scaled down versions of the product or its features found in the previous phase. You’ll put each solution to the test by improving, redesigning, accepting, or rejecting it.

Phase 5: Test

Here you’ll try out the solutions you arrived at in the previous phases by user testing them. However, while this is the final stage of design thinking in theory, it’s rarely the final stage in reality. Design thinking often includes going back to previous phases to find other solutions or to further iterate or refine your existing solution.

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Design thinking examples and case studies

Now that you understand the theory and process of design thinking, let’s look at some examples in action where design thinking had a real-world impact.

Case Study 1: American Family Insurance’s Moonrise App

American Family Insurance, a company that offers life, business, auto, and home insurance, came to design company IDEO with the goal of innovating in a way that would help working families. 

Stages 1 & 2: Empathise and Define

While American Family thought their customers might benefit from budgeting tools, IDEO found from their research in the Empathise phase that, actually, people needed a way to build up their savings against unforeseen needs.

They noticed a lot of people had meticulously planned budgets, which made budgeting tools a moot point. But they were living just within their means and an extra expense, like a doctor’s visit or kid’s basketball uniform, could throw their budget off. These people didn’t want to take on debt though, they wanted extra work so they could have a cushion.

Stages 3 & 4: Ideate and Prototype

IDEO took that idea and ran with it, creating Moonrise, an app that matches people looking for work with extra hours and income. Today’s businesses depend on on-demand work but the temp agencies they work with tend to want permanent placements. Moonrise does things differently. It enables companies to find people who are already employed elsewhere for short-term work through a simple text message interface. The employers can list shifts on the platform and workers are paid as soon as they finish their shifts.

Stage 5: Test

To test the app, 11 Moonrisers, six employers, and a team of designers and programmers were assembled for a one week period to work out the kinks in the platform. 

Based on the test’s success, American Family Insurance now owns the startup Moonrise, which launched in Chicago in 2018 and has since expanded to additional states. In 2018, over 7,000 shifts have been fulfilled and over $500,000 has been earned by people on the app.

Case Study 2: GE Healthcare’s Scanning Tools

GE Healthcare has cutting-edge diagnostic imaging tools at its disposal, but for kids they’re an unpleasant experience. 

“The room itself is kind of dark and has those flickering fluorescent lights…. That machine that I had designed basically looked like a brick with a hole in it,” explained Doug Dietz , a designer who worked for GE. How could they make the experience better for kids?

The team at GE began by observing and gaining empathy for children at a daycare centre and talking to specialists who knew what paediatric patients went through. The team then recruited experts from a children’s museum and doctors from two hospitals. This gave them a lot of insight into what children went through when they had to sit for these procedures and what could be done to lessen the children’s stress.

Stages 3, 4 & 5: Ideate, Prototype, and Test

The first prototype of the new and improved “Adventure Series” scanner was invented. Through research and pilot programs, the redesign made imaging machines more child-friendly, making sure they have other things to focus on than the scary looks and sounds of the machine. For example, the Coral City Adventure in the emergency room gives children an underwater experience where they get into a yellow submarine and listen to the sound of harps while their procedure takes place.

Patient satisfaction scores increased to 90% and children no longer suffer such anxiety about their scans. The children hold still for their procedures more easily, making repeats of the scans unnecessary. There’s also less need for anesthesiologists, which improved the bottom line for those hospitals that used the scanning machines because more patients could get scanned each day.

How to apply design thinking 

If you want to apply design thinking in your own work, follow these steps and best practices:

• Improve design thinking skills. Use training to explain, improve, and practically implement the phases of design thinking. You can do this in several ways such as workshops, online courses, or case studies shared with your team.
• Identify the correct problem. Listen to users and ask them unbiased questions in order to understand their perspectives. Engage with everyone and stay open-minded, so you can identify the correct problem, not the problem you or your organisation thinks users are having. 
• Have more debriefs. Be open about what went right and what went wrong in your process. Openly discuss why things succeeded or failed and why. View failure as learning, not as an excuse to give up.
• Iterate and iterate some more. The goal of design thinking is finding the best answer possible—and that probably won’t come in the first round of iteration. You’ll need to test and iterate as much as possible with new ways to solve the problem.

Design thinking is so popular—and so effective—because it places the user’s needs front and centre. For more user-centric design tips, learn how to incorporate user feedback in product design , get to grips with user research ethics , and learn how to conduct effective user interviews .

• design thinking

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This study investigates the utilization of design thinking by a university instructor in the development and delivery of an interdisciplinary curriculum. It examines the challenges encountered and the coping strategies employed during the process. The research, conducted as a case study of an interdisciplinary program course at a university in southern Taiwan from September to December 2022, involved data collection through field observations, in-depth interviews, and document analysis. All data were transcribed verbatim, coded, and triangulated to enhance research validity. The findings suggest that design thinking serves as an effective methodology for interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching. It emphasizes the integration of practice and application to facilitate students’ interdisciplinary collaboration and co-creation. Additionally, the study evaluates teaching strategies, with a focus on the role of visual tools, communication, and on-site observation. The insights gained from this research provide valuable perspectives on challenges in interdisciplinary teaching, particularly in a post-pandemic context. They guided the development of effective practices in Taiwan and beyond, addressing crucial aspects such as the roles of instructors, resource allocation, and the cultivation of interdisciplinary talent. The study emphasizes the continuous need for adaptation and the prioritization of depth in learning outcomes.

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Introduction

Individuals and industries worldwide have encountered unprecedented challenges and changes in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is crucial for higher education to nurture future professionals capable of effectively addressing increasingly complex societal problems (Berasategi et al., 2020 ). With the proliferation of intricate global issues such as climate change, unemployment, healthcare, immigration, pollution, and safety (Hardy et al., 2021 ), interdisciplinary approaches have emerged as essential strategies. The surge in complex problems underscores the inevitability of interdisciplinary learning. Higher education, in response to these challenges, strives to cultivate skills that transcend traditional boundaries, including interdisciplinary thinking (Spelt et al., 2009 ). Major universities in Taiwan have demonstrated their commitment to promoting interdisciplinary education through mechanisms such as interdisciplinary courses, micro-credit courses, and credit programs. Interdisciplinary education aims to develop students’ boundary-crossing skills, fostering problem-solving, communication, collaboration, critical thinking, entrepreneurship, and innovative practices. The implementation of interdisciplinary cooperation in teaching and learning becomes a key focus in cultivating future talent and enhancing students’ integrated abilities.

Interdisciplinary learning involves transcending the boundaries of a single specific subject or field and providing students with connections and interactions between different subject areas. This interconnectivity helps them to understand the limitations and frameworks of their knowledge or skills and to integrate the knowledge of two or more disciplines to produce a cognitive advancement in ways that would have been impossible or unlikely through single disciplinary means (Spelt et al., 2009 ). It cultivates their ability to integrate different knowledge systems in facing complex problems in their careers or society. Moreover, interdisciplinary curriculum teaching significantly impacts instructors and learners, as compared to single-field curriculum teaching (Chang and Lin, 2019 ; McLaughlin et al., 2022 ; Spelt et al., 2009 ). Through interdisciplinary dialog, instructors can learn from others’ experiences or identify their weaknesses, promoting professional growth, enhancing their teaching and curriculum planning abilities, and guiding students to think and cooperate to solve problems. Meanwhile, students have opportunities for multi-faceted exploration, using their knowledge and skills in their professional fields and collaborating with students from other fields. Interdisciplinary education influences students’ learning styles and thinking patterns as they are exposed to different areas of expertise (Chen et al., 2017 ). Despite these benefits, instructors and learners face challenges in interdisciplinary collaboration. For instructors, the challenge lies in seamlessly integrating the cognitive and ideational aspects of individuals from diverse fields within the classroom, aiming for effective communication (Tsai, 2014 ). For learners, the challenges lie in communication problems arising from the heterogeneity of members’ backgrounds, the ratio of team leaders to experts, how consensus is formed, and the ongoing conceptual analysis and evaluation conducted during the process (Tang and Lin, 2011 ).

Design thinking (DT) represents a 21st-century skill aimed at generating timely solutions to complex and practical problems (Tan, 2017 ). Therefore, in the post-epidemic era, as the trend to cultivate interdisciplinary talent increases, this case study investigates how a university instructor uses design thinking to design and teach a university interdisciplinary curriculum in the context of a university interdisciplinary program. Specifically, we explore the challenges encountered and coping strategies during the development of the interdisciplinary curriculum and teaching practice, and the professional growth and reflection resulting from the process. Our findings can serve as a reference to promote interdisciplinary education.

Literature review

Interdisciplinary teaching models.

The term “interdisciplinary” is widely used to encompass a variety of activities related to communication, interaction, and integration among all disciplines. The dismantling of disciplinary boundaries characterizes interdisciplinary learning, and it can provide students with opportunities to engage and interact with different fields of study. The main objective of this approach is to guide students to gain a deeper understanding of the constraints and frameworks of their knowledge or skills while developing their capacity to comprehend and integrate different knowledge systems (Guo, 2008 ; Spelt et al., 2009 ). Students participating in interdisciplinary programs tend to develop a more holistic perspective and solution-oriented strategies rather than solely gaining content-specific knowledge from a single discipline. Interdisciplinary learning is aimed at cultivating multiple essential professional competencies, to address emerging social and employment challenges (Chang and Lin, 2019 ; Ivanitskaya et al., 2002 ; Repko, 2008 ; Repko and Szostak, 2021 ).

