INTRODUCTION TO DESIGN THINKING

Hardly a day goes by without news of a company or entire industry being “disrupted” or even
“killed.” Media places the brunt of the blame on Millennials, but the fact is that today’s
consumers simply aren’t willing to tolerate tone-deaf, self-serving corporate solutions. It’s
becoming clear that Blockbuster, Radio Shack, and other companies that got left behind in the
digital explosion weren’t just offering the wrong solutions. They weren’t asking the right
questions about their customers, their products, or their business models.

Design thinking is a human-centric approach to problem solving that enables organizations to

ask better questions and generate more compelling solutions. In a nutshell, design thinking
involves understanding user needs, brainstorming ways to meet those needs, and rapidly testing
ideas. This methodology originated in the field of design but now, it’s being employed in a wide
range of industries and functions.

Smart companies leverage design thinking methods for a variety of business challenges both
internal and external. Design thinking is well-suited to tackling complex, messy, and ill-defined
problems—exactly the kind of problems that keep executives up at night. In this whitepaper,
you will learn about the key features and benefits of design thinking and how to apply this
technique at your organization.

DESIGN THINKING DEFINED

Design thinking is a methodology for understanding a situation or problem through the eyes of
your user. Most commonly, the methodology is structured as a five-step process.
1. Empathize—engage with people to understand the problem.
2. Define—outline the problem from the customer or end-user perspective.
3. Ideate—generate ideas.
4. Prototype—produce a solution or piece of the solution.
5. Test—evaluate solutions identified through prototyping.
Design thinking originated in the 1960s and has evolved over time. As such, there are several
different versions of the methodology that you may
encounter. Tim Brown, CEO of design and consulting firm
IDEO, offered a three-step methodology:
Design can help to improve our
1. Inspiration
lives in the present. Design
2. Ideation
thinking can help us chart a path
3. Implementation1
into the future.
Another popular iteration was proposed by Jeanne Liedtka,
American strategist and professor of business
—Tim Brown
administration at the Darden Graduate School of Business
at the University of Virginia. She framed design thinking as CEO, IDEO
a series of questions:

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 1. What is?—what is the current reality for customers and in the marketplace?
2. What if?—what are our options for creating a new future?
3. What wows?—what ideas should we focus on first?
4. What works?—how do real users interact with our prototype?2
These and other variations are perhaps best understood as superficial alterations of the same
core concept. No matter how it’s phrased, design thinking always involves distinct and iterative
stages of work to empathize with the user, generate ideas to meet the user’s needs, and rapidly
prototype and test ideas with actual users.

FUNCTIONAL USES OF DESIGN THINKING

Design thinking is gaining traction in a range of functions across the enterprise. An APQC survey
identified the top five functions using design thinking (Figure 1).

Top 5 Functions Using Design Thinking

Figure 1

Product Development
Product development and innovation teams use design thinking to develop and refine products
that customers actually want. The methodology is particularly useful in ensuring a viable
pipeline of innovations.

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 Customer Service
Design thinking helps customer service teams empathize with customers and better meet their
needs. Customer service employees are well-positioned to provide insights on customers, so
they are often included on multi-disciplinary design thinking projects.

Process Management
Process management teams use design thinking to assess organizational improvement needs
and improve processes and workflows. When process teams deploy design thinking, they often
focus on internal “customers” (i.e., employees) to understand why, for example, employees are
not correctly executing a documented process.

Marketing
Like customer service, marketing is well-positioned to contribute to design thinking and benefit
from its insights. Design thinking helps marketing teams deliver user-centric messaging. The
methodology also helps marketing teams understand when and where customers will be most
receptive to communications.

Strategic Planning
Design thinking can unveil unexpected insights that prompt organizations to ask big questions
about their strategy and business model. Smart organizations aren’t afraid to tackle these
questions and integrate them into their strategic plans. Design thinking is of particular utility
with digital transformation, a strategic initiative that many organizations are currently planning
or undergoing. Design thinking helps organizations select the best-fit technology tools because it
positions users—not the technology itself—as the driver.

Additional Functions
A survey by the Hasso Plattner Institute for Design Engineering at the University of Potsdam
identified several other functions in which design thinking is popular:
 consulting,
 IT,
 sales,
 HR.3
Design thinking is a useful tool for internal or external consulting teams because it helps
consultants get to the root of customer needs. For IT, design thinking drives user-focused
technology selections and deployments. Like marketing and customer service, sales is well-
positioned to provide insights for and benefit from design thinking. HR leverages design thinking
to develop user-friendly trainings and improve the workplace environment.

