Design Thinking Fundamentals

Design thinking is a valuable skill that has been applied across many fields for decades. Whether you work in marketing, sales, project management, or design, it can help you approach challenges with greater creativity and a stronger focus on people’s needs.

Its value extends beyond business. Design thinking can also be applied to personal situations, helping you view challenges from different perspectives, explore new possibilities, and make more informed decisions.

By mastering this skill, you can strengthen your professional capabilities, expand your problem-solving approach, and identify alternatives that may not have been immediately apparent.

Course objectives

• Understand the core principles of Design Thinking.
• Apply the 5-stage Design Thinking framework.
• Use empathy to identify user needs.
• Generate and evaluate innovative ideas.
• Build and test prototypes.
• Apply Design Thinking to everyday business challenges.

Design Thinking is a human-centered approach to problem-solving that focuses on understanding people's needs, challenging assumptions, and developing innovative solutions. It combines creativity, empathy, and experimentation to address complex challenges and create meaningful outcomes.

It is used across a wide range of industries and everyday situations. For example:

• Product development: creating a new mobile app by first understanding user frustrations, then designing features that address their real needs.
• Customer experience: redesigning a retail store layout to make shopping easier.
• Education: designing learning experiences that better engage students and accommodate different learning styles.
• Personal life: planning a career change, organizing a major event, or solving everyday challenges by exploring different perspectives and testing potential solutions before making decisions.

Design Thinking seeks to create solutions that balance three essential dimensions:

• Desirability – the solution meets real user needs and creates value for people.
• Feasibility – it can be successfully developed with available technology and resources.
• Viability – it supports business objectives and can be sustained over time.

The design thinking process is made up of 5 key phases:

1. Empathize – put yourself in the user’s shoes and understand their needs.
2. Define – define the problem you want to solve.
3. Ideate – generate a wide range of ideas.
4. Prototype – create simple prototypes while exploring potential solutions.
5. Test – explore the advantages and limitations of the solutions.

Principles that guide the process

• Human-centered: we start with people and their real needs.
• Curious: we ask questions and challenge assumptions.
• Collaborative: we co-create across diverse perspectives and expertise.
• Experimental: we learn by doing and embrace iterative progress.
• Optimistic: we believe meaningful solutions are possible and worth the effort.

Empathy is the ability to understand and appreciate another person’s thoughts, emotions, motivations, and experiences. It requires setting aside assumptions and preconceived ideas in order to gain a genuine understanding of what people need, feel, and value.

During the Empathy phase, the goal is to learn directly from the people affected by the design challenge. This is typically achieved through two complementary research methods:

• Observation: understanding users by watching their behaviors, actions, and interactions in real-life contexts.
• Interviews: gathering insights by engaging users in conversations about their experiences, needs, and challenges.

Together, they help build a richer understanding of users by revealing what they say, do, think, and feel.

The primary objective of this phase is to see the world from the user’s perspective. While interviews can provide valuable insights, direct observation can uncover unspoken needs, behaviors, and challenges that users may not consciously recognize or express.

To develop empathy effectively:

1. Focus on users’ needs and goals by understanding what they are trying to accomplish.
2. Explore their motivations and challenges to uncover the problems they are attempting to solve.
3. Seek to understand their emotions and experiences in order to gain a deeper appreciation of their perspective.

Complete the sentence below to define your own design challenge:

This structure guides you to define the challenge space, identify a specific user group, and provide the relevant context, without proposing a solution too early.

The AEIOU Framework is an observation tool used during the Empathize phase to help teams systematically study and understand users in their natural environment. It encourages observers to look beyond what people say and focus on what they actually do, the context in which they operate, and the interactions that shape their experience.

• A – Activities: what are people doing? Tasks, routines, workflows, processes.
• E – Environments: where does it happen? Physical, digital, social, cultural.
• I – Interactions: how do they engage? People, systems, services, touchpoints.
• O – Objects: what tools are involved? Devices, materials, resources, artifacts.
• U – Users: who are they? Needs, behaviors, motivations, goals.

Why use the AEIOU framework?

It helps teams capture rich observations and uncover insights that may not emerge through interviews alone. By examining activities, environments, interactions, objects, and users, teams can identify unmet needs, pain points, and opportunities for innovation.

Let’s adapt AEIOU to the design challenge of the remote onboarding experience for new employees.

A | Activities

New employees attend virtual orientation sessions, complete onboarding tasks, explore company resources, set up digital tools, meet colleagues, and learn about their role.

