Design Thinking aims to match a user’s needs with well-designed, technologically feasible solutions. It is a process where design is put at the forefront of the entire development process. A product or service is first designed for the user. The user experience is first and foremost.

The Design Thinking process follows seven specific phases. While presented in a linear graphic, the process is iterative. As UX designers learn from user testing, they go back to earlier phases to make revisions. 

My CareerFoundry UX Immersion course offers this great overview of stages of The Design Thinking Process.  (Please Note: If you decide to enroll in the UX Design course, be sure to use my referral link so you can save 5% off the course, and I will earn a referral fee).

• Understand: In order to solve a problem, you need to understand a problem. This first stage in the Design Thinking Process is all about taking the initial steps towards understanding the problem at hand. You’ll create problem statements (like we’ll be doing using the Double Diamond Strategy in the next Exercise!) and perform competitor analyses to ensure you understand not only what you’ll create but the landscape you’ll be creating it in, as well.
• Observe: In this second stage of the Design Thinking Process, you’ll be performing user research in order to observe your potential users and determine their needs and goals. User interviews and surveys fall under this stage.
• POV: In this stage, your goal is to step into the shoes of your users and “see” your product from their point of view. This is the reason why we create design personas! The closer we can get to our users, the greater our chance of fulfilling their needs efficiently.
• Ideate: Now that you’ve collected all these observations, it’s time to make ideas out of them. This is the part of the creative process that allows you to explore a wide variety and large quantity of diverse possible solutions. The purpose of ideation is to move beyond the obvious in order to explore a full range of ideas. User flows/journeys and card sorts fall under this category.
• Prototype: This is the experimental stage of the process. Transform your ideas into a physical format so that they can be experienced and interacted with by others. Build wireframe after wireframe, then turn them into interactive prototypes (after receiving feedback, of course). Throughout this process, additional insights and empathy-building will occur.
• Test: In this stage, you’ll be testing your prototypes with real users, collecting feedback, then improving and iterating on your designs again and again. Validating your designs in the early stages is a great way to solve problems before they reach a product development team. Use observations and feedback from people to create new hypotheses before starting the process over.
• Tell Story: As designers, we oftentimes must justify our design solutions to colleagues, managers, and stakeholders. This step is all about explaining and defending design decisions via effective storytelling while still being open to critique and feedback.
• Present: This comes after you’ve prepared all of your research, design solutions, and prototypes and are confident that your design is ready to be handed off to developers. Your goal at this point is to communicate what developers should code based on your blueprints.

Following is an example of applying The Design Thinking Process in outlining my project for the UX Immersion course.