What is the design thinking process in UX design?

Design thinking is an extremely useful process when you want to tackle complex problems that are poorly defined or unknown. This design methodology provides a solution-based approach to solving problems, by understanding the human needs involved.

Understanding the five stages of design thinking will empower anyone to apply these methods to solve complex problems — regardless of the scale, industry, or context of the issue.

I choose to focus on the five-stage design thinking model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school) because they are the leaders when it comes to teaching design thinking. Who better to take inspiration and learn from?

The following information comes from this fantastic article on design thinking: 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process*.

*It’s important to note throughout that the five stages are not always sequential. They do not have to follow any specific order and they can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively — more on that later!

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The five stages of design thinking, according to d.school, are: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test.

1. Empathize

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

The first stage of the design thinking process is to gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve.

This stage requires you to consult experts to find out more about the area of concern. You will gain these insights as you observe, engage and empathize with people to understand their experiences and motivations.

Empathy is crucial to human-centered design processes and allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world to gain insights into users and their needs.

2. Define (the Problem)

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

During the Define stage, all the information collected during the empathize stage is gathered.

This is where you’ll analyze the observations and synthesize them to define the core problems the team has identified up to this point.

You should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-centered manner.

For example, you shouldn’t define the problem as a personal wish or a need of a company:

• “We need to increase our food-product market share among teenage girls by 5%.”

It’d be much better for you to define the problem in a more holistic way, and include the reasons behind the approach. Like this:

• “Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in order to have more energy, be healthy and grow.”

The subject is now well-defined — the generic term “girls” has been changed to “teenage girls” which, while still broad enough, is a more specific segment. “Food” is also replaced with “nutritious food” which is more meaningful. Finally, a mission is incorporated — to help the teenage girls “have more energy, be healthy and grow”.

Added a paragraph below to explain “this”

3. Ideate

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

In the third stage of the process, designers start to generate ideas.

By now, you will have grown to understand your users and their needs and will have a human-centered problem statement.

With this solid background, the team members can start to think outside the box to identify new solutions to the problem statement, and you can start to look for alternative ways to view the problem.

There are hundreds of ideation techniques such as Brainstorm, Brainwriting, Worst Possible Idea, and SCAMPER. The Interaction Design Foundation actually has some downloadable templates on ideation techniques which are free for you to use. I’ve found them incredibly useful in ideation sessions I’ve been part of.

4. Prototype

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Now, with all the gathered information, the design team is able to produce inexpensive prototypes or scaled down versions of the key ideas generated within the ideation session.

These prototypes may be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the design team.

This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes and are investigated one by one.

This will result in them either being accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences.

By the end of this stage, the design team will have a better idea of the constraints and the problems inherent to the products that are present. It’ll also provide a clearer view of how real users would behave, think and feel when they interact with the end product.

5. Test

Author/Copyright holder: Teo Yu Siang and Interaction Design Foundation. Copyright licence: CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

In the test stage, designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototype phase.

This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model. As this is an iterative process, the results generated during the test phase are often used to redefine one or more problems, and you may find you loop back to the ideation phase based on this.

These results also provide a way to understand the users, conditions of use, and how people think, behave, and feel about the solution.

Although this is final phase, it may not be the end of the process. Even at this stage, alterations and refinements are made in order to rule out problem solutions and acquire a deeper comprehension of the product and its users as possible.

The Non-Linear Nature of Design Thinking

This may be a direct and linear outline of the design thinking process. Where one stage seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at the test phase.

However, in practice, the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion.

For example:

• Different groups within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently.
• The designers may collect information and prototype during the entire project to be able to bring their ideas to life and visualize the problem solutions.
• Results from the test phase may reveal some insights about users, which in turn may lead to another brainstorming session (ideate) or the development of new prototypes (prototype).

I hope all of the above has helped you to understand the design thinking process in a little more detail. I recommend you check out the original article for more information, and even explore what this online course Design Thinking: The Beginner’s Guide could offer you.

Design thinking is pretty popular these days, reading more and investigating about it is great way to supercharge your skills and learn how to apply the methodology to any problem you come across.