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Design Thinking Playbook
In this article, we cover:
- What is Design Thinking?
- Traditional Approach vs. Design Thinking Approach
- Design Thinking Success Story #1
- Design Thinking Stages
- Stage 1: Empathise
- Stage 2: Define
- Stage 3: Ideate
- Design Thinking Success Story #2
- Stage 4: Prototype
- Stage 5: Test
- Design Thinking Success Story #3
- Design Thinking Success Story #4
- Performance of Design Thinking Companies
- Measuring Design Thinking at your organisation
- Why Design Thinking Fails
- So you ran a Design Thinking Course. What’s next?
- Final Thoughts
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A can of WD-40 can be found in millions of homes around the world. However, the world’s favourite penetrating oil and water-displacing spray wasn’t perfect from the very beginning and it took 39 failed attempts to perfect the formula. This resulted in the name WD-40 which stands for Water Displacement perfected on the 40th try.
Today, WD-40 has a market cap of USD $2.49 billion.
The culture and mindset established within many organisations is one that loves certainty and punishes failure. We fear the judgment of our peers and this fear is what causes us to be conservative in our thinking. Many businesses seek perfection, which results in fewer risks taken eventually stifling innovation and creativity. The team at WD-40 failed regularly but learned from each failure.
Embracing failure is a key characteristic of the design thinking mindset.
What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a buzz phrase that has been thrown around companies for many years now. It is not a new concept but there are still many large companies that are yet to embrace this modern-day mindset and methodology. To put it simply, design thinking is a human-centred approach to problem-solving. If you are after a more detailed design thinking definition, the one below sums up the approach well:
