The Complete
Design Thinking
Process

The Design Thinking process helps teams use work through “wicked” problems and turn opportunities into innovations. When teams apply the Design Thinking process, they work through a series of steps and activities toward a solution that is desirable, feasible and viable — also known as the Three Lenses of Human-Centered Design.

Given the iterative nature of design, the Design Thinking process can be considered more of a playbook than a predefined agenda. When teams need to learn more about their users, they turn to Empathy. When it’s time to test models, they pivot to Prototype. Often, Test results can reframe the opportunity, resulting in fresh rounds of Ideation and Definition.

Unlike methods made for manufacturing or software development, the Design Thinking Process is designed for everybody. In fact, the Design Thinking process becomes more efficient as more skill sets are added to the team. This is because Design Thinking leans heavily on empathy and divergence, which both benefit from increased perspectives.

In practice, the most effective Design Thinking teams usually include 6 – 12 core members with diverse strategic and technical profiles. Some participants may be designers, but most will be experts and leaders in connected disciplines such as strategy, technology or marketing. Users are also common participants on the Design Thinking teams, as are other stakeholders or community members.

When building a Design Thinking team, consider the range of skills you need in order to make effective decisions during the workshop itself. This usually means having a mix of strategic and technical experts on-hand. In practice, teams with a mixture of “T-profiles” are most effective — that is, subject matter experts with a range of experiences.

While anyone can participate in Design Thinking, coaching a team through the process does take practice. Facilitating the Design Thinking process typically entails coordinating research efforts and running multi-day workshops.

According to a study published by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design [1], the three most active facilitators of Design Thinking in organizations are:

• Research & Development Leads
• Design Thinking Consultants
• Marketing Leads

The Design Thinking framework provides a convenient mental model of the decision making process. It breaks the innovation process into simple steps, and helps teams know where to focus and when.

The framework was pioneered by John Arnold, an MIT professor who described an early version as: Question, Observe, Associate and Predict. [2]

Arnold encouraged the iteration of his approach, and the Design Thinking framework has since been widely adapted to suit diverse organizations, technologies and needs.

The Double Diamond model is one of the most influential models of the Design Thinking framework. It was published by the British Design Council in the early 2000s, and helped crystallize underlying concepts for the working world. Specifically, the Double Diamond model depicts how the two phases of divergent and convergent thinking work together to develop ideas. Other common cyclical Design Thinking models include those published by Nielsen Norman Group and IDEO.

Staged frameworks are designed to help organizations integrate the iterative design process. The Integrated Design Thinking framework at Konrad is divided into three major stages containing a total of seven steps.

The following sections describe the Stages and Steps of the Design Thinking process, including what their objectives and key activities.

There are three primary stages of the Design Thinking process: Discover, Design, Deliver. Referred to as the 3 “Ds”, stages help organizations adopt Design Thinking into their existing processes. Together, the three stages provide a convenient way to coordinate complex projects containing iterative steps.

Read how Gillette used Design Thinking to develop the Gillette Guard: A made-for-India experience for 400-million people.

Instead of trying to jump from mountains of research data straight to ideas, the Design Thinking steps help unpack the black box of creativity, and provide clear objectives for collaboration. Each step of the Design Thinking process works through a handful of core activities, completed with an array of tools.

Design Thinking steps begin with Research, end with Implement, and traverse an iterative 5-step core of Empathy, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. This core set of 5 steps has been adopted by diverse industries and is championed by leading UX design communities including the Interaction Design Foundation.

Build the Foundation. Research helps move from sensing an opportunity, to seeing it in the context. It requires carefully studying the opportunity from every direction, and provides the foundation cross-functional teams need to work together effectively. Without a holistic view of the opportunity, teams will struggle to find feasible solutions that satisfy their innovation goals.

Become your Users. The first step of the Design stage, Empathy is where teams immerse themselves in the user experience and challenge their own assumptions. Often referred to as ethnography, the Empathy step studies people in the context of their culture and environment. Depending on the scale and complexity of the opportunity, the Empathy step can take just a few days or up to several months, as was the case in the Gillette Guard example above.

Before drafting jumping into Empathy activities, teams must be clear who their primary users are. For a company like AirBnB, that means considering both people who rent apartments, and the people with apartments to rent. These two groups have very different needs, and should be considered separately to avoid compromising designs. When drafting user personas, these groups would be further divided based on shared travel interests, demographics, or other criteria.

Make choices. The Define step helps teams frame insights from Research and Empathy steps into a compass for their collaboration. During Define, teams validate, prioritize and align on next moves using guided activities in Design Thinking workshops. Without the Design Thinking process, aligning a cross functional team on human-centered opportunities would be very difficult, if not impossible. By the end of the Define step, ideas for solutions will begin to appear everywhere.

Create choices. Ideate is where the magic of Design Thinking happens. Following weeks of research and immersion in the user experience, teams will begin seeing human-centered solutions everywhere they look. Core activities in the Ideate step help structure brainstorms and inspire new perspectives with creative tools like Brainwriting and SCAMPER. The Ideate step is usually revisited several times during the design thinking process as teams reframe opportunities and refine their solutions.

Create context. The Prototype step puts ideas in context, allowing teams to make performance-based design decisions before any big commitments are made. Prototyping begins with low-resolution sketches that can be quickly created and compared, adding resolution as more is learned. In practice, the best prototypes provide just enough context to keep users focused on the aspects you want to learn about.

Measure outcomes. The Test step in Design Thinking Test helps teams gather valuable feedback from users and other stakeholders. This step works hand-in-hand with Prototyping to inspire fresh ideas and refine working solutions. And just like with prototyping, the fidelity of the test should fit the situation — while “launch and learn” may be the best test for some projects, others have far lower risk tolerance.

