What is Design Thinking?

1. Design Thinking is human-centered

• Focus on people / customers and their needs and not on a specific technology or other conditions.

• Methods therefore used are observations, interviews, brainstorming, prototyping…

• Innovating at the intersection of business, technology and people leads to radical, new experience innovation.

• The user is the one to decide if a product or a service should exist or be established.

___

2. Design Thinking is an iterative learning process

• During anytime of the projects, Design Thinking teams work with the iterative approach: Redefining the problem, needfinding, ideation, building of prototypes, testing with the user.

__

3. Design Thinking projects consist of diverging and converging phases

• The results of diverse thinking build the base for the converging finalization.

• Design Thinking is a structured method with clearly defined milestones over a project timeline.

• Projects are usually built upon a certain goal defined in the beginning. Design Thinking projects on the other hand, have a lot of ambiguity to it as the outcome is open until the very final phase.

__

4. Design Thinking is prototyping

• Tangibility, experiencing and testing of results are essential basics of design thinking.

• Prototypes allows end-users to participate early in the innovation process.

• Surface feel allows earliest understanding of complex challenges.

… and most of the time Design Thinking is much more than this.

___

_____
___

For whom is Design Thinking suitable?

For all companies that want to tackle following challenges…

• Development of new product and service prototypes

• „idea-boost “ from outside

• Establishment of new business models

• Changing actual structures

• Improvement of innovation culture

Read here more about our 2011 project partners and how to get involved.