I Used Design Thinking To Reinvent My Career — Here’s Why It Worked

A former lawyer explains how the methodology led her to try out life as a pastry chef before getting a master’s in psychology.

By Paula Davis-Laack

In 2009, my law career stalled. I was burned out and ready to make a professional change, but I had no idea where to start or what my next step should be. Should I continue to practice law, just in a different setting or field? Or should I start my own business, and if so, doing what?

Design thinking is an innovation methodology–a series of steps for generating options, testing strategies, and getting feedback. Most of the time it’s meant to help you develop a product or process. But as I discovered, design thinking is also a great tool for getting unstuck from problems that may seem intractable–including when you hit a career plateau. Here’s how I used the process to carve out a new career path I didn’t even know existed, and why it helped me identify a new career path (and save lots of time, money, and frustration in the process).

Step 1: Observe

If you were going to design a new product, you’d first learn all about the end user to identify pain points and patterns of behavior. When it…