Make reality. Implement is the final step of the Design Thinking process, and the first step of full-scale development. Here, teams map out how to integrate their proven prototype with the current landscape they explored during Research, optimizing as needed along the way. If you’re interested in learning more about what end-to-end design thinking consultants can offer, contact us.

Design Thinking tools help teams combine perspectives and shape ideas. Each tool supports specific steps of the design thinking process, and comes in several flavors. The following section introduces the most popular Design Thinking tools, with additional links to more detailed resources.

Empathy maps help organize and compare emotional insights about your users. They are typically divided into six parts to create a holistic view of a person’s experience and needs: Think + Feel, Say + Do, See, Hear, Pain and Gain

While not a requirement of all Design Thinking projects, empathy maps are an excellent source of insight most often used to build user personas, brainstorm user stories and map user journeys.

1. Divide a whiteboard or sheet of paper into the six sections above — preferably right after a user interview ends
2. Arrange your notes and verbatims around the canvas
3. Review interview recordings to fill in any gaps and dig deeper
4. Compare notes with other interviewers and look to build on one another’s observations
5. Share your empathy map with the broader team and align on the major Pains and Gains

Note: If you are working alone or in small groups, waiting to complete the pains and gains sections as a team can help create better ideas and alignment.

A user persona is a fictitious character profile that embodies one segment of your potential audience. They contain detailed descriptions on their background (age, career, education), behaviors (patterns, interests), and goals.

User personas are created based on observations from a variety of user surveys, interviews and analytics. As a critical piece of the Design Thinking process, user personas help teams focus all their downstream problem-solving efforts.

1. Think about a specific user role or goal you want to support
2. Name your persona
3. Fill out their personal details based on your observations of similar users
4. Write a brief description about their current role and responsibilities as they pertain to your project
5. List 4-5 relevant behaviors or patterns they have using the insights gathered in an empathy map, interview for empathy or other Design Thinking research tool
6. Add a photo or mood board that captures their personality

Note: Avoid making more user personas than your team can remember in detail at once. Working with 3-6 user personas is usually best. Also consider scheduling quarterly team reviews of all your active user personas. This has the dual-benefit of keeping your users top of mind and your personas up to date.

User journey maps are a powerful visualization technique. They are built in small teams using inputs from ethnographic research, empathy and ideation activities.

Common elements of user journey maps include basic details about the user persona, a timeline from start to finish, the user’s thoughts and emotions at each key moment, and significant opportunities to improve the experience.

1. Select one of your user personas
2. Fill in basic details about the scenario
3. Divide the journey into overarching phases
4. Subdivide each phase into key moments
5. Overlay emotions and quotes from interviews and empathy maps
6. Identify user needs and opportunities to exceed expectations
7. Discuss your journey map with the full team and iterate until complete

Note: Mapping your user’s entire journey – not just when they interact with you – is a great source for inspiration. You can upgrade a user journey to a service blueprint by connecting KPIs and organizational processes.

User stories help teams align on high-priority opportunities to improve the user experience. They are formatted as a single sentence that answers 3 W-H questions: WHO is the user, WHAT do they want, and WHY.

User stories are often created during brainstorming activities and discussed as a team using tools like a cluster matrix. User stories are common in Agile methodologies, and can be grouped together to form epics and themes.

1. Grab post its or open your user stories template
2. Complete the following sentence with one of your user personas in mind:
   • As a [person in a specific role]
   • I want [to perform a specific action]
   • So that [I can achieve a specific goal]
3. Write as many stories about your different users as you can
4. Review user stories as a team

Note: Defining what needs to happen to “complete” the story can add more clarity for designers downstream. This is called the “acceptance criteria”.

SCAMPER is a brainstorming activity for breaking through to unexpected ideas. The word is an acronym for seven words that serve as cognitive prompts to help push thinking “outside the box”. SCAMPER stands for: Substitute, Combine, Adapt, Modify, Put to another use, Eliminate and Revers

1. Start with a solution you want to improve
2. Answer probing questions labelled under each letter
3. Generate as many ideas as possible
4. Move to the next letter if you get stuck

Note: Assigning one letter per person and rotating every 2-3 minutes can push ideas even farther.

The statement of opportunity, also called a problem statement, is a simple tool for aligning teams. They answer the WHO, WHAT and WHY of your project in a single line, and are similar to user stories but with a different focus.

Statement of opportunity is usually developed early in a Design Thinking workshop and revisited throughout the process.

1. Grab post its or open your statement of opportunity template
2. Write down what you believe the project’s strategic opportunity to be
3. Share your statements with the team
4. Align on a single statement of opportunity

Note: It is more helpful to focus on writing exactly what you feel the statement should be, instead of generating a pile of half-thought ideas

Gallery walks are an engaging way to share detailed results discovered during the Research or Empathy steps. They are intended to replicate the thoughtful experience of browsing in an art gallery, and participants are given worksheets or encouraged to record what stood out or surprised them.

Gallery walks are most often used to pressure test working user personas, with one large poster dedicated to visualizing each user type.

1. Create a “canvas” for each user persona
2. Hang your canvases around the room
3. Invite the full team come and browse
4. Provide a worksheet to focus discussion
5. Discuss the show and validate findings

Note: Gallery walks are best when stakeholders can actually walk. Use large posters, big pictures and fat markers. In addition, rules like no talking and changing stations at set intervals makes it easier to organize your thoughts.

Simply put, the Design Thinking process is a playbook that helps teams shape a field of opportunities into specific innovations. It breaks down the human-centered design process into a series of stages and steps, and guides complex collaborations with tools and activities.

Given the collaborative nature, most Design Thinking activities are completed during design workshops with the help of experienced facilitators. To learn more about putting the process into practice, see our guide How to Run a Design Thinking Workshop.