The 5 Phases of Design Thinking
Source: American Marketing Association
Analyzing the value of the design thinking process and solutions for marketers in better understanding your consumers
Design thinking is a process concerned with solving complex problems in a highly consumer-centric way. If you work in design or innovation in any capacity, you’ve probably heard of, and even leveraged, design thinking. At the very least, you’ve heard people talk about it so much that in some circles, it’s been relegated to buzz language with little meaning. But what is the real, honest value of design thinking, and in what contexts is it particularly useful?
What’s special (but not radical) about design thinking is that designers—and all creative people for that matter—have been using these methods of creative development intuitively since the beginning of time. Design thinking, in many ways, is simply an articulation and codification of the creative process that drives all human endeavors.
What’s special (and in fact radical) about design thinking is that it puts human beings first; the people we are ultimately solving problems for. In the current landscape of big data and depersonalization, this is a surprisingly radical act. If we decouple the discipline of design from the people it serves, it is nothing but a hollow aesthetic exercise.
Another way that design thinking is still a radical act is that it is rooted in questioning: It questions the problem, questions the assumptions and questions the implications. Consequently, design thinking is a powerful tool in tackling all kinds of challenges that are ill-defined or complex, by reframing the problem in human-centric ways.
