The Five Stages Of Design Thinking Process

Introduction

To understand the meaning of design thinking it is important to first understand what a design is. A design is an implementable idea or blueprint of a certain intended end-product. As such, design thinking is the cognitive process through which designs are formulated. Just like any other concept, design thinking has undergone various modifications in order to arrive at the present day concept of design thinking.

It had evolved as one of the essential methodology applied by designers to come up with ways of solving complex problems and finding anticipated solutions that fits the client’s needs (Behm, Culvenor, & Dixon, 2014). Through imagination, reasoning, intuition and fundamental rationale, design thinking makes an exploration

At around mid-1980’s to date; there has been a paradigm shift in the methodology of improving business, service and design (Johansson Woodilla, & Çetinkaya, 2013).

Design thinking process

The process of design thinking provides a full description of a problem and gives the solution in line with the predefined user demographics at the center of concept development. And design thinking forms 5 major stages. Firstly, empathize; this refers to the creation of meaningful innovations that one needs to get full understanding of his users and give a solution to their problems. This is the centerpiece of the human-centered design methodology (MacLeod et al., 2015). And it can be done through observing users and their behaviors in their lives perspective, engaging by asking questions and lastly, watch and listen which involves the combination of both observation and engagement so as to complete a task. Secondly, define; aims at bringing clarity and concentration to the design space. This stage involves making sense from the gathered information through crafting meaningful and actionable problem statement (MacLeod et al., 2015). The POV acts as a

This thinking approach is pretty unique in that it is limitless and allows one to explore the full potential of their imagination. It is common cliché-“think outside the box.” To think outside the box is to essentially allow our minds to wander and explore the full potential of the creativity that comes with the flexibility of the human mind. And most problems facing humanity in this 21st century can be subdued or overcome through allowing our minds to think beyond boundaries, certainly, through the design thinking