A drawing of a person at a wall with the five stages of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test hung on it. They are adding a sixth stage with an “Implement” label. Each phase is illustrated with an icon, a heart of empathize, a push pin for define, a light bulb for ideate, a paper plane for prototype, a test page for test, and a rocket is being added for implement.

Sometimes the learning is in the doing

A very brief introduction to the grand topic of Design Thinking

4 min readOct 15, 2022

This article is day 14 of a 31 day series. A mash-up of the Inktober 2022 prompt list and UX terminology. Read more about the challenge here.

Day 14 | Inktober prompt: Empty | UX Term: Design Thinking

You have to start somewhere

I stumbled upon this little gem a few weeks ago when I was going through some old notebooks. It’s not an accurate explanation for design thinking, like, at all, but it does make me chuckle.

A drawing of a hanging picture. At the top of the picture is text that says “What are you thinking about?” In the middle is a drawing of a person with a thought bubble with only the word “design” in it. Below is a label of “Design Thinking”.

It’s nice to go back once in a while to remind myself of what I’ve worked on. What I liked, and what I didn’t like, what I learned, and what I used to distract myself from learning.

Design Thinking is a big topic. And it’s one of those that you learn more about the more you use it. But since we have to start somewhere, let’s start filling our empty cup up with the basics.

What is Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is both an ideology and a framework. Cool. What does that mean?

Well first, the ideology. Put simply it says that we should focus on users, and take a hands-on approach to doing so. Why? Because it leads to innovation, and that innovation can be the differentiator that makes your product next-level. Sweet.

Then there is the framework, or the process of it all. When I was first introduced to Design Thinking, it was presented as five phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. As I’ve continued to learn more about it, I discovered that the Nielsen Norman Group, my personal source of truth for pretty much anything UX related, has it listed as empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement. As they define it, “implement” is the “doing” of design thinking.

I would have to agree with them there. In all of my exposure, implementing was always implied, if not explicitly mentioned. It was expected that you would implement, get feedback and jump back into other phases as needed to iterate.

So now we have names for each of these phases, but seriously, what does that mean?

Here’s what that means

Empathize — during this phase we’re looking to completely understand our users, to get inside their heads and hearts.

Define — here we’re looking to clearly define the problem that we’re solving for. Because that’s what we’re really here for, right? To solve problems.

Ideate — this can take many forms, be it brainstorming, or… I guess brainstorming is a good catch-all, but you might call it something different. Here we’re coming up with ideas for solutions that we can test.

Prototype — this is a fun one, when we get to see pieces coming together and start to get a real idea of the product as it might appear after launch. It’s just a design at this stage but we “wire it up” so that users can interact with it as if it were an almost real boy. (I mean product, but I just saw a Pinnochio preview so… there ya go.)

Test — during this phase we’re identifying tasks that users will likely complete, and have them try to complete them by using our almost real boy. And we observe. And we take notes. And we shake our heads when they doing something we did… not… see… coming. (Not when then can see us of course, but when they’re not around, because manners.)

There isn’t an official “Revisions” phase anywhere in this process, because really that can happen whenever we learn something new that changes what we think about how the product should be. If I were going to put it anywhere, it would probably be here. We learn a lot during testing and we usually want to address what we can before we implement.

Implement — This is the end of the tale, but not the end of the story. What I mean by that is that as the last phase in our list, we want to bring the product to life and send it out into the world. The story continues because we don’t do all of that work, make something we’re super proud of and then just say “Bye!” We want to know how it’s doing, and we want to keep making it better.

So yes, “implement” is that phase, where the thinking becomes the doing. We want to make sure that it’s doing its job. Solving problems and taking names.

Takeaway

I promised a very brief introduction to Design Thinking so I hope this morsel will encourage you to dig deeper into the various methods that support this approach to user experience design. While the framework is pretty well established, there will always be new ways to accomplish the goals it has in place.

It’s also important to know that Design Thinking is not the only way you can go about improving user experiences. It was the first approach that I was taught but it won’t be the last. I hope the same for you.