E | Environments

The onboarding takes place remotely through the employee’s home workspace and digital platforms such as video meetings, messaging tools, learning portals, and company systems.

I | Interactions

New employees interact virtually with managers, onboarding buddies, HR teams, trainers, IT support, and colleagues through meetings, chats, emails, and collaborative activities.

O | Objects

Employees use laptops, headsets, onboarding checklists, presentation materials, training videos, digital forms, collaboration platforms, and internal knowledge resources.

U | Users

The main users are new employees, each with different roles, locations, backgrounds, digital skills, expectations, and support needs. Other users include managers, onboarding buddies, HR representatives, trainers, and IT support teams.

Based on the design challenge you wrote earlier, fill in the AEIOU table.

Conducting interviews is one of the most effective ways to build empathy with users. The goal is to understand their experiences, needs, motivations, frustrations, and expectations by listening directly to them. Rather than validating assumptions, interviews help teams uncover insights they may not have considered before.

Effective interviews help design teams:

• Discover unmet needs and hidden pain points.
• Understand users' goals, behaviors, and motivations.
• Challenge assumptions and biases.
• Gather rich qualitative insights that inspire innovative solutions.

Key interview requirements

• Prepare open-ended questions.
• Create a comfortable and non-judgmental environment.
• Listen more than you speak.
• Avoid leading questions.
• Capture quotes, observations, and emotions.
• Focus on learning, not selling or convincing.

Selecting the right participants is a key factor in gathering meaningful insights. Recruit a diverse range of individuals who can provide rich perspectives and support in-depth interviews.

Careful planning and coordination with the team ahead of time are essential. Interviewing is both demanding and rewarding: each interview typically lasts between 60 and 90 minutes, but it lets you immerse yourself in the user's world and gain a deeper understanding of their experiences and needs.

An effective interviewer stays attentive and connected to the participant in order to:

• Recognize when to dig deeper and explore a topic further.
• Know when to gently steer the discussion back on track.
• Interpret the underlying meaning behind what is being expressed, beyond the words themselves.

When recruiting participants

• Define the user groups most relevant to the challenge.
• Seek a mix of participants with different levels of experience and perspectives.
• Include both mainstream and extreme users when appropriate.
• Ensure participants are willing to openly share their experiences.
• Schedule interviews in advance to allow enough time for preparation.

Suggested questions for the remote onboarding experience for new employees:

Follow-up probes

Use these prompts throughout the interview to explore responses in greater depth:

• Can you tell me more about that?
• Why was that important to you?
• How did that make you feel?
• What happened next?

Interview objective

These questions help you uncover pain points (confusion, isolation, technical issues), needs (guidance, connection, support), motivations (learning, belonging, success), and opportunities for improvement in the remote onboarding journey.

Think of conducting interviews related to your own problem statement. Write the questions you would ask, based on what you have learned.

An Empathy Map is a collaborative tool used during the Empathy phase to organize and visualize insights gathered from user research, observations, and interviews. Rather than relying on assumptions, it captures what users actually express and demonstrate, and helps teams align around a shared understanding of the user.

How to create an empathy map

1. Conduct interviews and user observations.
2. Collect quotes, observations, and key findings.
3. Organize the information into the four empathy map categories: Says, Thinks, Feels, Does.
4. Identify patterns, unmet needs, motivations, and pain points.
5. Use these insights to guide problem definition and idea generation.

Example: remote onboarding experience

Why empathy maps matter

• Build empathy for users.
• Reveal hidden needs and frustrations.
• Challenge assumptions.
• Align on a common understanding of the user.
• Inform the creation of personas, journey maps, and innovative solutions.

Build an empathy map based on your interview outcomes.

Once you have completed the Empathy phase, the next step is to make sense of the information you have gathered. Unlike quantitative research, which typically produces numerical results, empathy research generates rich stories, observations, and experiences. By analyzing this qualitative data, you can identify recurring patterns and themes that reveal users' underlying needs.

The Define phase is the second stage of Design Thinking. It is where teams transform what they learned into a clear, focused, and human-centered problem statement. Instead of jumping directly to solutions, the goal is to identify the right problem to solve.

Why is the Define phase important?

• Turn observations into meaningful insights.
• Identify users' real needs and pain points.
• Align everyone around a shared understanding of the challenge.
• Focus on the root cause rather than symptoms.
• Create a strong foundation for ideation and innovation.

To capture and communicate your findings, create insight statements: concise statements that summarize what you have learned and guide the next steps. Organize your findings into Needs and Insights.

