why design thinking

Design Thinking centralizes on a human-centric approach that has been felt as a disruptive force across industries. Design Thinking has somewhat given light to the creative triggers for teams to embrace the elusiveness of most business frameworks. 

However, the common link between all business models is innovation. For models to survive and retain their future proof qualities, innovation needs to be the cornerstone of every business model. But with Design Thinking, innovation finds a more structured layer for itself to unfold further developments and bring encouraging results. So, by implementing this, the world will be equipped to harbor innovation while employing methods that are constructive and easy to follow up. 

What is Design Thinking?

Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO has broadly defined Design Thinking as a discipline that implements a user’s methods and sensibilities to settle all humane requirements under a technologically feasible framework, especially for businesses to convert the same into market opportunity and customer value. 

In essence, it can be categorized as a cognitive activity that designers implement while designing their products. It is also deemed as the driving force of smooth designs and innovation. 

Use of Design Thinking

Although originated with designers, Design Thinking has found several use cases across industries. One of the primary reasons for the prolific outlook of Design Thinking is its ability to emulsify complex systems. This can be used for exploring the bigger picture and convene globalization, find an immediate response to pivotal issues, and respond quicker than any other alternatives. 

It can be used by anyone, any business, or any industry for that matter. 

Also Read: How Design Thinking can solve complex problems of the IT Sector

Why Design Thinking is Important

It enables us to create future-proof and long-lasting solutions for consumers. It thus has consolidated itself to be important for the following reasons: 

  • A human-centred approach to combat pain points from the consumer end, providing immediate and long-term solutions. Moreover, this approach makes it easier to uncover invisible pain points which otherwise will remain as chronic symptoms. 
  • Sometimes consumers lack articulation to describe a problem but the problem can be understood from customer interaction. It thus defines these ambiguous interactions to find more scalable solutions. 
  • It can further innovative output via its iterative approach. 
  • Instead of qualitative research modules, we can make prototypes that can be tested to find its relevant use cases.

Implementing Design Thinking in businesses

Business Models are as important as the design of products and services. The design surrounds itself in a way that it settles to resonate and linger on, going beyond its appearance. Design is just not about the style, it’s’ about giving a form to an idea. Good design can’t exist in a vacuum, it combines cognitive science, technology, aesthetics, and human needs to produce something unique which the world did not know it was missing up until its creation. 

This is an approach that centralizes the humane requirement. A business landscape can largely benefit from this, since businesses deal with complex choices that can be sieved via Design Thinking. This approach also entails data, researches, and visual design – naturally giving it a proper use case for businesses.

Also Read: Value of Design Thinking in Business

Here’s how businesses can garner competitive traction: 

  • Re-reading the issue: Let’s take a real-world use case to illustrate this point – IBM was approached with a task to improve airline kiosks such that check-in processes happen quickly with increased frequency. Although they started developing the software, the problem was more localized since the kiosks had issues with charging and the officers in charge had difficulty in overcoming the constrictions to charge these machines who’s charging plugs were in the back of each machine.

    The solution they delivered was via a mobile app that eased the check-in process minus the hassle and budget cuts. The key takeaway from this anecdote is that some issues are not visible but Design Thinking introspects the possibility of an issue via questioning and having a more holistic reading of the problem to find leads. 
  • Collaborative Strength: Devises collaborative methods to perpetuate hygiene around the work ecosystem. The collaborative fervour of this approach also makes way for growth and innovation. Design Thinking’s approach reduces the anxiety of failure which Herbert Simon, a psychology professor at Carnegie-Mellon University thinks. The collaborative strength drives participation count and furthers healthy input without any hierarchical discrimination. This unconventional approach has created many breakthroughs in the past. 
  • The subjectivity of an issue: A mathematical problem entails multiple approaches which essentially is the same for any issue if one were to treat it in a general sense. So, when multiple perspectives and insights are collated for a collective output, the process borders on productivity and innovation. Design Thinking essentially removes a problem from ever reappearing which has an overall affirmative outcome. 
  • User-Centric: As mentioned earlier, Design Thinking centralized user opinion. Interactions and exchanges with users can solve a problem immediately. This is far more productive and conversion worthy as opposed to adding features based on assumptions and predictions. 
  • Simpler Steps: There are five steps to Design Thinking – 1) Empathize 2) Define 3) Ideate 4) Prototype 5) Test – these steps ensure a more intuitive and streamlined approach that draws in newer ideas and inspirations to thrive upon. 
  • Business Models: Design Thinking is just a process, it is a mindset that produces seamless solutions based on its managed philosophy to build better business models. 

Growth of Design Thinking in the Coming Years

Design Thinking is a robust and repeatable process that primes on questioning, observations, experimentations, and augmentation. It also equips users to see beyond the conventional dilemmas. What Design Thinking essentially does is that it creates a set of perspectives supplemented by solutions that can effectively solve a problem. Design Thinking thus draws out use cases where user’s requirements are understood and the outcome is shaped accordingly. So, a model will have a quicker time in being deployed without losing its refinement. 

The core values of design thinking don’t ideate on constructing revenue dispensaries but to help businesses realize their edge of innovation. Design Thinking in a traditional sense meditative, with properties that can help you engineer and re-engineer a solution and test appropriate scenarios for them to play out. 

The future of design thinking is to transcend beyond designing for solutions. The future also incorporates experimentations and empathy along with methodologies, tools to deploy strategic fronts for future casting. 

Source: https://www.hiddenbrains.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/Design-Thinking-00-01-0998-min.jpg

So, the future with design thinking will lead us through a clearer path that is non-normative, unambiguous, and filled with newer alternatives. The strategic forces behind design thinking also make this approach future proof such that it can embrace any sort of uncertainty and ambiguity, emulsifying them to produce identifiable solutions for everyone. 


Design Thinking is intuitive, collaborative, and engaged in a sort of engagement that involves customers and stakeholders to define a problem and find a scalable solution. This easily decentralizes the conventional process of problem-solving and merges the gap between keeping commitments and converting them into a scalable client pool.

The future is an exciting time, especially for the design thinkers who will continue to reflect, explore, and create designs that cater to value-driven experiences for the customer to feel heard and taken into account. 

If you are looking to upskill, join the Stanford GSB Executive Education’s Design Thinking course in collaboration with Great Learning.



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