4 Principles of Design Thinking

Design Thinking is an approach used for practical and creative problem-solving. It is based on the methods and processes that designers use, but it has actually evolved from a range of different fields including architecture, engineering and business. It is concerned with solving complex problems in a highly user-centric way. It focuses on users first. It seeks to understand people’s needs and come up with effective solutions to meet those needs.

It is an iterative process which favors ongoing experimentation until the right solution is found. It is what we call a solution-based approach to problem-solving. Solution-based thinking focuses on finding solutions; coming up with something constructive to effectively tackle a certain problem. 

Design thinking builds people’s capacity to innovate by letting them adopt and practice an innovative mindset. Design thinking helps to foster a culture of innovation, and lets the teams to generate and test ideas creatively and effectively. The skills developed through design thinking can then be applied in a variety of ways, such as a design sprint, a process for testing ideas which involves fast prototyping.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, a prototype is worth a thousand meetings”

―Ideo.org

Four Principles of Design Thinking

Human Centric: No matter what the context, all design activity is social in nature, and any social innovation will bring us back to the “human-centric point of view”, which means that your users should be should be the center of the design of the products or services. User-centric design means understanding what your users need, how they think, how they behave; and incorporating that understanding of users needs into every aspect of your process. When you can empathize with them and take inspiration from their needs, feelings, and motivations, your team can create meaningful solutions to actual problems, instead of just creating innovative but useless products.

Embrace the Ambiguity: Ambiguity is inevitable, and it cannot be removed or oversimplified. Experimenting at the limits of your knowledge and ability is crucial in being able to see things differently. Instead of trying to think of one perfect solution, think about reframing your problem or looking at it from all conceivable angles to get several possible solutions. It is about looking at multiple ways to solve a problem. Some of the ideas might not work, but some other ideas can bring fantastic solutions. As Edward deBono said, “The need to be right all the time is the biggest bar there is to new ideas.” So embracing the ambiguity is one of the principles of design thinking.

Redesign: All design is redesign. While technology and social circumstances may change and evolve, basic human needs remain unchanged. We essentially only redesign the means of fulfilling these needs or reaching desired outcomes.

Tangibility: Making ideas tangible in the form of prototypes enables designers to communicate them more effectively. After gathering the ideas, one shall start experimentation or building prototypes. Experimentation or building prototypes helps to realize which ideas work and which ones don’t. Hypothesizing and testing will determine what changes will lead to an easier, frictionless or more intuitive path.

Design Thinking can be applied to any field, it doesn’t necessarily have to be design-specific. It is both an ideology and a process, It is extremely user-centric. It revolves around a deep interest in developing an understanding of the people for whom we’re designing the products or services. It helps us observe and develop empathy with the user.

“People ignore design that ignores people.”

—Frank Chimero, Designer

It involves constant testing and iteration to go from best practices to better practices. It supports the idea of fail early & fast, by prototyping to build early-stage version of the idea and testing it at a small level to see what actually works, and gathering the data to decide what makes sense, either to move your idea forward, tweak it or scrap it.