• Needs (actions): what your end user is trying to accomplish. Needs are expressed as actions or goals rather than objects or solutions.
• Insights (the why): the underlying reasons behind those needs, revealing the motivations, frustrations, or behaviors uncovered through research. They provide an actionable direction to find novel solutions.

Quick guide

1. Make sure your insight is authentic, non-obvious, and revealing. It should uncover how people think or feel and explain the “why” behind human behavior.
2. Summarize the 10 most important insights.
3. Derive the design principles or problem clusters from the insights.
4. Identify key themes or questions (for example, through dot voting).
5. Select three thematic areas and formulate a question for each.
6. Refine and strengthen the question.

Examples of insights: new hires onboarding experience

• New hires feel overwhelmed by the amount of information shared during the first week.
• Many employees are unsure who to contact when they need help.
• Employees appreciate learning from peers more than reading long documents.
• Important resources are stored in multiple locations.
• New hires want a clear roadmap of what to do during their first 30 days.
• Employees often hesitate to ask questions because they do not want to appear unprepared.
• Manager check-ins are not consistent across teams.
• Employees learn faster when information is presented in small, digestible pieces.

Objective: practice writing meaningful insights and identifying key themes.

A Point of View (POV) helps you clearly define the problem you want to solve. It is built from the insights gathered during the Empathy phase and focuses on the user's needs and motivations.

A good POV helps the team focus on the right challenge, understand the user's needs, and prepare for the Ideation phase.

POV formula

Quick guide

Make sure your POV:

• Provides a clear and narrow focus.
• Frames the challenge as a problem statement.
• Inspires your team and guides innovation efforts.
• Helps evaluate ideas later.
• Captures attention.
• Is meaningful, actionable, insightful, and unique.

Scenario: a remote employee is struggling to stay connected with the team.

Need: what does this employee need?

1. To feel connected to the team.
2. To have regular opportunities to collaborate with colleagues.

Insights: why?

1. Employees who work remotely can feel isolated when interactions are limited to task-related discussions.
2. Informal conversations help build trust and strengthen team relationships.
3. Feeling connected to colleagues increases engagement and motivation.

Define the problem (who? what? why?)

A remote employee needs better ways to connect with colleagues because limited social interaction can lead to feelings of isolation and reduced engagement.

The point of view

Your turn

Create a POV statement for your own challenge using the formula [User] needs [Need] because [Insight].

The Ideation phase is where teams generate a wide range of ideas to solve the problem identified during the Define phase. The goal is to explore possibilities rather than find the perfect solution. Teams use creativity techniques to think beyond obvious answers, challenge assumptions, and discover innovative approaches.

What happens during ideation?

• Generate as many ideas as possible.
• Encourage creative and unconventional thinking.
• Build on the ideas of others.
• Avoid judging or evaluating ideas too early.
• Explore multiple ways to solve the problem.

Divergent and convergent thinking

Divergent thinking expands possibilities and generates a large number of ideas. Convergent thinking narrows down options and selects the most promising ideas.

Brainstorming is a technique used to generate a large number of ideas in a short time. By sharing ideas openly, team members build confidence and inspire each other's creativity.

A relaxed and positive atmosphere is important. At first, you may hesitate to share ideas because they seem unusual or unrealistic. That's completely normal. Remember, your first ideas are not always your best ideas: the more ideas you generate, the greater the chance of discovering an innovative solution.

Benefits: it generates a large number of ideas, encourages unconventional thinking, and gives every team member an opportunity to contribute.

7 brainstorming rules

1. Encourage wild ideas. Bold and unusual ideas often lead to innovative solutions. It's easier to refine an idea later than to create one from scratch.
2. Build on the ideas of others. Use “and” instead of “but”.
3. One conversation at a time. Every idea can then be heard and developed.
4. Defer judgment. Generate ideas first and assess them later.
5. Focus on the topic. Keep discussions centered on the challenge.
6. Aim for quantity. The more ideas, the higher the chance of finding a great solution.
7. Be visual. Sketch, draw, or use sticky notes.

Practice generating a large number of ideas by applying the brainstorming techniques. Write one idea per line, without judging them.

The Prototype phase is where ideas are transformed into simple, tangible representations that can be explored, shared, and tested with users. Rather than spending time building a perfect solution, teams create quick and low-cost prototypes to learn what works, what doesn't, and how users react.

A prototype is a simple version of a product, service, experience, or process that allows you to test an idea before investing significant time and resources.

The prototyping loop

1. Build (from your input idea).
2. Get feedback.
3. Adapt the prototype.
4. Test with end users.
5. Adapt the prototype again, until you reach the output prototype.

