Design Not Thinking: the only design process you will ever need

A comprehensive guide on how to Design without wasting your brain.

Maiane Gabriele

Published in

You don’t know this meme

5 min readMay 26, 2023

A dumb monkey in from the a image that looks just like the common representation of the Design Thinking process.

You’ve probably heard about Design Thinking.

If you didn’t, don’t worry. Actually, let’s start with it.

The Origin of Design Thinking

Since the 60s people used to apply scientific methodology and processes as a way to understand Design. But it was in 1969 that the mess really started.

Herbert A. Simon, scientist and Nobel prize winner was the first one to mention design as a way of thinking.

Gif of a man with his mind blowing. — Gif from Giphy.

Basically, they were just starting to relate two non-senses:

Thinking; and,
Design.

Insane! Can you imagine thinking as a Designer?

Actually, if I wanted to think I would be a developer.

After that, things just got crazier. It’s common sense that IDEO was one of the big responsibles for this craziness. In 1991, they helped to bring terminology, steps, and processes to Design Thinking. This was essential as a way to make it popular.

What the Hell is Design Thinking?

Nowadays, Design Thinking is seen as a process or a framework — also as a god. Actually, Let me Google That for You (really, click here).

As you can see from our quick research, IT HAS A LOT OF VARIATIONS. But, most of the time there are several patterns.

Diverse images showcasing the Design Thinking process, double diamond and more. — Printscreen of Google Images after searching for “Design Thinking”.

In a short, this is Design Thinking:

Problem Hypothesis: you have a problem.
Explore the Problem: you explore to check if there are other problems.
Define your problem: you define what is the REAL problem.
Ideation: you explore as many ideas as you can.
Prototype: you define the best solution for the problem and prototype it.
Test: you test the solution and start finding new problems.

Gif showcasing the regular design thinking process. — Regular Design Thinking Process. Created by the author.

You may have a few questions by now:

What is a problem hypothesis?
How am I going to explore a problem?
What if I find another problem?
How can I explore ideas?
Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

An egg with a mustache floating over the water. — Gif from Giphy.

The Design Not Thinking!

But don’t worry about these questions, you don’t need to think anymore.

Thinking is underrated. Artificial intelligence can do that for us.

And this is where the DESIGN NOT THINKING shines. ✨

People knew thinking would be too much, so they started developing Design Not Thinking. A variation of the original version that won’t waste your brain.

What is wonderful about it is that you can just follow — blindly — the steps, without being critical.

Actually, if you find yourself thinking too much, take a deep breath and go to Tiktok for a while.

How to use Design Not Thinking

With Design Not Thinking you can solve ANY PROBLEM in your life by following these steps:

1. Problem Hypothesis

Write something you think is a problem in up to 80 characters.

E.g.: The chicken is too big to come before the egg.

2. Explore the problem

Follow (don’t ask) these steps:

Step 1. Qualitative Research

Ask your mother/parent or any other person that is really close to you if your problem is a problem.

Try to be as biased as you can (E.g.: “Hey, Daddy, do you think that chickens are big compared to a tiny egg?”)
Important! If you were not biased enough you won’t be able to finish.

Step 2. Quantitative Research

As a way to make sure your Daddy isn’t the only one who agrees with it, create a form in any digital platform (aka Google Forms).

Add to the form that very same question you asked your Daddy (not mandatory).
Add another field, long text format, and ask a very complicated — and mandatory — question, so that the less amount of people as possible will finish your form. (E.g.: “What do you think is the philosophical relationship between the chicken and the egg?”)
Ask for all the sensitive data you can think of, like address, social ID, e-mail, and more (all mandatory).

3. Define your problem

This step is really important!

If you followed the exact steps outlined above just a few people have finished your form. The beauty of it is that you now know for sure that your Problem Hypothesis will be the problem you have to solve.

Because your Daddy didn’t disagree with you, and other people didn’t finish the form. If they did, since the question is biased they have also agreed with you!

Can you see the benefits of this methodology already?

4. Explore ideas

Step 1. Persona

Create a persona of your daddy (or whoever you interviewed on step two).

This may seem difficult, but just add their worst picture and some random graphics, like, from 1 to 10, how much they like chickens or eggs.

Step 2. Wireframes

Just draw some rectangles like they were a screen.

Note: Depending on your subject you may change the shape. Since we are talking about eggs I suggest trying oval shapes.

5. Prototype

Search for “Eggs and Chicken Screen” (or something related to your problem) on Google and copy the first result. Try to change the typography to Comic Sans to make it different.

6. Test

Show your interface to the person you interviewed in step two.

Make sure to show it super fast so they can’t really see it.

After that ask: “Did you like it?”.

Important: If they say no, just ignore them and don’t mention you did any tests when you present your work.

A gif showcasing the Design Not Thinking process and how genious you are by following this process. — Design Not Thinking Process. Created by the author.

That’s a wrap!

This is Juan, he is really glad, because since people created Design Not Thinking he doesn’t need to ‘thinking’ anymore. Hope you can be our next Juan. 🙊