Design Thinking is a human-centric approach to creating solutions. This course will teach you the principles of Design Thinking and walk you through applying its five phases to your projects.
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Design Thinking is human-centric. It puts people first, before thinking about technology, to enable them to achieve more. According to Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, Design Thinking is "a human-centered approach to innovation" that allows people across any industry to deliver stronger and more meaningful - even revolutionary - products. In this course, we'll introduces the core principles and key phases of Design Thinking.
We'll answer common questions like:
- What is Design Thinking and how does it apply to technical projects?
- What are the core principles of Design Thinking?
- What are the five commonly recognized phases of Design Thinking?
- How can we use these phases to develop more innovative solutions?
And when you're done you'll be able to:
- Apply Design Thinking to technical projects to enable more creative and innovative solutions.
- Relate the five phases of Design Thinking to the Agile Software Development framework.
- Leverage the core principles and key phases of Design Thinking to envision and define more meaningful solutions.
- Completed source repository
- Working website that you can use to host your own Design Thinking toolkit.
None. This course is a great introduction to Design Thinking for anyone involved in technical projects.
Developers, students, managers, teams
Hello @{{user.login}}, I'm so excited to teach you about Design Thinking! 😄
This repository will be a working website that you can publish as your own Design Thinking landing page.
As we work, we'll create a resource that others can use within your organization. This repository will be useful even after you finish this course.
This is how this course will move along:
- Every new issue or pull request will start with a challenge question
- You'll answer the challenge question (don't worry, there are no right or wrong answers!)
- The question will highlight the importance of each topic in Design Thinking
- The related Pull Request will add the resources for that topic to the toolkit
- When we're finished, we'll publish the toolkit using GitHub Pages
Now let's try your first challenge question!
Design Thinking focuses on using the newest technologies to solve problems.
- True
- False
Our first pull request introduces Design Thinking in more detail.
Design Thinking emphasizes delivering a good tool to users faster, rather than waiting on the completion of the perfect tool.
- True - putting a good, functional, tool in the hands of users quickly is more valuable than delivering a perfect tool when it's too late.
- False - users should not compromise on the perfect tool to get something more quickly.
Design Thinking does not focus on technology. It is human-centric. It puts people first, before thinking about technology, to enable them to achieve more.
This approach leads to more meaningful and innovative solutions, regardless of industry.
You can find your next steps in the first pull request.
User-Centric design enables the continous delivery of value to users. This means that putting a good, functional, tool in the hands of users quickly is more valuable than delivering a perfect tool when it's too late.
Design Thinking accomplishes this by establishing the boundaries of the product early through the definition of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP). Once the MVP is delivered, the team continues to iterate on the solution, incrementally improving and enhancing it by leveraging continous feedback from users and stakeholders.
In Design Thinking, human-centered design begins with Desirability. The convergence of user need, business viability, and technical & financial feasibility outlines the solution.
- Read the additions about MVP in the
Files changedtab. That's where the content for this topic in our Design Thinking Toolkit will come from - Approve this pull request
- Merge this pull request
- Delete the branch
This pull request is about the five phases of Design Thinking. These phases are based on three core principles.
So far we've learned that Design Thinking is, at it's heart, User-Centric. We've also talked about the concept of putting a Minimum Viable Product in the hands of users quickly in order to gain insight for solutioning. Despite Dilbert's example, the designer must always remain focused on the needs of the user.
Based on the information we've covered so far, what principles do you think might be important to Design Thinking?
You can find your next steps in your [next pull request]({{ url }}).
There are many important ideas and principles when utilizing Design Thinking. At its core though, it's User-Centric. Therefore the most important characteristic of a solution is that it meets the needs of the User. To ensure solutions achieve this objective, the three fundamental principles of Design Thinking guide teams through the process of defining the MVP, and then iteratively improving and enhancing it to achieve the final product.
These three principles are:
- Empathy
- Ideation
- Experimentation
You'll read more detail about these principles when reviewing this pull request. The most important thing to know is that these three principles translate into the five phases of Design Thinking:
- Empathize
- Define
- Ideate
- Prototype
- Test
Stanford's Design Thinking Model
- Review the additions about the five phases of Design Thinking in the
Files changedtab. That's where the content for this topic in our Design Thinking Toolkit will come from. - Approve this pull request
- Merge this pull request
- Delete the branch
This pull request is about the first phase of Design Thinking: Empathy.
