Design Thinking allows teams, organizations, and brands to break out of rote decision making and action. It instead focuses thinking and effort on solving problems for people, by being human centered. Human-centered design gives context to decision making and taking action. Design thinking a methodology that applies to a wide array of challenges and opportunities in creative ways.
Design thinking is employed in how we design and implement internal processes and systems to best serve the needs of users and customers. It is also applied to designing those actual systems, products, and experiences that our customers user and have. Design thinking results in new and improved ideas, approaches, processes, and systems that benefit the intended audience.
Design thinking is collaborative. By bringing together practitioners and professionals from various areas, ideas and solutions can be more effectively surfaced. Intentional collaboration results in more complete input. It also results in more robust solutions. As IDEO states, design thinking lives at the intersection of desirability, viability, and feasibility. Collaboration better informs each of these. Collaborative solutions are often the best solutions.
By employing the designer’s mindset and employing the work of talented professionals, beautiful solutions are developed that are tailored to those who the team, organization, or brand serves.
Design leaders are effective at bringing together these collaborative efforts. They understand human-centered design. They contribute various strengths. The ideal design leader would have a deep understanding and practice of human-centered design, with deep experience in the field that it is being applied to. An effective design leader knows when to apply their strengths, and when to help others bring theirs to the surface.
Design thinking is not reserved for traditional designers. With creative confidence and an understanding of design thinking, it can be employed by almost any field.
I am a design leader with 15+ years of experience in design leadership. I am also a graphic design professional and developer with 15+ years of experience in various graphic design and development capacities. Learn more about me.