Design thinking is a way of problem solving, identifying needs and opportunities that is not linear! It could involve more than one team working simultaneously. It is a process that involves visiting and revisiting the following stages: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.
Empathizing means you take a person-centered design approach, that is thinking of who will benefit or who will be your target audience or user.
Defining means when you gather together all the information you have created and collected during the previous stage.
Ideate means you “think outside the box” and brainstorm. It is vital to get as many ideas or solutions as possible at the beginning of this phase.
Prototype stage means that an inexpensive or down sized versions of the product or solution is produced so you can try it out by sharing and testing within the team or other people outside the design team. This is a stage of experimentation and the aim is to find out the best way or solution for the problem/need/opportunity identified during the three stages before this one.
Test stage involves the testing of the prototype. At this phase it will be possible to make alterations and refinements to the design or solutions by its users.
The young students in the video below show this process. You can see how they managed to use design thinking to solve a real-life problem at their school! Watch and apply design thinking in your life. 🙂
Explore more on design thinking through this tool kit developed through an Erasmus+ project here:
Here is a direct link to the Tool Kit
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