Previously, two inquiry-based teaching approaches, problem-based learning (PBL) and project-based learning (PjBL) were commonly used in interdisciplinary education (Majeski, 2005 ; Modo and Kinchin, 2011 ; Stentoft, 2017 ; Wróblewska and Okraszewska, 2020 ; Yang and Lin, 2015 ). These approaches differ in learning content, problem structure, and learning outcomes. For example, the PBL learning style is more divergent, guiding learners to form different sub-problems by setting out structurally ambiguous problems. On the other hand, PjBL is more convergent, forming sub-problems through perceiving different phenomena or exploring the impact of different variables (Yang et al., 2018 ).

More recently, interdisciplinary project-based learning (IPBL) has emerged. Like the approach businesses use to develop teams in multiple areas, IPBL provides sufficient training for teamwork and collaboration to students from different disciplines, preparing them to engage in complex technical, engineering, educational, and social projects. Students can promote their learning by contributing their strengths and resources (Carpenter et al., 2007 ; Johansen et al., 2009 ; Stozhko et al., 2015 ; Whitney, 2014 ). IPBL can help students develop creativity, overcome the barriers of disciplinary self-centeredness, facilitate the development of knowledge management processes, stimulate their interest and motivation in subject curricula, promote their participation in the learning process, and enhance their cognitive levels and satisfaction with learning outcomes (Biasutti and EL-Deghaidy, 2014 ; Yueh et al., 2015 ). Emphasizing teamwork and collaborative learning in interdisciplinary project teams can improve effective communication and problem-solving skills and prepare students for future community engagement and development in the real world. These benefits highlight the necessity, relevance, and importance of IPBL for interdisciplinary integration. Therefore, IPBL is considered an important model for cultivating relevant skills for students aiming to find their ideal professions (Hsu and Shiue, 2018 ).

However, these PBL learning modes have limitations in meeting students’ learning needs for engagement with increasingly broad and complex challenges. A new emerging interdisciplinary inquiry-based learning approach: design-based learning (DBL) was proposed (Yang et al., 2018 ). DBL was initially proposed by D. Nelson, and its concept is deeply influenced by J. Dewey’s philosophy, emphasizing learning through practical operation and action. It incorporates design concepts such as prototypes into the curriculum, innovating teaching methods to provide students with an integrated learning experience (Nelson, 2004 ). It combines “design thinking” and “design practice”, allowing students to explore and solve real-life problems through reflective learning processes and hands-on doing (Mehalik and Schunn, 2006 ). Design thinking (DT) is an iterative, human-centered approach to solving complex problems that have gained considerate popularity in business, education, medicine, etc. (Dukala et al., 2023 ; Li and Zhan, 2022 ; McLaughlin et al., 2022 ; Skywark et al., 2022 ). DT is frequently defined as the application of a designer’s sensitivity and techniques to align the requirements of individuals with what is technologically possible and what a feasible business strategy can transform into customer value and market opportunity (Brown, 2008 , p. 2). In the practical tasks of DBL, students are required to construct tangible artifacts, fostering higher-order thinking abilities and demonstrating creative, design, and decision-making thinking (Chen and Yang, 2020 ). Compared to PBL and PjBL, DBL places a greater emphasis on humanism, particularly focusing on the human-based problem-solving process, prototype testing, and iterative refinement stages (Wang, 2023 ; Yang et al., 2018 ). Therefore, using DBL as the core of interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching is expected to be a concrete, feasible, and essential pedagogical strategy in the future.

Challenges and strategies in implementing interdisciplinary curriculum

Some interdisciplinary research has shown that implementing an interdisciplinary curriculum impacts instructors and learners significantly (Chang and Lin, 2019 ; McLaughlin et al., 2022 ; Spelt et al., 2009 ). For instructors, interdisciplinary dialog enables them to learn from others and identify their weaker areas, leading to professional growth and the ability to integrate knowledge from multiple fields. These benefits enhance their teaching and curriculum planning abilities and contribute to guiding students in their thinking and collaboration with a view to solving problems. Several aspects need to be considered when developing an interdisciplinary curriculum, including assessing the appropriateness of the course content, balancing different fields, encouraging creativity, collaborating with external partners, and addressing real-world problems and social trends. When designing interdisciplinary project courses, instructors should focus on how to teach the required hard skills for the topic, and as students begin to communicate with others, their need for soft skills becomes apparent. If instructors do not provide sufficient support, communication issues may hinder the development of hard skills. There is no need to distinguish between cultivating soft and hard skills during the learning process, as they are mutually beneficial.

However, without instructors providing scaffolding for these interactive processes, students may not automatically develop soft or hard skills in interdisciplinary project courses. Therefore, instructors engaging in interdisciplinary teaching must carefully consider how to offer guidance and scaffolding to students aiming to develop both hard and soft skills (Vogler et al., 2018 ). For learners, interdisciplinary learning provides opportunities for exploration from multiple perspectives, utilizing knowledge and skills from their field and collaborating with students from other fields. Interdisciplinary approaches prioritize the development of higher-order thinking skills, such as analysis, application, generalization, and forming meaningful connections between different disciplines. Although these approaches may be less effective than traditional methods in building in-depth knowledge of a single subject, they offer unique benefits that cannot be achieved through a single-subject focus (Ivanitskaya et al., 2002 ). Students who have received interdisciplinary education training, influenced by diverse ways of thinking in different fields, will have more diverse learning styles and thinking patterns (Chen et al., 2017 ).

In addition, implementing an interdisciplinary curriculum poses significant challenges. Instructors in higher education institutions often lack training in interdisciplinary or transdisciplinary education, viewing interdisciplinary project activities as intimidating, especially when they cut across different classes and disciplines (Vogler et al., 2018 ). Bridging cognitive and ideational gaps for effective communication among students from diverse fields in the classroom proves challenging (Tsai, 2014 ). Furthermore, successful interdisciplinary teaching requires close collaboration among scholars from different fields, and language and terminological differences between these fields commonly serve as barriers (Repko, 2008 ; Repko and Szostak, 2021 ). The skills involved in interdisciplinary learning are also challenging to teach or understand in the classroom (Katz and Martin, 1997 ). Therefore, instructors must design experiential activities to help students acquire relevant skills through hands-on learning. Learners may face time constraints due to their academic workload, semester schedules, financial support, or the necessity of taking on additional jobs, which can limit their ability to participate in and benefit from teaching activities (Ryser et al., 2009 ). Team collaboration may lead to communication problems arising from the heterogeneous backgrounds of members, the ratio of team leaders to team members, the formation of consensus and conceptual analysis during the process, and the evaluation of the project (Tang and Lin, 2011 ).

Based on the above, this case study delves into the development and delivery of an interdisciplinary curriculum within a university setting. It investigates the various instructional challenges encountered and strategies employed to nurture professional development and reflection, particularly in the unique circumstances of a university interdisciplinary curriculum post-pandemic. The insights derived from this study are intended to provide valuable guidance for the advancement of interdisciplinary education practices in Taiwan and beyond.

Participants

Research field and participants.

This case study focuses on an interdisciplinary-related course offered by an interdisciplinary program at a university in southern Taiwan. The study has received ethical approval from the Human Research Ethics Committee, Taiwan, confirming its adherence to ethical guidelines. The participants included one instructor, one teaching assistant, and 38 students enrolled in the course. In the interests of research ethics, they were asked to fill in the research informed-consent form voluntarily and also to freely decide whether to agree to include the previously collected data in the final research analysis to protect their rights and interests. The case instructor’s areas of expertise include cultural anthropology, material culture, globalization and localization, design and applied anthropology, and design thinking. The case instructor has taught this course for five semesters.

This course aims to cultivate students’ comprehensive abilities to apply design thinking across interdisciplinary domains. This includes solving real-world problems, enhancing communication skills, developing divergent and convergent thinking, understanding various stages of the design thinking process, strengthening empathy, conducting on-site observations, translating insights into practical designs, and acquiring practical skills for production, modification, and presentation of end products. The course has three main learning objectives: design thinking fundamentals, maker skills, and mid- and final-term projects. In the mid-term project, students must use the design thinking techniques learned in class to design games for children. For the final project, students must design creative playground equipment for the community and organize a two-day community play equipment exhibition. This course is a transdisciplinary curriculum primarily focusing on real-world scenarios, such as designing creative play equipment for children.

This study focuses on the dynamic process of designing and implementing interdisciplinary courses and emphasizes the use of design thinking methodology. We conducted classroom observations and interviews and collected documents throughout a semester to analyze and synthesize the data exploring various aspects of interdisciplinary course design and implementation. The research team conducted weekly classroom observations from September to December 2022. The research team interviewed the case instructor three times, and the case instructor recommended one student from each group for an interview. Interview locations were chosen for their quiet and comfortable environment and suitability for recording and note-taking. Open-ended interviews were conducted using semi-structured questions. Table 1 lists the case instructor and student information.

The research team

The research team consisted of a university faculty member, R1 (researcher), who teaches in a department related to education, and a master’s student, R2 (collaborative observer and interviewer), who works in a department related to education. R1 and R2 conducted classroom observations together, and R1 served as the primary interviewer during the interviews, with R2 conducting the collaborative interviews. The team conducted a member check meeting to analyze the data. R1 has 3 years of experience in interdisciplinary course design and teaching (since 2019) and has published two research papers on interdisciplinary course teaching.

The researcher distributed informed consent forms to the case instructor and students and proceeded with data collection only after obtaining their agreement. The data collection process was anonymous, and participants were informed that the collected data would only be used for academic research. The paper-based data would be placed in a locked cabinet, and a password would protect the electronic files to protect the participants’ privacy. The case instructors and students were also free to include previously collected data in the research analysis.

Instruments

Participant observation data.

