5 Best Digital Tools and Resources for Design Thinking

One of the main ingredients that make Design Thinking so effective is collaboration. Whether working alone or collaboratively, it is extremely important to capture every single aspect of the workshop in the most effective ways.

To do so where utilize post-it notes, clips, posters, Legos, material samples and any other tool that allows us to iterate fast before moving on to the next idea.

After a lot of research, I discovered that there is no single design thinking tool or platform that is right for every project. You need to handpick every single tool from your arsenal when the time comes.

Although few things could ever replace the simplicity of post-it notes (I’ve come to the point that, when I ask people who they think invented Design thinking, they usually answer Post-It), today’s digital collaboration platforms are becoming a powerful way to quickly iterate even with remote teams.

Here, I’ve rounded up some of my favorite Digital Tools and resources for design thinking:

TIMETIMER ONLINE BY DESIGN THINKING COACH

I found this extremely handy online TimeTimer to display full-screen during Design Thinking workshops.

A Time Timer is a visual timer designed to “show” the passage of time through the use of a patented red disk that disappears as time elapses. TimeTimers are typically quite expensive, so having a digital version for free could be very helpful for many practitioners.

MURAL

MURAL is a visual collaboration workspace for modern teams. Based in the cloud, MURAL provides shared, digital whiteboards where teams visually explore complex challenges, facilitate design thinking methods, and organize Agile processes across any device.

A mural is a large, shared canvas for mapping content of all kinds. Think of it as a giant board or wall you can customize the way you want.

SMAPLY

In design projects all over the world, teams working in service design (or design thinking, experience design, UX, cx, etc.) often struggle with similar issues: What to do after a workshop? How to process workshop results? How to work with geographically dispersed teams? How to create professional deliverables with limited time and budget?

Smaply helps private and public organizations to successfully do design thinking workshops by …

• Developing software to efficiently use basic service design tools such as personas, (customer) journey maps, and stakeholder maps.
• Developing software to efficiently research customer experiences using mobile ethnography (ExperienceFellow).
• Offering free templates as well as ready-to-use template packs and other workshop materials.

PROTOTYPE ON PAPER

POP helps you transform your pen and paper ideas into an interactive iPhone or Android prototype.

Quickly snap your sketches and then link them together to simulate your app idea.

It even allows you to record feedback and test your idea. POP allows you to instantly get feedback on your ideas with user testing, commenting and collaboration tools.

MOLESKINE SMART WRITING SET

The high-end notebook vendor has packaged a ‘smart’ pen with a specially imprinted paper notebook that lets you transfer notes to a mobile device.

As a compromise between yesterday’s and today’s writing technologies, Moleskine recently introduced its Smart Writing Set, which includes the Pen+, a version of the Neo Smartpen N2, and a notebook designed to be used with the Pen+ (and which, according to Moleskine’s PR, “is purposefully designed with extended rounded edges to look like a tablet”). The Pen+ works with a mobile app to record everything you write in the notebook in digital format.

Everything then gets synced to Evernote or other Cloud Account. Magic.

Can you think of anything I missed? Let me know in the comments!