What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a framework to guide organisations to understand the needs of their customers to create new and more creative solutions.

How can design thinking helps business?
Design thinking helps teams deal with ambiguity by providing them with a framework that harnesses their creativity. Design thinking is directly related to innovation and improved financial results.

How does design thinking work?
Design thinking is a 5-step process which is empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. By starting with the customer or end user organisations are encouraged to put themselves in their customers shoes in the empathise stage to then define the real problem and needs of their customers rather than what the organisation perceives their needs to be.

Which companies use design thinking?
GE Healthcare, Apple, IBM, Lego, Intuit, Mariott, General Electric, BHP, RAC, Anglicare, RedCross, St.John of God Hospital, AirBnB, Phillips, BMW, Volkswagon, Toyota, Johnson & Johnson, Netflix and you should too

Why design thinking works?
Design thinking works because it helps define the root cause of a human problem. Organisations can better design solutions if they have an intimate need of the problem they are trying to solve. It also helps decipher what a customer needs from what they may say the need.

Why design thinking fails?
The most common cause of why design thinking fails is when leaders of an organisation don’t fully believe in the process. Teams must be empowered to go out and understand customers within their own environments and they must then have the autonomy to dedicate time at work to defining the problem and brainstorming solutions. Success with design thinking comes with small steps and frequently practising the process.

Can design thinking be used for social change?
Design thinking is a framework that encourages human connection and understanding. It is becoming more and more prevalent in the social impact space and organisations such as the likes of IDEO are encouraging its use by providing anyone with access to supporting materials.

Can design thinking solve business problems?
Design thinking helps solves business problems by ensuring people within the organisation have an in-depth understanding of the problem they are trying to solve and the human elements and challenges within the problem. This helps better design solutions for clients, teams and industries.

Design thinking versus human centred design
Design thinking is a framework that helps produce innovative products and services keeping into account feasibility, viability, and desirability. It partners human problems with technological solutions. Human centred design is a focus on the human elements within these solutions. It focuses on creating the best possible user experiences and effortless use or interactions.

Design thinking with lean
The principles of lean are fully utilised in the focus on creating fast prototypes to test ideas with minimal cost and effort. The idea is to test ideas as early as possible to iterate or create new ideas.