Before starting the academic term, the researcher consulted with the case instructor to understand the curriculum, teaching context, student characteristics, observation focus and tools, and feedback session arrangements. During the teaching process, the researcher obtained written consent from the case instructor and students before conducting classroom observations and recording factual data about the case instructor’s teaching and student behavior. After the teaching period ended, the researcher held feedback sessions with the case instructor to clarify the ideas and achieve a consensus. The observed data were derived from two sources: (1) observation records and photos taken during class, and (2) non-specific observations, such as incidental behavior or conversations between the case instructor and students during data collection in the classroom.

Interview process and outline

Semi-structured interviews (Table 2 ) were the primary data collection method, and the entire interview process was recorded. The research team conducted interviews about the interdisciplinary course design and teaching experiences. The interviews with the case instructor focused on how to design and teach an interdisciplinary course, address teaching challenges, and professional growth and reflections during the process. The interviews with students focused on the impact of course design and teaching activities on their learning.

The interview content was transcribed verbatim and coded using NVivo 12 software to avoid disclosing the names of the research participants and other related privacy information. We used triangulation (Denzin, 1978 ) to enhance research validity (Maxwell, 1992 ). The data collection methods used to obtain the research data included interviews, observation records, and document data. “Data source triangulation” was adopted, inviting the case instructor, course students, and collaborative observers to participate in the study, to examine the data consistency. In addition, a recording pen was used to record data, to avoid missing or biased information. The researcher recorded interview and observation content in detail, carefully organized document data, and avoided over-inference to present the research’s validity.

Each research subject was given three codes: the first code represented their identity (R1: Researcher 1; TS: instructor S; SY: student Y); the second code represented the data type (I: Interview; O: Classroom observation and reflection); and the third code represented the date. For example, SW_I_20221228 indicates that student W was interviewed on December 28, 2022, and R1_O_20221006 indicates that Researcher 1 conducted classroom observation on October 6, 2022. During the data classification and formation of categories, the research team referred to the relevant literature and compiled primary categories. Sections of a similar nature and content were placed under the same relevant category. At the same time, member checks and peer reviews (Miles and Huberman, 1994 ) were conducted for the interview content. Analysis was stopped when the data began to show patterns and became increasingly stable.

Data analysis began in February 2023 and was divided into two stages. The first stage involved open coding, where the researcher conducted a preliminary analysis of three instructor interview transcripts, six student interview transcripts, nine researcher classroom observation records, and nine co-observer classroom observation records for 27 files. The first level of open coding generated 83 codes. In the second stage, based on the first level of coding, the researcher extracted the main codes through axial coding, resulting in 12 main codes. Examples of the codes are provided in Table 3 .

Results and discussion

Design and planning an interdisciplinary curriculum, using design thinking as a methodology for curriculum design.

Gaining insights into the pedagogical approaches and experiential aspects of design thinking in higher education enables educational institutions to enhance student learning, ensuring alignment with the demands of professionalism, personal development, and civic engagement (McLaughlin et al., 2022 ). The case instructor used the Stanford University D-School design thinking model to design and plan the interdisciplinary curriculum, consisting of five stages: “empathize”, “define”, “ideate”, “prototype”, and “test”. The “empathize” stage helped participants understand the importance of empathy and learn how to cultivate it. The “define” stage clarified the problem through common methods, such as summarizing the key points and establishing connections, making the design goals clearer. The “ideate” stage taught participants ideation techniques to transform problems into solutions. The “prototype” stage proposed ideas closer to the final solution and the creation of prototypes to obtain user feedback. Finally, during the “test” stage, participants were encouraged to implement their prototypes, assess their effectiveness, and verify their solutions, gaining a deeper understanding of the importance of thorough testing (Henriksen et al., 2017 ; Wang and Sung, 2019 ).

The case instructor guided university students through three complete cycles of design thinking across three projects: the “Design Thinking Mini-Workshop,” the “Mid-term Project,” and the “Final Project.” During the first cycle, in the third week of the course, the case instructor-led students in designing a chair for their partners as part of the Design Thinking Mini-Workshop. This phase aimed to familiarize students with two design thinking techniques—divergent and convergent thinking, five steps—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test, and three criteria—desirability, feasibility, and viability. In the second cycle, the case instructor directed students to use cardboard as the material for designing board games targeting elementary school children. The design thinking process was employed, and children were invited to test and play with the game prototypes. By the end of the course, each group leveraged observations from the game field, interviews with children, and feedback on their gaming experiences to design innovative wooden play equipment for children. This culmination of efforts served as the third cycle, wherein the groups collaborated with “Taiwan Parks & Playgrounds for Children by Children” to organize a two-day park play equipment exhibition in a southern Taiwan administrative district.

As part of the three design thinking cycles, the case instructor set different assignments to help students practice the two techniques, five steps, three criteria, and related design thinking tools (Fig. 1 ). These assignments included observing and documenting children’s toys, observing and documenting children’s game ideas, learning woodworking skills, explaining sketches for the final project, creating prototypes for the final project, designing a poster to introduce the project, and completing a nine-square personal business model.

The correspondence chart of design thinking and interdisciplinary course tasks.

Balancing resources and real-world impact: challenges and strategies in extended interdisciplinary courses

The case instructor has a humanities and social sciences background and has taught this course five times since 2018. He is adept at conducting field observations and interviews in different contexts and has independently studied courses related to design thinking and industrial design. He has a strong interest in design and art and has conducted two years of ethnographic research into the maker community in Taiwan. The case instructor’s expertise lies in guiding students’ observations and interviews to discover the users’ needs. However, to overcome the limitations of his lack of technical expertise, he invited industry experts to co-teach and introduce external resources into the classroom.

TS: If students only stop at the proposing ideas stage, they will not see the final outcome, and the product cannot be iterated. Therefore, I hope that after completion, the students’ work can undergo another market test, and the complete production process can be recorded as an important memory for them. Also, if we want to do this, we need resources, which need to be related to the community if we want to use USR (University Social Responsibility: one project in Taiwan) … These outcomes are very expensive, including both the teaching of certain techniques, as well as giving students the opportunity to practice these techniques, for which you need tools, and every step costs money. If only proposals are made and no prototype is produced, the students’ understanding and perception of the entire project or their understanding of design thinking will not be deep enough. (TS_I_20230104)

As part of university-level interdisciplinary education, students were encouraged to solve real-world problems. The case instructor didn’t want students to only reach the proposal stage; he introduced more time, supported resources, and practical venues to establish a stronger connection between classroom content and the real world. Therefore, this course tended to be longer, and the holidays were often utilized. For example, the regular class time is three hours per week. However, during the later prototype production stage, students often used the holidays to make wooden playground equipment in rented venues. In addition, the resources needed to support classroom activities, such as professional guidance from industry experts, learning woodworking skills, mechanical equipment, wooden materials, and hourly fees, are costly. While balancing classroom learning and not allowing students to spend too much money, the case instructor must also administer the operation of the course before conducting a class. For example, he must apply for government project funding, invite corporate cooperation and sponsorship, contact primary schools for cooperation, and identify exhibition venues to ensure sufficient resources and venues for teaching.

Interdisciplinary teaching strategies and tools

Creating a culture of equitable instructor–student relationships through effective questioning and example-setting to foster classroom discussion.

During the first week of class, the case instructor told the students, “Don’t call me ‘instructor’ or ‘professor’, please call me C (the case instructor’s name) or coach. The reason is that I don’t want you to give up thinking, and I want to create an equal atmosphere in the classroom to encourage you to speak up more (R1_O_ 20220908).” During class, the case instructor is skilled in using questioning as a scaffold for student learning, often using “what”, “why”, and “how” to ask questions. Starting from the students’ experiences, the case instructor connects them to the concepts to be elaborated by the case instructor, to train students to think in more abstract ways.

TS: Have you ever experienced good design? Why was it good? What would happen if that design didn’t exist? How would you use that design to solve a problem if it were you?

TS: Next, I will introduce the inspiration and function of the EAT WELL product (a universal tableware design) through a crowdfunding video, which is mainly designed for patients with dementia. What is special about this tableware? What was the motivation behind creating it? What other special features were mentioned in the video? Was there any reference to the color used in other materials?… (R1_O_20220908)

During the process, the case instructor utilized questioning, scenario simulation, and discussions to facilitate students’ exploration of user needs, identification of underlying reasons, and generation of viable solutions through mutual discussion based on their life experiences or relevant cases. Subsequently, the case solutions were decided with a view to training students’ insights.

(During the class, a student was invited to simulate the perspective of an IDEO researcher role-playing a patient.)

TS: IDEO wants to improve the patient experience in Minnesota hospitals--starting with a change of perspective. (When you spend the whole day lying in bed in the hospital, all you can see is the ceiling.) So, once you change perspectives, what does the person see in the world?

TS: Why should the floor color in the hospital ward be divided into different areas?

TS: People can be in a more comfortable state, just like being at home. Although the hospital is also a public building, we also hope they will want to make patients feel comfortable when they see a doctor. (R1_O_20220929)

Encouraging the use of visual tools and vertical communication to facilitate dialog

The tools and methods commonly used in design thinking include ethnographic methods, personas, journey maps, brainstorming, mind maps, visualization, prototyping, experiments, and others (Micheli et al., 2019 ). These visualization tools allow users to engage in experiential learning and reflect on their actions (Elsbach and Stigliani, 2018 ). Therefore, using visualization tools for communication is crucial in design thinking. Significant disparities may exist due to individuals’ diverse cognitive and linguistic habits, especially in heterogeneous groups. Hence, in the second week of the course, the case instructor helped students establish a habit of using visual communication, extensively employing visual and graphic means to discuss issues, and encouraging students to conduct vertical communication after pasting their data on the wall, thereby making the process of design thinking more three-dimensional (Fig. 2 ).