Types of prototypes

During the Prototype phase, it is important not only to evaluate whether users find the solution useful and desirable, but also whether it can be delivered and sustained as a viable business. The Business Model Canvas (BMC) helps teams explore how their solution creates, delivers, and captures value, and identifies assumptions to test with prototypes and user feedback.

The 8 building blocks

1. Key partners: who are our key partners, and which activities or capabilities do they contribute?
2. Key activities: what activities are required to create, deliver, and maintain the value proposition?
3. Key resources: which people, technology, processes, or assets are essential?
4. Value proposition: what value do you deliver, which problems do you solve, which needs do you address?
5. End users: for whom are you creating value?
6. Channels: how will the value proposition reach end users?
7. Cost structure: what are the major costs of delivering the solution?
8. Revenue streams: what are end users willing to pay for, and how will revenue (or benefit) be generated?

Example: remote employee onboarding

How might we create a more engaging and effective onboarding experience for remote employees so they feel connected, productive, and supported from day one?

Choose the design challenge you have been working on throughout this course and complete the eight building blocks. For each block, provide at least one answer.

You have explored the problem, generated ideas, and built prototypes. Now it is time to put your solutions in front of the people you are designing for and learn from their feedback.

Experimentation is about testing ideas in real-world situations to gather evidence and reduce uncertainty. The goal is not to prove that an idea is right, but to learn what works, what does not, and what should be improved.

When selecting an experiment, consider the balance between cost, speed, and confidence in the results. As a general rule, start with simple, low-cost experiments when uncertainty is high; as confidence grows, invest in more robust testing methods.

Experimenting steps

1. Define your hypothesis: the assumption you want to test and the expected outcome.
2. Choose an experiment that will provide the evidence needed.
3. Define success metrics: objective indicators that show whether the hypothesis is valid.
4. Plan the experiment: who participates, what is tested, when and where, how data is collected.
5. Obtain required approvals and resources.
6. Conduct the experiment according to the plan.
7. Gather feedback: interview participants about their experience.
8. Analyze results and decide next steps: repeat under different conditions, refine and iterate, abandon the idea, or adopt the solution and monitor its impact.
9. Share your learnings with stakeholders and participants.

A validation survey tests assumptions, gathers feedback, and measures interest in a proposed solution. It collects input from a larger group of end users quickly and cost-effectively. Unlike exploratory surveys used during the Empathy phase, it is conducted after a concept or prototype exists, to verify specific hypotheses.

When to use it

• Test whether users see value in your solution.
• Prioritize features or ideas.
• Measure user interest or willingness to adopt a solution.
• Compare concepts or prototype variations.
• Gather quantitative data from a larger audience.

Advantages: quick and inexpensive, reaches many users, produces measurable data, validates assumptions before implementation.

Limitations: users may say they would use a solution but behave differently; less detail than observation or interviews; results depend on the quality of the questions.

A Single-Feature Minimum Viable Product (MVP) builds and tests only the most important feature of a solution: a simplified version that delivers a single core benefit. The purpose is to validate whether the key feature solves a real problem before investing in additional functionality.

How it works

1. Identify the core feature that delivers the primary value.
2. Build a simplified version with only the functionality needed to test it.
3. Release it to a small group of target users.
4. Measure user behavior: adoption, engagement, satisfaction, usage patterns.
5. Use the results to decide: improve, expand, pivot, or abandon.

Advantages: low cost compared to a full build, real-world evidence from actual users, reduced development risk, stronger validation than surveys alone.

Limitations: may not represent the complete experience, users may judge the solution on the limited feature, requires some development effort.

A clickable prototype is an interactive mock-up that lets users click through screens, buttons, and workflows as if they were using a real product. It is not fully developed and contains only enough functionality to test the user experience, helping teams validate assumptions about usability, navigation, and interactions before full development.

How it works

1. Create screens that represent the user journey.
2. Link the screens together with buttons, menus, and navigation paths.
3. Ask users to complete tasks in realistic scenarios.
4. Observe user behavior: where they click, hesitate, or get confused.
5. Collect feedback and identify improvements.
6. Refine and retest.

Advantages: fast and relatively inexpensive, realistic feedback, reveals usability issues early, encourages rapid iteration.

Limitations: users cannot test actual functionality, may not reflect technical constraints, feedback may focus on design and navigation rather than functionality.

Choose an experiment method for your design challenge and describe how you would apply it: hypothesis, who participates, what you test, and your success criteria.

Check what you have learned. Each answer is explained right away.