Design Thinking

Design thinking refers to creative strategies designers utilize during the process of designing. Design thinking is also an approach that can be used to consider issues and resolve problems more broadly than within professional design practice, and has been applied in business and to social issues. Design thinking in business uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

The notion of design as a "way of thinking" in the sciences can be traced to Herbert A. Simon's 1969 book The Sciences of the Artificial, and in design engineering to Robert McKim's 1973 book Experiences in Visual Thinking. Bryan Lawson's 1980 book How Designers Think, primarily addressing design in architecture, began a process of generalising the concept of design thinking. A 1982 article by Nigel Cross established some of the intrinsic qualities and abilities of design thinking that made it relevant in general education and thus for wider audiences. Peter Rowe's 1987 book Design Thinking, which described methods and approaches used by architects and urban planners, was a significant early usage of the term in the design research literature.Rolf Faste expanded on McKim's work at Stanford University in the 1980s and 1990s, teaching "design thinking as a method of creative action." Design thinking was adapted for business purposes by Faste's Stanford colleague David M. Kelley, who founded the design consultancy IDEO in 1991.Richard Buchanan's 1992 article "Wicked Problems in Design Thinking" expressed a broader view of design thinking as addressing intractable human concerns through design.

Design thinking is a method for practical, creative resolution of problems and creation of solutions. It is a form of solution-based, or solution-focused thinking with the intent of producing a constructive future result. By considering both present and future conditions and parameters of the problem, several alternative solutions may be explored.

This approach differs from purely analytical methods scientific method, which begin by defining all parameters of a problem with an aim to create a single, correct solution. Design thinking identifies and investigates known and ambiguous aspects of the current situation in an effort to discover unknown parameters and alternative solution sets that may lead to the goal. Because design thinking is iterative, intermediate "solutions" are potential starting points of alternative paths, including redefining of the initial problem, in a process of co-evolution of problem and solution.

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