What Is Design Thinking, Really? (What Practitioners Say)

Introduction

For the past decade, design thinking has continued to gain popularity. There are countless courses, graphics, and articles on the topic all over the web (including our own article, video, and course.) As any trend, it can grow to have a life of its own.

Here at NN/g we embarked on a long-term research project to understand how design thinking affects the quality of the products produced and how practitioners incorporate design thinking in their design work. But, in order to estimate the impact of design thinking on our field, we need to first determine how UX and design professionals define design thinking.

Research Method

This research phase consisted of 71 in-person intercepts in Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, and North Carolina and 16 remote interviews, over the phone and via video conferencing. These 87 participants represented a diverse range of countries, industries, roles, and experience.

Intercepts consisted of two primary questions:

1. What do think of when you hear the phrase “design thinking”?
2. How would you define design thinking?

Interviews consisted of 10 questions, excluding demographic-related questions:

1. What are the first words that come to mind when I say “design thinking”?
2. Can you tell me more about [word they supplied in response to question 1]?
3. How would you define design thinking? Why?
4. What does it mean to practice design thinking?
5. What are the positive or negative effects of design thinking?
6. How does design thinking impact the following?

• Products and services
• Process
• Employees
• Clients/customers

7. Using this scale, what is your experience using design thinking?
8. Using this same scale, how successful has Design Thinking been in your experience?
9. What could have been better?
10. What is good about design thinking? What is bad about design thinking?

This article summarizes our high-level findings regarding respondents’ perceptions and mental models about design thinking. Follow-up articles will discuss findings related to specific tools and activities, benefits, criticisms, and strategic recommendations.

Most importantly, this research aims to uncover design thinking in an impartial, straightforward way. Our research is self-funded, which allows us to be unbiased by third-party interests and tell the truth, as we discover it in our empirical research with real users. We don’t have to follow UX fashion or trends, nor do we need to push clients toward a suboptimal proprietary or trademarked solution.

Design Thinking: Associations

Before asking participants to define design thinking, we sought to learn the words or concepts our respondents freely associated with design thinking. 

The number of words offered by the participants ranged from 0 to 7, with most participants providing 2 words. The average number of words per participant was 2.25; the median was 2. Some participants provided words that were not related to each other and, in some cases, even contradicted each other. While respondents’ responses ranged in structure, the majority of associations could be grouped within one of the following thematic categories:

• Characteristics described features of design thinking such as user-centered or iterative.
• Uses indicated general areas where design thinking can be applied (e.g., problem solving, strategy).
• Specific steps named stages within the design-thinking process (e.g., research, validate).
• Visuals included words describing either existing design-thinking visualizations (e.g., loop) or images associated with design-thinking practices (e.g., sticky notes).
• Institutions (or brands) described specific branded versions of design thinking that participants were either familiar with or that they had heard often mentioned in the same context as design thinking. This theme also included places (San Francisco, Finland) associated with design thinking.
• Interpretations included positive and negative words that reflected attitudes about design thinking (e.g., trendy, not useful).
• Perceived outcomes encompassed words such as options, ideas, and improvements describing how design thinking changed the state of the world or of a design.
• Uncategorized included words (e.g., consultancy) that did not fit into the above categories.

This word cloud highlights the most common responses; the most frequently mentioned words were process, iterative, collaboration, and design. (The size of the font is roughly proportional with the number of responses that mentioned that word.)

This table shows the words listed by our participants in each of the 7 main themes. We show how many free associates (out of the total number of words) fell in each category, how many different words were in each category, and the percentage of respondents who mentioned a word in that category. Scroll the table to the right to see more data.

These findings suggest that the majority of people (62% of our respondents) associate design thinking with characteristic-like attributes, possibly because such attributes are:

• Tangible: Characteristic-based language is the most basic way to teach and grasp an otherwise abstract concept, without the specific, often confusing design-thinking jargon.
• Consistent: All ‘branded’ definitions of design thinking (provided by varying institutions) include these kinds of descriptors (whereas they may otherwise preach conflicting language and value propositions).
• Popular: The most popular visual representations (e.g., via Google image search) depict design thinking as a “process” (which was the most common characteristic word in this category).

The characteristic category was also the least diverse: out of the total 66 words provided in this category, there were only 16 distinct words. That means that a lot of these words were supplied by more than one participant. Respondents often named these characteristics in pairs. Duplicative pairings included iterative and collaboration, process and design, divergent and convergent.

Other attribute categories were far less popular than the characteristics one. The runner up was the uses category, with 24% of the participants providing a word related to the use of design thinking. If we expanded this category to include organization-related words (crossdepartment and whole organization), this bucket would grow to 27%.

The interpretation theme was the most diverse, excluding the uncategorized group. Out of the 11 words falling under interpretation, only one (trendy) was offered by two participants. Whereas most of the words associated with the other themes reflected a neutral (debatably positive-leaning) attitude, the interpretation category carried clear positive or negative perceptions. Words in this category often came in pairs of two: trendy and buzzword, overrated and not useful.