Arguably, empathy is the most important stage of Design Thinking. The purpose of this stage is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem at hand.
Which of the following methods should a designer use to derive insights into user needs?
- Observation
- Engagement
- Immersion
You can find your next steps in your [next pull request]({{ url }}).
All of those methods are important to gaining an empathic understanding of the problem at hand, so all of the answers are right.
The designer must:
- Observe users and stakeholders in their daily work. Observation often provides the most objective identification of the problem requiring a solution
- Engage users and stakeholders in interviews and conversations to develop the best possible understanding of their needs and objectives
- Immerse themselves in the physical environment of the users
You'll read more detail about how to use empathy to design meaningful solutions in this pull request, which also includes a case study.
- Review the additions about the Empathize phase of Design Thinking in the
Files changedtab. That's where the content for this topic in our Design Thinking Toolkit will come from - Approve this pull request
- Merge this pull request
- Delete the branch
This pull request is about the Define & Ideate phases of Design Thinking.
We've learned that Design Thinking is all about users. With that in mind, which of the following problem statements, based on the case study from our previous pull request, is more effective?
- We need a system to ingest and consolidate road maintenance issues from multiple sources and in many formats.
- The citizens in our town need to easily report road issues and follow the progress of repairs.
You can find your next steps in your [next pull request]({{ url }}).
That's right! The second statement is much more likely to result in an innovative and valuable solution for the citizens.
Such statements are created in the Define phase (phase 2) of Design Thinking. In this phase, designers gather and analyze all of the information collected during the Empathize phase. By identifying pain points and patterns in the information, a clear definition of the problem is crafted.
After the problem has been defined, designers can begin to generate ideas for a solution. This is phase 3 - Ideate. In this phase innovation & creativity are the most important factors! To transition to the Ideate phase from the Define phase, teams often ask "how might we..."
Read more detail about how to define and ideate in this pull request.
- Review the additions about the Define & Ideate phases of Design Thinking in the
Files changedtab. That's where the content for these topics in our Design Thinking Toolkit will come from. - Approve this pull request
- Merge this pull request
- Delete the branch
This pull request is about the Prototype & Test phases of Design Thinking. Let's kick this topic off with a challenge question!
Only high-fidelity prototypes are of value in Design Thinking.
- True, it's worth the time to always build out the most accurate simulation of the final product as possible.
- False, quickly generating even the simplest prototype allows teams to gather feedback faster.
You can find your next steps in your [next pull request]({{ url }}).
It's false! One of the main reasons for prototyping is to fail fast. Even a simple pencil & paper prototype can help teams to discover that they're on the wrong track. As prototypes evolve user testing becomes more involved, but their feedback should be incorporated right from the beginning. Prototyping allows for this kind of continuous feedback loop with users and other stakeholders from the start.
This approach helps teams avoid getting stuck in limbo or "analysis paralysis" like Dilbert's colleagues.
Read more detail about how to use prototype and test as part of Design Thinking in this pull request.
- Review the additions about the Prototype & Test phases of Design Thinking in the
Files changedtab. That's where the content for these topics in our Design Thinking Toolkit will come from. - Approve this pull request
- Merge this pull request
- Delete the branch
It's time to publish the Design Thinking toolkit you've been working on.
To publish:
- Go to the Settings tab for this repository
- Scroll down to the section titled GitHub Pages
- Select main branch in the Source drop down
That's all! GitHub Pages will then deploy your site and report its status back to me.
You can find your next steps in your [next pull request]({{ url }}).
You finished this course. You can see a deployed version of our work together at [your new GitHub Pages site]({{ deploymentURL }}). Feel free to share this link directly with others, or you can save the resources in one of the following ways.
- If you'd like to just save the contents to your machine, you can:
- Use this shortcut link to [download the files]({{ downloadURL }})
- Download the files by clicking on the Code tab, clicking on Clone or download and clicking Download ZIP
- Clone the repository to your machine
- If you'd like to transfer the repository to an organization on GitHub:
- If your organization is on GitHub.com, [fork it]({{ forkURL }})
- If your organization is on GitHub Enterprise Server, transfer the repository
I won't track any further events in this repository.
Your next steps will be in the Design Thinking Learning Path, which is coming soon!