TS: Please come up to the front with a pen and some sticky notes, and practice sharing and giving feedback to others. This process will help everyone develop the habit of team communication and collaboration.

(Students verbally share their observations on children’s game behaviors, while others give feedback using sticky notes.)

TS: Why do children want to play with this toy? Let’s think about it together. Did this child gain any value from playing with it?

S: This is a 7-year-old girl with a lively and imaginative personality. She plays a role-playing game with her own dolls, pretending to be a teacher and the students, because her mother does not buy her toys very often. (R2_O_20220915)

Peer feedback using sticky notes (R2_O_20220915).

The case instructor also considered explicitly teaching students how to integrate ideas from different sources and imparting basic teamwork skills to provide comprehensive support for interdisciplinary learning. Achieving consensus is often necessary for feedback or teamwork for decision-making. The case instructor suggested that students can use dot stickers to provide their opinions, and when there is disagreement, using them to vote is useful. Subsequently, students often used this method for group discussion in assignments.

The idea is that everyone provides an idea, and if we want to select one, we vote. I think we use voting because C (the case instructor) first taught us a “dot-sticking” method, and then I just changed it to being online and then voting. (SL_I_20221228)

The purpose of the prototype was to generate ideas and solve problems. Regarding communication, a picture is worth a thousand words, and a prototype is worth a thousand pictures (Wang and Sung, 2022 ). Therefore, the case instructor suggested that students use geometric elements such as triangles, circles, and squares to complete a basic three-dimensional structure of the work and only use red, blue, yellow, black, and white colors. The paper version is cut into triangles, circles, and squares for combination (Fig. 3 ).

Low-fidelity to high-fidelity prototypes (R1_O_20221027).

Experiential teaching activities: a study on site observation and user experience

Designers must observe, interview, or experience users’ daily lives to understand the users’ needs. The critical task of design thinking is to transform the observed or interviewed data into insights and create products and services that can improve people’s lives. Through empathy, designers can connect these insights with others’ perspectives and understand and feel the world through their experiences and emotions (Brown, 2009 ). However, this type of learning is not easy to teach or understand in the classroom. In interdisciplinary classrooms, instructors must design experiential activities that allow students to acquire relevant skills through experiential learning (Ryser et al., 2009 ). In this case, the case instructor asked students to observe children’s behavior in the playground (Fig. 4 ), interact with them, and help third and fourth-grade elementary school children design their dream backpacks. These all represent ways whereby students may observe children and explore their play needs.

Observation of children’s play behaviors at a play area (R1_O_20220929).

Progressive practice of the design Point of View (POV)

It is essential to define clearly the problem to be solved, to generate a design point of view (POV). A POV can help designers gain deeper insights into the research object and problem, including the users, needs, and insight elements, by organizing user needs that have not been met from the collected data. With a clear POV, designers can develop focused problem statements and generate high-quality solutions. Therefore, designers must analyze, observe, and discover data, form unique insights through an integrative interpretation of a large amount of data, and help other designers to move to the next stage through an actionable problem statement. There may be multiple insights, and the designer must select the insight that meets the current users’ needs (Liu, 2021 ).

When defining the problem, the case instructor used progressive exercise tasks from existing cases and field data collected by students to enable them to practice forming POVs and improve their problem-solving skills. The case instructor used practical business cases for students to practice writing a POV and compared the differences with a case POV.

TS: Please watch the “Lucky Iron Fish: Shape of Health” video. The locals in Cambodia suffer from iron deficiency, which often causes dizziness, miscarriage, lack of focus in children, osteoporosis, etc. If a method could be found to provide enough iron ions to Cambodians through their typical fish and rice meals, the problem of iron deficiency could be solved. The research discovered that using iron cookware during cooking could release iron ions and address iron deficiency. How can the locals willingly put a piece of iron into the pot during cooking when they cannot afford to use expensive iron pots? Please practice writing the POV for this case. (R1_O__20220929)

After gaining experience writing case-based POVs, students practiced writing POVs using observation data from children’s play areas and from conducting dream backpack design workshops with children (see Fig. 5 ).

POV exercise (R1_O_20221013).

During the practice, the case instructor reminded the students that questioning is crucial to uncovering needs, and observation can reveal other needs. At the same time, the case instructor used questioning to refine the quality of the students’ POVs.

S: The elementary school student’s original backpack is a Transformer with a hard shell. It has compartments on the left and right sides for storing umbrellas and water bottles.

TS: What are his expectations and difficulties in using the backpack?

S: He hopes it can be made easier to carry, as the hard shell makes it feel heavy on his back and waist. He wants it to look like a regular backpack and provide protection against bad guys.

TS: From this perspective, what needs might he have? He may be afraid of bullying and need protection and safety. (R1_O_20221006)

Through a progressive POV exercise, students can quickly discern a child’s play traits and tendencies from the types of games and play equipment they use. For example, a child inventing their own rules for playing a game indicates a more proactive and imaginative nature. A child drawing game equipment that involves shooting or destruction suggests a high need for stimulation. Conversely, more introverted children may require independent play equipment.

S: The elementary school students in our group drew slides, climbing nets, mazes, aggressive equipment, and obstacle courses. Therefore, our insights suggest they enjoy pursuing excitement, challenging limits, and continuous obstacle courses. (R1_O_20221020)

Collecting feedback for prototype testing and refinement

During the testing phase of the design thinking process, the main approach was to collect feedback from others to conduct testing and make revisions. Before testing, the case instructor invited students from other groups to provide feedback and suggestions on the prototype.

(Group feedback and questions after a board game proposal)

S1: Does just moving the cup provide enough hands-on experience for the children? The gameplay may be a bit monotonous; perhaps there could be more variation.

S2: What’s the difference between this and playing ping pong with yourself? What’s the selling point of this device to attract children to play? It feels like it could be made more exciting.

S3: How does the ball drop? Will the size be changed again?

S4: Chopsticks could be added to provide a barrier; otherwise, the ball drops too quickly.

TS: Does someone need to throw the ball from the top and someone catch it at the bottom? Maybe this could be less interactive and physical, and the gameplay could be more diverse. If more of these are made, can children compete and increase the richness of the gameplay? It is also important to spend time testing the spacing and adding unpredictability. (R2_O_20221103)

During the production of the play equipment, a professional carpenter was invited to provide structural recommendations for the student’s production of the 3D prototype of the wooden plank play equipment (Fig. 6 ).

The professional carpenter: This group of students is highly motivated. They encountered a problem with the positioning of the slope and its connection with the hexagonal structure. The slope is placed on a rectangular frame, and there is a possibility that the frame may collapse when children climb on it. One solution is to make the frame square instead of rectangular. For the upper part of the structure, two ladders are used. The thickness of the wood for the ladders needs to be determined. The structure may sag in the middle if the wood is not thick enough. Therefore, support poles may need to be added to the bottom, and the design of the upper wooden board also needs to be considered. (R1_O_20221117)

3D prototype of the creative play equipment designed by a group (R1_O_20221117).

The role of the case instructor: guiding student thinking and providing direction and strategies

In interdisciplinary classrooms, besides teaching professional knowledge, the case instructor played a crucial role in guiding students’ thinking and providing problem-solving strategies and directions.

R1: What is C’s (the case instructor) role?

SG: He tends to play the role of “guiding without being overly directive”. In other words, he would provide us with some resources in the early stages but does not interfere too much with the content we discuss. If we encounter problems, we can discuss them with him. For example, when we were facing the second prototype revision round at one elementary school, he came to discuss it with us. As our entire play equipment was too big, he suggested a direction and guided our discussion toward the idea of “modular play equipment”. (SG_I_20221222)

As interdisciplinary educators, we must be prepared to allow students to feel uncomfortable and uncertain in their learning environments. However, we must also maintain a safe learning environment where students are free to make mistakes and their perspectives are valued and understood (Gardiner, 2020 ). Therefore, when students’ approaches and definitions of problem-solving deviate from the topic, instructors must intervene and guide them while valuing their ideas. The following is a discussion that the case instructor had with group members after class, as they had deviated from the main theme while working on their final proposal for play equipment.

TS: Last week’s successful experience seemed to have limited you to focusing only on game design instead of equipment design, which led you to break out of the original scope of the assignment to design equipment. I do not agree that you violated the assignment rules by making a game. I appreciate your out-of-the-box thinking, but this assignment was not about game design. You could incorporate fighting or obstacle race concepts and create various obstacles, such as throwing actions. I can accept starting with archery or throwing games as a basis for obstacle racing and turning the field into a space of thieves, where breaking through various obstacles can allow the children to complete different missions. (R1_O_20221117)

The challenges and responses of interdisciplinary teaching

Interdisciplinary teaching in practice: addressing technical skill gaps and enhancing learning experiences.

The case instructor has a humanities and social sciences background. Despite being able to introduce external experts and resources to compensate for their lack of technical expertise, some students still feel insufficient time is allocated for learning certain technical skills, such as woodworking.

The case instructor taught some content too quickly, and the time he spent teaching woodworking was very short for those who didn’t know. When he taught, he compressed some content, making me feel that professional learning was insufficient, and I needed to find additional information to understand it. … Although his manual skills were not very good, his biggest help to me was that he would ask us to conduct field investigations, which allowed us to observe many details. (SA_I_20221228)

Ideal interdisciplinary teaching requires close collaboration among scholars from different fields. Regular professional communication and dialog are essential to understand the interrelationships and differences between each other’s subjects and facilitate collaborative teaching with two or more instructors from different disciplines. Joint preparation is also required to discuss the goals, content design, teaching methods, and assessment strategies for interdisciplinary learning (Chang and Lin, 2019 ). However, due to school resources and practical considerations, a single instructor often undertakes interdisciplinary teaching in Taiwan. Therefore, a sole instructor of interdisciplinary courses must engage in interdisciplinary learning to accumulate different forms of professional knowledge and new perspectives. The case instructor must frequently engage in metacognitive reflection on professional limitations, introduce resources from other fields as appropriate, and have a basic understanding of other fields to become a bridge for students to engage in learning from different disciplines.

My major is not in design, so I must resort to some simple methods that students can brainstorm with. At this point, I learned about Bauhaus, a design school from before World War II who influenced design education worldwide. What I learned from Bauhaus was that, with the simplest colors, one could create many basic, minimalist designs. We don’t need to make students do something fancy. Instead, they can start learning about what design is and what form is by being able to decompose or transform the combination of these simple geometric shapes. I think that’s enough. I think the design thinking curriculum is not simply about learning about form but also about solving problems, and that form is just one problem-solving method. (TS_I_20230104)

Most university instructors typically have a single disciplinary background, and to engage in interdisciplinary course instruction, they must be open-minded and capable of reflective thinking. An open-minded attitude is essential in learning about different fields and understanding the professional terminology used in other fields. Additionally, interdisciplinary instructors need specialized knowledge, educational expertise, or teaching skills. They should constantly reflect on the content of the course and its relevance to the real world, finding a balance between reflection and routine and between thinking and action (Zeichner and Liston, 1996 ).

Navigating constraints: challenges in implementing design thinking cycles and community exhibitions in a limited-time academic semester

In a 16-week course with only three hours per week, students were expected to complete three design thinking cycles and organize a public exhibition in the community of their wooden play equipment. Throughout the process, the case instructor and students must overcome resource and funding challenges, work collaboratively in teams, and invest significant time and effort in completing various assignments and tasks. Due to their academic course loads, semester schedules, financial constraints, and the need for additional employment, students might encounter time limitations that may affect their participation in and ability to benefit from all the activities (Ryser et al., 2009 ). While most students showed a strong commitment to learning, the researcher observed that some students could not dedicate additional time outside of class to construct their wooden play equipment due to the required time investment.

For most of the courses I have taken, the requirements usually involve writing a paper or presenting a proposal. If it’s even simpler, like if everyone just wants to pass, we might do a group project where we all contribute information, and one person compiles it all to complete the report. However, in this class, I feel that many complex discussions and divisions of labor are required because we’re not just preparing a report. We also have to assign carpentry work, decide how to make proposals. and allocate labor. (SL_I_20221228)

In Taiwan, a typical university semester lasts 16 to 18 weeks, with each course typically consisting of 2 to 3 classes per week. Different schools have different regulations regarding semester length and course schedules. These regulations often constrain interdisciplinary courses, making it difficult for students to have a coherent or in-depth learning experience. Therefore, the school administration’s cooperation is essential (such as cross-departmental course selection systems, credit granting, and instructor allocation) (Chang and Lin, 2019 ). The case instructor believes that design thinking should have different learning directions at various stages of the academic system and suggests that schools should have more flexible implementation schedules for interdisciplinary courses, allowing instructors to design courses that enable students to have greater involvement and apply what they have learned (TS_I_20230104).

Balancing interdisciplinary teaching content and pedagogical principles: challenges and considerations

This interdisciplinary course requires three cycles of design thinking. Therefore, the case instructor had a busy and full teaching schedule in the classroom, potentially resulting in the omission of some skills instruction. For example, when university students designed dream backpacks with children, the researcher observed that the university students needed to improve their interviewing skills.

In one group of elementary school students working on the design of a dream backpack, the group of university students kept asking the elementary school students questions, which caused them to hesitate in their ideation of the backpack. They were unsure whether it was due to difficulty responding to too many questions, making it difficult to draw their ideas immediately. The university students asked many questions to stimulate the elementary school students’ imagination regarding the backpack design, but the elementary school students did not respond much. (R1_O_20221006)

In interdisciplinary courses, forming student teams is also challenging. The case instructor asked the students to post their expertise on the wall and recruit members with different skills to form teams. The case instructor hoped to have students from different disciplines on each team; this was a modification he made after teaching the course for four rounds. However, one group in which all seven students were from the same discipline remained, and they could not find another group to join. The case instructor compromised on this principle and allowed students from the same field to form a group.

Last year, there was another event where some people couldn’t be grouped due to overly strict grouping, and it seemed like we were exposing some people to exclusion. This year, a few people couldn’t be grouped with anyone else, such as students J, B, or C. It was difficult to divide them up, so I thought giving them a sense of belonging and letting them be in the same group rather than strictly enforcing the grouping was more important. Of course, I asked their opinions, “Are you willing to sacrifice your rights to work with people from other departments or different people?” They said they were willing, so I let them continue in the same group. (TS_I_20230104)

Furthermore, in authentic field-based courses, the case instructor allowed students opportunities for free exploration if they did not deviate too much from the topic. Even if the students had not considered the specific characteristics of the final practical field, they were usually given the freedom to proceed without too many restrictions.

In this group, I feel that they did not consider that the playground equipment should be placed in a park because the playground equipment exhibition is an event. Their initial proposition was “no pressure”, wanting introverted children to hide in the playground equipment alone. However, most of the people who come to play with the equipment in the park are accompanied by their parents, and basically, it is just for children to release their energy. Therefore, this setting is unsuitable, but I wanted to let them try it out. (TS_I_20230104)

Interdisciplinary teaching is a highly complex process that requires instructors to possess a level of interdisciplinary background and teaching knowledge to balance the learning proportion of professional knowledge, interdisciplinary teaching content, and principles in curriculum design. At the same time, they must also have sufficient resources, time, and practical experience to connect classroom content with the real world and consider using different teaching tasks to provide students with guidance scaffolding to develop hard and soft skills (Vogler et al., 2018 ). In addition, interdisciplinary design thinking courses should include growth-oriented reflection, explicit group work skills, and content with a real-world application (Skywark et al., 2022 ). As interdisciplinary instructors, they must also have a degree of flexibility and openness to accept unexpected situations that may arise during the process and afford students the space to try and learn from their mistakes.

Conclusions and suggestions

Conclusions, design thinking as a methodology for interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching.

In higher education, instructors often lack interdisciplinary education and training in using interdisciplinary methods in teaching. Drawing on the case instructor’s interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching experience in this study, we propose that design thinking is a suitable methodology for interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching. Design thinking emphasizes starting from practical situations and problems, exploring users’ potential needs and challenges, and valuing human-centered design and innovative solutions. In interdisciplinary courses, students come from diverse backgrounds and professions, and they can work together using design thinking to integrate their knowledge and skills to solve complex problems.

In interdisciplinary teaching, it is crucial to assess effective methods for fostering teacher-student relationships and promoting classroom discussions. Researching the roles of visual tools and communication in interdisciplinary dialog provides valuable insights, contributing to a deeper understanding of their impact on learning. Additionally, the study explored the influence of on-site observation and user experiences on students, assessing the feasibility of integrating these activities. Analyzing the progressive practice of the design POV sheds light on its effects on students’ problem-solving abilities. The study also emphasized the importance of feedback collection during prototype testing, presenting best practices and improvement recommendations. Lastly, an evaluation of instructors’ roles in interdisciplinary teaching concluded the exploration, offering insights and practical recommendations for enhanced teaching effectiveness.

This case study investigated the development and delivery of an interdisciplinary curriculum within a university setting, exploring instructional challenges and strategies for professional development and reflection, particularly in the unique circumstances of a university post-pandemic. The insights aimed to guide the advancement of interdisciplinary education practices in Taiwan and beyond. The research examined strategies used by instructors to balance disciplinary knowledge acquisition in interdisciplinary teaching, addressing limitations in their professional background and how this balance impacts student expectations. An evaluation assesses the resource and time investment required for interdisciplinary course development, exploring strategies to overcome associated challenges. Emphasizing the intricate connection between interdisciplinary course content and the real world, the study underscores the need for ample resources, time, and practical venues.

Cultivating interdisciplinary talent is crucial in higher education, leading to recommendations for allocating fixed funds in future university academic development plans. Instructors are encouraged to actively seek government research project funds and collaborate with established partners for enduring learning opportunities. Despite increased time investment and potential term-related limitations in interdisciplinary learning, the suggestion is to enhance student learning depth by introducing flexibility into the curricular structure, such as adopting a modular or intensive course system. The ongoing challenge of balancing interdisciplinary teaching content and principles necessitates continuous adjustments. In designing learning tasks, instructors should prioritize depth over breadth, avoiding superficial outcomes. It is crucial to adapt courses based on student feedback to achieve interdisciplinary teaching objectives.

Limitations and suggestions

This study investigated how a university instructor utilizes design thinking in interdisciplinary curriculum design and explored the teaching challenges and coping strategies. Due to space limitations, this study primarily focused on the case instructor’s perspective and did not present the students’ views on interdisciplinary learning. Additionally, to avoid disrupting classroom learning, the researcher and the collaborative observer only observed from the periphery of the classroom and did not observe student interactions during group discussions, so some information could only be obtained through post-interviews.

Furthermore, in this case, the case instructor had a humanities and social science background and thus emphasized observation and interviews. This issue requires further exploration into interdisciplinary curriculum design. The emphasis on interdisciplinary curriculum design could differ if the focus were shifted to instructors or students from a science and technology background. Future research could conduct comparative studies of interdisciplinary teaching among instructors from diverse backgrounds to understand their perspectives on interdisciplinary curriculum design. Finally, future research could also investigate students’ attitudes and opinions on interdisciplinary learning to understand more fully their needs and expectations of interdisciplinary education.

Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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This work was supported by the National Science and Technology Council of Taiwan under Grant No. NSTC 111-2410-H-017-027-.

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Wang, CC. Using design thinking for interdisciplinary curriculum design and teaching: a case study in higher education. Humanit Soc Sci Commun 11 , 307 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41599-024-02813-z

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COVID-19: The Ultimate Design Thinking Use Case

We are living in extraordinary times as COVID-19 continues to cause crises across the world. Could designers make use of design thinking to solve urgent problems and come up with innovative solutions?

By Miklos Philips

Miklos is a design leader, author, and speaker with more than 18 years of experience in the design field.

PREVIOUSLY AT

An emergency field hospital with tents customarily used for disaster relief has been opened in New York’s Central Park, and across the globe, “social distancing” has become part of our everyday behavior.

We are coming to grips with COVID-19, but it has caught us off guard. As most of the world’s population is under some form of lockdown, we find ourselves in the middle of an unprecedented social experiment with many people working remotely and entire families staying home.

A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. For years, we have been warned of the possibility by hundreds of health experts, and in 2015, Bill Gates talked about how unprepared we are in his TED talk . He grimly warned: “If anything kills over 10 million people in the next few decades, it’s most likely to be a highly infectious virus rather than a war.” We are now faced with a challenge that has no parallel in peacetime this century.

While most people manage to “keep calm and carry on,” friction and frustration are inevitable living under such a crisis. But duress lays fertile ground for innovation, and during times such as these, eager designers and creatives can’t help but see opportunities for improvement.

If we approached COVID-19 as a design problem, could we find innovative ways to apply design thinking and human-centered design principles to help soothe everyday frustrations and mitigate the most pressing issues? Drawing parallels between the problems of the global pandemic and those of product and service design, the similarities are obvious.

At the intersection of the innovator’s mindset and creative thinking, we could explore ways to help the world deal with this and the next pandemic. Reaching into our designer’s toolkit, we could deploy the staples of our craft, including problem definition, ethnographic research, ideation, prototyping, and user testing. Taking advantage of recent innovations and the latest technology, we could run Design Sprints , focus on a specific problem, generate multiple solutions, build prototypes, and get rapid feedback.

The Design Thinking Process Applied to COVID-19

A global pandemic puts enormous stress on governments and healthcare services. Suddenly, there is a scramble to circulate the correct information and roll out products and services to deal with the crisis. These challenges bring together a blend of product design, experience design, and service design problems that are desperate for a solution, and design thinking can help.

Design thinking is a methodology that provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It combines what’s desirable from a human point of view with what is technologically feasible and economically viable. It’s useful in tackling loosely defined, complex problems by understanding human needs.

Design thinking is unique compared with other forms of problem-solving methods in that it’s a non-linear process focused on delivering outcomes, rather than being focused on a precise problem definition. The design thinking process consists of five stages: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test . Each step needs to be given appropriate resources and the proper duration to create an end product that reliably meets user needs.

Information Clarity, Consistency, and Distribution

The flow of information is essential to curbing a pandemic. While the virus responsible for the COVID-19 pandemic was spreading, it took authorities several weeks to consolidate their messaging and make it consistent. With advanced technology, the distribution of information isn’t the problem. It’s transmitting the right information to the right people at the right time.

In times of crisis, there is an acute need for standardized, consistent, and effective information design. Principle four from the Nielsen Norman Group’s 10 Usability Heuristics for User Interface Design states: “Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing.”

To contain the outbreak, the UK government quickly moved to design clear, consistent messaging, taking advantage of the rule of three : “ Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives. ” It was widely distributed via the internet and media. People received texts, got emails, and saw posters on the street, all of which has proved to be very effective.

Unfortunately, not all governments are created equal, and too little came too late from too many. Particularly when lives are at stake, clear and consistent instructions from healthcare services and authorities need to be out sooner rather than later.

In an ideal scenario, an emergency “design commission” with an army of volunteer designers and content strategists could spring into action to rapidly craft and test various designs. Taking the design thinking phases of empathize, define, and ideate , this rapid response team of designers could assist authorities with formulating the right kind of messaging.

During the final phase of design thinking: implementation , governments could text millions of people with new rules around social distancing with the help of mobile operators. Getting information out rapidly over a variety of channels would ensure people receive the right kind of information promptly.

The primary goal of content strategists and information designers working with healthcare services is not only to convey vital information but to reduce people’s “cognitive load.” Borrowed from cognitive psychology, it is a frequently used term in UX and describes the process where, unable to process an overload of critical information, the brain shuts down.

Information designers can observe the Laws of UX and apply two of its “golden rules” to reduce cognitive load: Hick’s Law and Miller’s Law. Hick’s Law states that “the time it takes to make a decision increases with the number and complexity of choices,” so minimalist, uncomplicated designs are best when people need to make a decision. For example, it could be applied to an infographic outlining whether to use facial masks or not.

In an extreme scenario, both of these laws could be violated simultaneously by confusing pictograms meant to convey vital information, i.e., presenting too many choices and asking people to remember too many things.

The third UX principle that could be adopted for powerful information design is the Von Restorff Effect , which can help people recall information more easily. It states that “items that stand out from their peers are more memorable.” Designers can use the Von Restorff Effect to design effective, memorable information that needs to be conveyed quickly and convincingly.

The Psychology of Panic Buying

Experts say hoarding essential supplies despite reassurances from experts that shortages of everyday household goods are unlikely is motivated by a natural human reaction to stress and uncertainty.

When crises occur, people quite naturally want to regain control. We tend to run with the herd, thinking: “If everyone else is buying toilet paper, hand sanitizers, and pasta, I should probably do the same.”

How can stores prevent or at least get ahead of this kind of behavior? Reflecting on the principles of UX design, it’s about “knowing your user.” Becoming keenly aware of previous events, patterns, and behaviors that lead to the raiding of aisles in supermarkets and pharmacies could mitigate the problem.

Aligning the panic-shopping phenomenon with the user interface heuristic “visibility of system status,” clear signage throughout the shopping experience could curtail the rush to stock up on essentials. Governments could raise awareness through the media and send uniform signage to grocery stores to calm nerves and inform shoppers that there is plenty to go around.

If there is a principle that is sacred to UX designers, it's know your user. After all, how can we design something for people without in-depth, detailed knowledge of them? Don Norman , co-founder and Principal Emeritus of Nielsen Norman Group

Product and Service Design in the Age of COVID-19

Effective solutions are desperately needed to a myriad of problems foisted on the world by COVID-19. As a result, the pandemic is powering innovation on an atypical scale and pace not normally considered. Apart from PPEs (personal protective equipment), hospital beds, and face shields, ventilators are in short supply, which has sparked an astounding number of design breakthroughs. And that’s just one area where necessity has proved itself to be the mother of invention.

Innovation is now recognized as the single most important ingredient in any modern economy. Tom Kelley, IDEO Partner

Self-diagnosis at home, monitoring those who are infected, widespread testing, and contact tracing are just a few design problems that need solving. Dealing with emergent mental health issues, panic buying, and social distancing caused by lockdowns is another. Endless design problems with unique challenges present themselves during global crises, and exciting design opportunities abound.

Fusing advanced technology with design thinking, designers have an opportunity to bring forth many innovative products and services.

Design Thinking in Healthcare: Test, Trace, and Treat

In the battle to contain the contagion, employing the test, trace, and treat approach is unavoidable. Widespread testing and contact tracing are needed to identify and alert people who have come into contact with a person infected with the coronavirus.

Putting into practice the user-centered design process, designers could brainstorm new ideas with the “ how might we ” method. It would require us to accept that we don’t currently know the answer and foster a collaborative approach to solving it. IDEO calls it “ challenge mapping ,” which is very similar to the 5 Whys method for problem-solving (developed at Toyota in the 1930s).

For example, currently, home test kits are not reliable for testing for novel coronavirus infection. But the steps in the design thinking process could be applied to make them ready for the next one.

Under empathizing and defining , we can understand the problem; with ideation and prototyping, we can explore the most cost-effective way to make them; and with testing and implementation , we can refine and deliver an effective solution. In this way, millions of home test kits could be designed, prototyped, and tested .

Mobile apps and big data are ideal partners for contact tracing. When people develop symptoms, how can they know if it’s COVID-19? An AI-powered COVID-19 symptom checker app could “listen” to coughs and breathing, as well as measure body temperature and heart rate via an external wristband. Comparing results with large sets of previous data, it would come up with a diagnosis. Once the symptoms are confirmed, the app can then advise users on an appropriate course of action.

Looking at social distancing, apps could be designed that alert people if they’re getting too close to someone. It could be wearable tech, such as a chest camera, that would send an audible alert to their mobile device (or their earphones).

COVID-19 and Mental Health – Living in Isolation

As authorities race to stem the spread of the coronavirus by shuttering everything we take for granted, some experts fear the consequences on people’s mental health, and the longer a quarantine continues, the greater the effect.

Experts say that depression, anxiety, and suicides typically emerge from traumatic events, such as widespread lockdowns and the uncertainty of the pandemic. The impact is worse for those with existing mental health conditions, the elderly, the vulnerable, and the self-isolating.

Eight to 10 days after they were quarantined due to the spread of COVID-19, more than half the participants in a recent study reported the adverse psychological effects of the outbreak as “moderate or severe.” Can design thinking address people’s protracted isolation and look for ways to alleviate mental stress?