The other themes received relatively few responses: less than 11% of the participants provided a word in any of these categories. 2% of the words were uncategorized.

Our own visualization of design thinking is a circle, to emphasize the iterative approach we recommend. This graphic is one of many that prominently show the process aspect of design thinking. The cumulative effect of such visuals influences how practitioners perceive the concept.

Design Thinking Definitions: Mental Models

We also asked participants to define design thinking in their own words. The majority of answers fell into one or several of the categories below.

1. Process

Several participants defined design thinking as a problem-solving process. Within this category, respondents often drew parallels to the creative process. For example, participants defined design thinking as “guiding a group of individuals through the creative process” and “a way of applying the creative process to traditional business problems and services.”

In other cases, this process-oriented definition was associated with traditional user- or human-centered theories, such as “an approach to problem forming and solving that is focused on who you are designing for” and “a process for thinking through a problem and looking at all the aspects of what influences something and someone.”

2. Mindset Shift

Some participants defined design thinking primarily as a mindset shift or “changing the way you think.”  The words associated with this mindset shift were “new, out of the box thinking” or “different way of working.” Unlike those who defined design thinking primarily as a process, participants who associated design thinking with a mindset shift referenced applying this type of thinking outside of work. “It’s not even just about work, but also life…it’s a way to observe and narrow things down that you can use in your day to day.”

3. Toolkit

The most complex and diverse group of definitions came from participants who viewed design thinking as a flexible, adaptable toolkit. These participants did not associate a specific process with design thinking, but rather viewed it as scaffolding to solve both organizational (often internal) and end-user (external, product-related) problems.

Definitions in this class often referenced how design thinking combines different processes, tools, and ways of thinking in order to handle a problem or project and “to dependably produce successful/meaningful/effective results for the business and user.”

We see these three ways of defining design thinking as a continuous range of perceptions and hypothesize that they mirror the amount of experience that a professional has with design thinking. As people become expert at design thinking, they change their understanding of it: from perceiving it as a prescribed process to a mindset and finally to a dynamic toolkit appropriate for approaching a wide variety of problems. Further research is needed to investigate this hypothesis.

Why Alignment Matters

One of the greatest strengths but also weaknesses of design thinking is that there is no single, widely used definition for it. This flexibility in meaning is beneficial because it encourages challenge, exploration, and inquiry, and allows people to morph the concept to their needs.

However, multiple ways of defining design thinking translate into friction, disagreement, and misunderstanding within teams and organizations. Ambiguity around what design thinking is, how it’s practiced, and its measurable effects lead to contradictory opinions, misinterpreted objectives, and unaligned outcomes.

Establishing a Shared Baseline

Regardless of your own perception of design thinking, it is important to have an educated understanding of how others define design thinking. As indicated above, design thinking can mean a variety of things to different people. When collaborating or sharing your own experiences (whether positive or negative), articulate your definition of design thinking: what does it mean in the context in which you are practicing, advocating, or criticizing?

Developing Empathy for Peers/Others 

Encountering resistance and frustration is common when introducing design thinking to a team or organization. Often times, however, this frustration is less about the practice as a whole. Rather, it is often tied to an assumption, perception, or past experience. If discussing or encouraging design thinking, understand the perspectives and current associations of your peers, before implementing change.

Increasing Your Likelihood of Adoption

Being aware of varied perspectives (or even just different jargon) will help you navigate feelings and existing mentalities, thus increasing your likelihood of adoption. Start by creating a shared definition of design thinking: what it is, as much as what it is not. This definition does not necessarily need to follow the industry norm — in the context of your organization, what do you want design thinking to contribute? The more tangible you can be, the better. Establish a shared visual, align on language, and agree on ideal outcomes.

Conclusion

Although there may be no single, widely used definition of design thinking, there is unexpected unity in how people conceptualize design thinking. 62% of our research participants associated characteristic-related words with design thinking, and not only that — they tended to come up with the same words.

This high proportion of vague “process” words suggests that most people know something about design thinking, but may not be able to articulate precisely what it entails.

This design thinking initial research has four clear takeaways:

• While people may converge on the general idea of design thinking, they don’t necessarily have a precise grasp on the concept. This convergence also largely negates opinion — unity on the concept does not necessarily mean agreement on impact, effect, or usefulness.
• This lack of global consensus makes alignment within your team imperative. Create a working definition to use for design thinking, and don’t just stop there — what do the specific words within that definition mean?
• Consequently, measuring the effect of design thinking is dependent on the definition itself — what is and is not considered design thinking within the specific context that is measured.
• More research is needed in order to better understand what makes design thinking successful or unsuccessful, effective adoption methods, and constraint-driven best practices.