The process of research (all kinds), conversations with end users, brainstorming, rapid prototyping and iterating, etc. is just how we've always worked. Now everyone is talking about it and making promises about how transformational it is. Yes, it can be transformational, but it's helpful to step back a bit and demystify this:

Design Thinking is at its core simply applying a designer’s process to any project.

That means moving any type of project – from launching a startup to designing a website – through a design process that is open and welcoming to all participants, getting input and buy-in along the way. It's taking the tools and techniques designers have always used and teaching non-designers to use them to build solutions for all kinds of problems. It's creating a coalition of people to share in the process of design, applied to all kinds of things. So are designers embracing this new/old approach to problem solving?

Not always. Designers have this tendency to want to solve problems, and for many that means internalizing the process, living with it, conducting an ongoing internal monologue with it, until the beginning of a comprehensive solution begins to emerge. Then, the sketches get more refined, the rationale behind the solution solidifies and soon you are presenting your solution to your clients (who might not be the end users). Only then does the engagement with outsiders begin - what if the button were rounded, is the tagline too long, can you make it bigger, etc.

See: A Lab for Design Thinking

What was frustrating about this process is that in the end you’ve simply swapped one person’s taste and judgement (yours) for the client’s, and neither of you is very qualified to decide what end users want. Your can conduct reams of research and user testing, but you're still interpreting input, and leaving the door open for your biases to walk in and dominate the conversation.

The Democratization of the Design Process

This is where Design Thinking, and specifically a component called Human Centered Design (or HCD of short) comes into play. HCD was pioneered by Don Norman many years ago and grew out of his belief that the design process was too beholden to individual taste. Don had spent enough time as a cognitive psychologist to know that people are biased, and while they know what they like, they likely can't adequately explain why they like it. This applies to designers also, and can lead to a great deal of design that simply fails to solve the problem. The primary reason for this failure starts early – failure to identify the real problem, because actual users weren’t asked what problem they wanted solved, and couldn’t accurately describe the problem anyway. HCD is a means by which users (or their proxies) can participate in the process of discovering what problem needs solving, and then engaging them in the process.

What’s new is how this approach has been applied to so many other types of needs, and how non-designers can participate in a process to solve problems alongside designers. In this way design has become opened to everyone and applied everywhere. What's very satisfying about this for designers (like me) is that we can now say we're closer to solving the problem because the problem was more accurately defined from the outset. Also, the quality of the solution is no longer a designer-said/client-said matter of opinion. Users are involved in every aspect of the process, and therefore are invested in the solution.

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