We can take steps from the design thinking process and approach problems from the user’s perspective: empathize with sufferers and ideate solutions. Healthcare services could support the availability of high-quality, remote counseling by therapists, psychiatric nurses, and doctors. However, the ease of use (usability) of these digital services is crucial, as well as the simplicity of making an appointment.

For many people, talking to friends and family over video calls helps. However, according to Jakob Nielsen of the Nielsen Norman Group, the elderly are typically not tech-savvy users and “need dramatically simplified software” that works with a push of a button. For them, making a video call needs to be almost as simple as using a lightswitch.

To help detect depression, Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers have recently developed an AI system that can detect if a person is suffering from depression by analyzing their speech patterns. Such an AI system can power a mobile app that monitors a person’s speaking patterns, detects mental distress, and sends an alert to doctors. It could prove especially useful for those who can’t get to a doctor for an initial diagnosis due to distance, cost, or a lack of awareness that something may be wrong.

Designing Better Personal Protective Equipment (PPE)

When stepping out of home isolation, protection is on everyone’s mind. During lockdowns, people still need to get essential supplies, pick up medication, and get some exercise.

As designers approach the new norms and apply design thinking to personal protection, a window of opportunity opens up for design innovation. We can empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement . For example, designers could envision washable gloves made of comfortable material that offer sufficient protection and would become part of our daily protective wear.

For those with a smartwatch, using haptic vibration , apps could sound an alert as the wearer is about to touch their face. Fashionable face masks that are easy to manage yet block airborne viruses could be designed.

The lack of personal protective equipment for medical professionals is prompting design innovation at an unprecedented scale. In any healthcare system, there are not only the patients to consider but their families, the doctors, nurses, and other support personnel. A holistic system including all its components needs to be considered in order to see where design can help.

It’s putting the person, the human at the centre of what you do. Because no matter what industry or sector you’re in, there’s a human in there somewhere, so just anticipate and consider their needs. Kathryn Townsend, Head of Customer & Client Accessibility, Barclays UK

During the ideation phase in design thinking, it’s unlikely the ultimate solution to the problem will be discovered. The point is to come up with as many ideas as possible, sort through them to find the best ones (which will likely be some combination of user needs, practicality, cost-effectiveness, and other factors specific to the project), and then figure out which ideas should move on to the next step: prototyping .

Challenging assumptions is key to defining what is or isn’t a viable solution that can lead to innovative ideas. The idea is to try everything, even if some turn out to be duds.

I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work. Thomas Edison

As intensive care units are overwhelmed, there is an acute shortage of ventilators. Some ventilator manufacturers are forming partnerships with various firms and working around the clock to make them as fast as possible. Hope is also riding on smaller design labs that could make ventilators more quickly.

With ideation and prototyping , a team led by University of Oxford professors along with a student and professors from King’s College of London have defined a simple, safe, and scalable ventilator design that meets the strict specifications for use with patients. The design exploits off-the-shelf components and equipment with parts that can be produced using 3D printing, cutting costs dramatically.

“In less than two weeks, the students, researchers, and academics driving this project have developed into a highly structured and efficient team, brainstormed a prototype, and won government backing,” professor Mark Thompson of Oxford said.

Contactless Everything Is King

Naturally, people fear contact with anything when a tap on a screen or keypad can cause a fatal infection. Touch-based UIs are not favored, and paying with cash isn’t permitted in many grocery stores. Out are ATMs, supermarket keypads, and vending machines; in are contactless transportation passes and payment terminals where people can use contactless cards, ApplePay, and Google Pay.

And then there is radar tech like Google’s Project Soli for contactless interactions.

Project Soli is developing a new interaction sensor using radar technology. The sensor tracks sub-millimeter motions at high speed and accuracy. It fits onto a chip, can be produced at scale, and built into small devices and everyday objects. Soli is a miniature radar that understands human motions at various scales: from the tap of a finger to body movements.

Contactless payment terminals are already here, but soon, using radar-powered motion sensors, contactless UIs should be possible for everything from ATMs to vending machines. Interacting may be slower with these UIs, but “contactless-modes” will be safer to use. When there is no longer a need, systems can switch back to touch-based interactions.

Shopping for essentials in contactless stores would be a boon during global pandemics. Computer vision, sensor fusion, and deep learning systems can enable checkout-free shopping experiences. Are checkout-free stores like Amazon Go Grocery ahead of their time?

Data Visualization and Analysis

Putting cities under lockdown is not enough. Testing, contact tracing, home isolation, and rapid treatment are vital —all of which generate a lot of unstructured data. A sea of data coming in is good, but data alone doesn’t speak and doesn’t help make informed decisions. It’s tantamount to drinking from a firehose.

Policymakers and hospital leaders need to make informed decisions based on facts backed by data. For systems to function well, we not only need data but more importantly, robust data analysis and data visualization tools. Again, “ visibility of system status ” takes on vital importance. Patterns need to be identified, the spread of the virus visualized, and disease conditions monitored 24/7.

To facilitate better decision-making, researchers and startups are using artificial intelligence and other technologies to predict where the virus might appear next and how fast it will spread. These AI tools may use advanced technology and algorithms, but many of them suffer from poor usability. They need to be well-designed, present data efficiently, and communicate complexity with clarity through sophisticated data visualization.

UX designers have an opportunity to step in and make improvements. Once again, they can turn to the design thinking process: define the problem, ideate solutions, prototype, test , and implement the next generation of data visualization tools.

Closing Thoughts

The rapid spread of the coronavirus and the disorganized and erratic response of many governments demonstrates how unprepared we are in dealing with a global pandemic. No one looked at the COVID-19 outbreak as a design problem, but the crisis offers a chance to question the wisdom of old habits and to explore out-of-the-box thinking. Applying the design thinking process, designers and design thinkers can play a vital role in diagnosing the most pressing issues and come up with solutions.

Tumult and upheaval have altered history with wars, plagues, and chaos, sometimes leading to positive growth. We can look for a silver lining in the current calamity: COVID-19 is forcing the world to rethink its outmoded routines and power a remarkable pace of design innovation. Many design breakthroughs of the current crisis will be short-lived, but many will have staying power because they solve big problems. It’s up to designers to get to work.

Let us know what you think! Please leave your thoughts, comments, and feedback below.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• How to Work Remotely When It Matters Most
• Exploring the Reasons for Design Thinking Criticism
• The Value of Design Thinking in Business
• Breaking Down the Design Thinking Process

Understanding the basics

How do you describe service design.

Service design is the action of determining what elements of a service will provide the optimal experience for its users by examining the service’s communication, infrastructure, and material components as well as the users’ interactions with it.

Why is service design important?

Service design provides design tools and a structure that help companies get to know their customers, their needs and desires, and to provide them with a superior experience. It drives profits and offers companies ways to reduce cost as well as achieve a competitive advantage.

What are the benefits of service design?

Effective service design creates an optimal experience for users. It considers all stakeholders, fosters collaboration, creates consistency, offers cost reduction, and helps to keep companies agile by embracing change. Design thinking in service design can help.

What is the difference between misinformation and disinformation?

Misinformation is false information that’s given without malice, and disinformation is false information, such as government propaganda, that’s given with the intention to deceive.

What is design thinking not?

Design thinking is not about lightly updating existing designs and generating “alternative” solutions. A simplified approach to design thinking impedes real innovation. Many designers dislike the notion of design thinking because, to them, it tends to reduce the design process into an easy-to-follow formula.

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Member since May 20, 2016

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Design thinking, innovation, user experience and healthcare design

Design Thinking Case Study: Innovation at Apple

Apple is one of the leading companies that is renowned for its unique products and brand. A short talk with an Apple user reveals there is an emotional relation between consumers and Apple products , including every “i” product created in the past two decades.

Why are Apple products different from their competitors’ products? How does Apple manage to achieve innovation in its product families? Answering these questions provides interesting insight into Apple’s history and how it survived its most critical time between 1985 and 1997.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple after being fired, the company share was only worth US $5 and its future was uncertain. Today, in 2016, Apple’s share price is around US $108 and the company achieved revenues of US $233.7 billion in 2015 with net income of US $53.39 billion.  This mini case study sheds light on the role that design thinking and innovation played in helping Steve Jobs rescue Apple with his consumer-driven strategy and vision for the company.

The Hard Times at Apple

The early days of Apple (which was cofounded by Steve Jobs on 1976) are characterized by its first personal computer that was delivered with Apple OS. During this time, Apple was dominating the market because there were no other manufacturers of this type of computer as computers were used only by governments or large companies. However, in 1985, Steve Jobs was forced to leave the company. This marked the start of a chaotic era in the company’s strategy and product development.

In the period 1985-1997, Apple struggled to achieve market success, especially after Jobs’s departure and increasing competition from other giants such as IBM, which decided to enter the PC computers market. During this period, Apple faced number of challenges including:

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• Unstable strategy due to the change of executive teams
• Unclear vision about Apple’s competitive strategy, especially after IBM entered the PC market
• Unclear vision about selling OS licenses, which would put the company in competition with Windows operating system
• Large number of failed products (such as Newton PDA) and few successful ones (such as PowerBook)
• Products not unique in the market
• Confusion and uncertainty among Apple consumers, resulting from this strategy

Design Thinking to Fuel Innovation

Apple is one of the leading companies in the field of innovation and this couldn’t have happened without the company adopting design thinking . Design thinking is a solution-oriented process that is used to achieve innovation with considerations about the consumer at the heart of all development stages. Tim Brown, president and CEO of IDEO, defines design thinking as follows: “ 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. ”

“Most people make the mistake of thinking design is what it looks like. People think it’s this veneer — that the designers are handed this box and told, ‘Make it look good!’ That’s not what we think design is. It’s not just what it looks like and feels like. Design is how it works.” — Steve Jobs

In previous design thinking articles, we explored the different models of design thinking including the IDEO model, d.school model, and IBM design thinking  model. Most of these models share the target of achieving innovation through three main factors:

User Desirability . The product should satisfy the consumer’s needs by solving everyday problems through a user-centered process. This can be achieved through a deep understanding of the user and through an empathic design process, which can only be achieved by putting ourselves in the shoes of our consumers (using tools such as an empathic persona map ).

