In an age when innovation is key to business success and growth, you’ve likely come across the term “design thinking.” Perhaps you’ve heard it mentioned by a senior leader as something that needs to be utilized more, or maybe you’ve seen it on a prospective employee's resume.
While design thinking is an ideology based on designers’ workflows for mapping out stages of design, its purpose is to provide all professionals with a standardized innovation process to develop creative solutions to problems—design-related or not.
Why is design thinking needed? Innovation is defined as a product, process, service, or business model featuring two critical characteristics: novel and useful. Yet, there’s no use in creating something new and novel if people won’t use it. Design thinking offers innovation the upgrade it needs to inspire meaningful and impactful solutions.
But what is design thinking, and how does it benefit working professionals?
Design thinking is a mindset and approach to problem-solving and innovation anchored around human-centered design. While it can be traced back centuries—and perhaps even longer—it gained traction in the modern business world after Tim Brown, CEO and president of design company IDEO, published an article about it in the Harvard Business Review.
Design thinking is different from other innovation and ideation processes in that it’s solution-based and user-centric rather than problem-based. This means it focuses on the solution to a problem instead of the problem itself.
For example, if a team is struggling with transitioning to remote work, the design thinking methodology encourages them to consider how to increase employee engagement rather than focus on the problem (decreasing productivity).
The essence of design thinking is human-centric and user-specific. It’s about the person behind the problem and solution, and requires asking questions such as “Who will be using this product?” and “How will this solution impact the user?”
The first, and arguably most important, step of design thinking is building empathy with users. By understanding the person affected by a problem, you can find a more impactful solution. On top of empathy, design thinking is centered on observing product interaction, drawing conclusions based on research, and ensuring the user remains the focus of the final implementation.
So, what does design thinking entail? There are many models of design thinking that range from three to seven steps.
In the online course Design Thinking and Innovation, Harvard Business School Dean Srikant Datar leverages a four-phase innovation framework. The phases venture from concrete to abstract thinking and back again as the process loops, reverses, and repeats. This is an important balance because abstract thinking increases the likelihood that an idea will be novel. It’s essential, however, to anchor abstract ideas in concrete thinking to ensure the solution is valid and useful.
Here are the four phases for effective innovation and, by extension, design thinking.
The first phase is about narrowing down the focus of the design thinking process. It involves identifying the problem statement to come up with the best outcome. This is done through observation and taking the time to determine the problem and the roadblocks that prevented a solution in the past.
Various tools and frameworks are available—and often needed—to make concrete observations about users and facts gathered through research. Regardless of which tools are implemented, the key is to observe without assumptions or biased expectations.
Once findings from your observations are collected, the next step is to shape insights by framing those observations. This is where you can venture into the abstract by reframing the problem in the form of a statement or question.
Once the problem statement or question has been solidified—not finalized—the next step is ideation. You can use a tool such as systematic inventive thinking (SIT) in this stage, which is useful for creating an innovative process that can be replicated in the future.
The goal is to ultimately overcome cognitive fixedness and devise new and innovative ideas that solve the problems you identified. Continue to actively avoid assumptions and keep the user at the forefront of your mind during ideation sessions.
The third phase involves developing concepts by critiquing a range of possible solutions. This includes multiple rounds of prototyping, testing, and experimenting to answer critical questions about a concept’s viability.
Remember: This step isn’t about perfection, but rather, experimenting with different ideas and seeing which parts work and which don’t.
The fourth and final phase, implementation, is when the entire process comes together. As an extension of the develop phase, implementation starts with testing, reflecting on results, reiterating, and testing again. This may require going back to a prior phase to iterate and refine until you find a successful solution. Such an approach is recommended because design thinking is often a nonlinear, iterative process.
In this phase, don’t forget to share results with stakeholders and reflect on the innovation management strategies implemented during the design thinking process. Learning from experience is an innovation process and design thinking project all its own.
Check out the video about the design thinking process below, and subscribe to our YouTube channel for more explainer content!
The main value of design thinking is that it offers a defined process for innovation. While trial and error is a good way to test and experiment what works and what doesn’t, it’s often time-consuming, expensive, and ultimately ineffective. On the other hand, following the concrete steps of design thinking is an efficient way to develop new, innovative solutions.
On top of a clear, defined process that enables strategic innovation, design thinking can have immensely positive outcomes for your career—in terms of both advancement and salary.
As of December 2021, the most common occupations requiring design thinking skills were:
In addition, jobs that require design thinking statistically have higher salaries. Take a marketing manager position, for example. The median annual salary is $107,900. Marketing manager job postings that require design thinking skills, however, have a median annual salary of $133,900—a 24 percent increase.
Overall, businesses are looking for talent with design thinking skills. As of November 2021, there were 29,648 job postings in the United States advertising design thinking as a necessary skill—a 153 percent increase from November 2020, and a 637 percent increase from November 2017.
As businesses continue to recognize the need for design thinking and innovation, they’ll likely create more demand for employees with those skills.
Design thinking is an extension of innovation that allows you to design solutions for end users with a single problem statement in mind. It not only imparts valuable skills but can help advance your career.
It’s also a collaborative endeavor that can only be mastered through practice with peers. As Datar says in the introduction to Design Thinking and Innovation: “Just as with learning how to swim, the best way to practice is to jump in and try.”
If you want to learn design thinking, take an active role in your education. Start polls, problem-solving exercises, and debates with peers to get a taste of the process. It’s also important to seek out diverse viewpoints to prepare yourself for the business world.
In addition, if you’re considering adding design thinking to your skill set, think about your goals and why you want to learn about it. What else might you need to be successful?
You might consider developing your communication, innovation, leadership, research, and management skills, as those are often listed alongside design thinking in job postings and professional profiles.
You may also notice skills like agile methodology, user experience, and prototyping in job postings, along with non-design skills, such as product management, strategic planning, and new product development.
There are many ways to approach problem-solving and innovation. Design thinking is just one of them. While it’s beneficial to learn how others have approached problems and evaluate if you have the same tools at your disposal, it can be more important to chart your own course to deliver what users and customers truly need.
You can also pursue an online course or workshop that dives deeper into design thinking methodology. This can be a practical path if you want to improve your design thinking skills or require a more collaborative environment.
Are you ready to develop your design thinking skills? Explore our online course Design Thinking and Innovation to discover how to leverage fundamental design thinking principles and innovative problem-solving tools to address business challenges.
Esther Han is a marketing professional and contributing writer for Harvard Business School Online. She has a passion for design, photography, and the written word. One of her bucket list items is to travel to every country in the world; she's been to 40 so far.
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