Market Viability . Successful products require an integrated marketing strategy that identifies the target segment and builds the product brand in accordance with this target segment. Tools such as the business model canvas can help our understanding of the project and create a business strategy for it. Also, tools such as the SWOT analysis allows us to understand the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats of the specified product.

Technology Possibility . Technology provides state-of-art tools for designers to innovate and build products that meet today’s needs. Technology should be adopted through the development process, including the prototyping stage where a visual presentation of the product is made to the team.

Think Different!

After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997 (upon Apple’s acquisition NeXT), he started to apply the design thinking characteristics discussed above, which reflected his vision for Apple products. The vision discussed below was used to form Apple’s strategy from 1997 until today. Steve Jobs applied design thinking by focusing on:

• People’s needs and desires, rather than only the needs of the business
• Building empathy by helping people to love Apple products
• The design rather than the engineering work; designers consider both the form and the function of the product
• Building simple yet user-friendly products rather than complex hard-to-use products

The vision characterized above can be clearly identified in modern Apple products. Although other competitors focus on the features and product capabilities, Apple focuses on a holistic user experience.  For example, the iMac is renowned for being quiet, having a quick wake-up, better sound, and a high-quality display. This vision was formed in Apple’s development strategy that includes:

Excellence in Execution

In this part, Steve tended to improve the execution process by closing 2 divisions, eliminating 70% of the new products and focusing on the higher potential products, reducing the product lines from 15 to just 3, and shutting facilities to move manufacturing outside the company. Apple also launched a website for direct sale of its products and started to take an interest in materials and how products are manufactured within a consumer-driven culture.

Platform Strategy

Apple streamlined their product portfolio to a family of products that can be produced  much more quickly while keeping the existing design elements. Also, the company targeted product that require less repair and maintenance.

Iterative Customer Involvement

The consumer experience should be integrated into the design and development stages through participating in usability testing. Also, the design for interfaces should focus on the user experience.

Beautiful Products

In addition to the function of the product, the form should beautiful, which can be achieved through continuous innovation and development. Apple also focused on the materials and manufacturing process and took a bold approach to trying new ideas rather than sticking with the ordinary design forms.

Apple’s history with innovation provides a clear lesson about how design and innovation can turn company failure to market success and a leading position in a competitive market. Design thinking helped Apple to innovate while placing their consumers at the heart of the process. The period that Steve Jobs was absent from Apple demonstrates that copying others and lacking a clear innovation strategy can lead companies directly from success to failure. On the other hand, innovation can definitely help build a successful business.

Dr Rafiq Elmansy

I'm an academic, author and design thinker, currently teaching design at the University of Leeds with a research focus on design thinking, design for health, interaction design and design for behaviour change. I developed and taught design programmes at Wrexham Glyndwr University, Northumbria University and The American University in Cairo. Additionally, I'm a published book author and founder of Designorate.com. I am a fellow for the Higher Education Academy (HEA), the Royal Society of Arts (FRSA), and an Adobe Education Leader. I write Adobe certification exams with Pearson Certiport. My design experience involves 20 years working with clients such as the UN, World Bank, Adobe, and Schneider. I worked with the Adobe team in developing many Adobe applications for more than 12 years.

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Design Thinking in Practice: 3 Case Studies

This collection of case studies was first published on the Of Course Global website.

Learn more about Design Thinking in this free Insight Platforms webinar ; or enrol in the Design Thinking Masterclass .

1. How might an international human rights organisation drive its followers to act for unity on a global scale?

The context

Global Citizen needed to catalyze engagement from its followers in anticipation of its 2017 annual festival.

They sought a viral global movement that made people around the world take action on behalf of their mission in a meaningful, inclusive and compelling way. Specifically, they sought assistance in developing the campaign concept, campaign messaging, and engagement strategy.

The process

Of Course engaged in a series of ideation workshops with Global Citizen and two time Grammy Award nominee artist J.Views, whose work focused on movement and togetherness.

Through iterations and brainstorming, we honed in on the concept of immigration and banned travel, sparked by the J.Views lyric “we moved like we were unafraid”.

With this inspiration, we crafted a campaign called #wemove that asks followers to enter public spaces, film a video of them moving ‘like they were unafraid’, and share their video on social media.

#WeMove is about creating a global movement committed to social change, standing together for freedom, for justice, for all!

The transformation

Of Course and Global Citizen selected the best videos submitted and developed a final video that was seen by 1 million people at the annual festival. In total, nearly a thousand people from over 35 countries engaged in the campaign.

Beyond the campaign itself, at a difficult and troubling time,  this movement gave people an opportunity to show that they were not scared: of each other, to share their voices, or to take a stand.

2. How might a global pharmaceutical company truly connect with doctors when launching a new medicine?  

Having just developed a groundbreaking drug for leukaemia, Pfizer needed a strategy to launch the medicine at a major industry trade show.

Given the drug’s newness, Pfizer’s critical goal was to engage and educate doctors on its potential, and convert them into ambassadors on its value for patients. Any strategy had to be grounded in doctors’ needs and interests.

Of Course began by reframing the problem at hand. To create a truly doctor-centric launch, Pfizer needed its marketing, commercial and medical sales teams – previously siloed – to work together.

We created interdisciplinary teams and designed customised sessions for those teams to identify needs, ideate ways to address those needs, and decide on viable and innovative ideas to launch. In subsequent sessions, ideas were prototyped and tested with real users.

Transformation

Of Course and Pfizer’s teams devised three transformational ideas for the launch, which were subsequently built out by Pfizer.

The interdisciplinary makeup of the teams had a critical impact on the initiative; the medical sales team’s involvement in particular meant that the strategies were rooted in doctors and their needs. Furthermore, the idea validation process was accelerated, savings months of back and forth.

3. How might a leading bank place human needs at the centre of its work?

Capital One’s CEO felt urgency that all of its employees be trained on the fundamentals of human centred-design.

While the leading bank excelled at technology and business solutions, they wanted to bring the voice and needs of the customer more front and centre into their operations.  Their guiding objective was to transform from a provider of financial services to an institution built around improving the lives of others.

Of Course facilitators delivered a series of three-day workshops, tailored to Capital One’s business model and customer segments. Participants gained understanding and appreciation of the core principles underlying human-centered design: empathy building, ideating and rapid prototyping.

They were brought through interactive exercises that forced them to challenge assumptions and develop problem-solving approaches rooted in human needs. Participants were then tasked to apply what they learned by designing solutions for real problems faced by their banking customers.

Of Course also ran “train-the-trainer” sessions so that Capital One felt empowered and capable of building human-design skills among teams after the engagement.

The company-wide training initiative was so successful that Capital One decided to create an internal group dedicated to human-centred service design.

Capital One leaders cited a real behaviour change across the company and renewed focus on customer needs. In total, Of Course trained over 350 employees over the course of 6 months.

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A Case Study—Applying a Design Thinking Process and User Experience Goals in Developing Solutions for a Smart Construction Site

• Conference paper
• First Online: 16 June 2022
• Cite this conference paper

• Susanna Aromaa 10 ,
• Inka Lappalainen 10 ,
• Eija Kaasinen 10 &
• Janne Öfversten 11  

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNCS,volume 13323))

Included in the following conference series:

• International Conference on Human-Computer Interaction

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Digitalization is increasing in the construction industry. However, there are still challenges that may delay its progress, such as the heterogeneity in construction sites, complexity in its environment and the uniqueness of each construction project. To smoothen this progress, it is important to apply human-centric approaches when designing digitalization. The goal of this study was to understand how user experience (UX) goals could be utilized during the design thinking (DT) process when developing digital solutions to be used in a construction site. A case study approach was applied in studying this phenomenon. Based on the case study, it was seen that DT supports co-innovation in complex development projects. However, DT is not always one iterative process but can be more complex and include many parallel DT processes. The integration of UX goals to the DT process could provide a more systematic view to the development process and help to avoid a disconnection of parallel DT processes. The findings of this study can be used as guidance when applying UX goals during the DT process in complex project contexts.

• User experience goals
• Design thinking
• Construction

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Acknowledgments

The work was carried out in the KEKO project, funded by Business Finland and the project partners KONE, Nokia, YIT, Caverion, Halton, Netox, and VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd. The authors would like to thank the interviewees for participating in the study and the whole project group.

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VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland Ltd., P.O. Box 1000, 02044, VTT, Finland

Susanna Aromaa, Inka Lappalainen & Eija Kaasinen

KONE Oyj, Keilasatama 3, P.O. Box 7, 02150, Espoo, Finland

Janne Öfversten

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Correspondence to Susanna Aromaa .

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Aromaa, S., Lappalainen, I., Kaasinen, E., Öfversten, J. (2022). A Case Study—Applying a Design Thinking Process and User Experience Goals in Developing Solutions for a Smart Construction Site. In: Soares, M.M., Rosenzweig, E., Marcus, A. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability: Design Thinking and Practice in Contemporary and Emerging Technologies. HCII 2022. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 13323. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05906-3_8

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-05906-3_8

Published : 16 June 2022

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