Ultimately, design thinking can benefit any area facing complex problems that would benefit
from in-depth understanding of internal or external customers. Andrew Webster, VP of
ExperiencePoint, recommends against drawing firm guidelines around what design thinking is
for, or around who would use it. “Within organizations there may be teams that have owned

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 design, but those lines don’t really need to exist. Design thinking is multi-disciplinary,” said
Webster.

KEY BENEFITS AND OPPORTUNITIES

Too often, organizations operate as if they are Design thinking is an approach to
wearing blinders: they only see the options that are solving problems especially suited to
right in front of them. This makes it easy for leaders conditions of high uncertainty.
to fall in love with ideas—whether they are internal
improvement initiatives or new product offerings—
that ultimately fall flat. Design thinking helps —Jeanne Liedtka
organizations take off these blinders and see a wider Professor of Business Administration,
view of customer needs and potential solutions. The University of Virginia
methodology gives teams the time and permission
to dig deep into questions, test multiple solutions,
and learn from mistakes.

“The design thinking approach forces you to stay in the question and not define exactly what the
problem is,” said design thinking thought leader Barry MacDevitt. “We all have a tendency to
jump to solution mode far too quickly, so the design thinking approach forces you really to live
in this unclear, sometimes very muddy place. This ends up producing a much better
understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve.”4

Design Thinking Delivers Real Results

Research shows that organizations realize tangible benefits from design thinking. The Design
Management Institute tracked the performance of publicly traded companies with best-practice
design management—including Apple, IBM, Nike, SAP, Starbucks, and Target—and found they
consistently outperformed the S&P 500.5

But large companies aren’t the only ones that see real results from design thinking. The Hasso
Plattner Institute’s design thinking survey—which included large, medium, small, and even
“micro” (1-9 employees) companies—found that:
 71 percent of respondents said design thinking improved the working culture at their
organization,
 69 percent of respondents said design thinking made their innovation processes more
efficient,
 48 percent of respondents said design thinking heightened user integration, and
 18 percent of respondents said design thinking saves costs.6

Organizations that Ignore Design Thinking Risk Falling Behind

Smart organizations know that customer centricity and innovation is key to survival in today’s
crowded marketplace, so it’s little wonder that design thinking has gained significant traction.
An APQC survey found that only 11 percent of respondents were unfamiliar with design thinking
(Figure 2).

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 Familiarity With Design Thinking

Figure 2

APQC also found that most organizations—60 percent—have adopted design thinking at least at
the individual or functional level (Figure 3).

Familiarity With Design Thinking

Figure 3

APQC’s findings echo those of the Hasso Plattner Institute survey, in which 72 percent of
respondents reported that design thinking is already in practice in parts of the organization.

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 HOW TO USE DESIGN THINKING
In this section, you will learn how to deploy design thinking at your own organization. Core
design thinking tools and approaches are presented for each step of the five-step design
thinking methodology. However, there are a few things to know before beginning.

Select a Meaningful Pilot Project

Design thinking projects should focus on a visible and business-relevant challenge. They should
not, however, be too high-stakes. Andrew Webster recommends that organizations “pick
something forgiving, like overcoming a plateau.”

Develop a Multi-Disciplinary Project Team

Leaders in design thinking advise against siloing design thinking in one function. Pull project
team members from different areas of the business and train them on the methodology. Choose
individuals who can contribute insights to the focus of the pilot and/or are interested in design
thinking due to their domain expertise or natural inclinations. The team leader should have a
track record of embracing new approaches and encouraging teams.

Frame the Environment

Performance management structures and organizational norms can create barriers to the
execution of the pilot. If managers are primarily rewarded on through-put, they will be unlikely
to support their employees’ participation on the project team. “The way managers are rewarded
and recognized is often the biggest stumbling block to design thinking projects,” said Webster.

Be clear with project team members’ managers about how the pilot will impact day-to-day
work. Catherine Courage, senior VP of customer experience at Citrix Systems, said that
successful design thinking project teams have one thing in common: “they received explicit
support and encouragement from their executive managers.”7

EMPATHIZE
The first step in the design thinking process is to
emphasize with users. Design thinking teams do this by The main tenet of design thinking is
directly engaging with, observing, and immersing empathy for the people you’re trying to
themselves in the user experience. For example, if the design for.
project team wants to learn about the customer
experience at a fast food restaurant, they could:
 speak with patrons about their experience after —David Kelley
they’ve finished their meal; Founder of IDEO
 watch patrons as they approach the counter, order
food, receive it, and dine; or,
 go “undercover” and order from the restaurant as a regular patron would.
Getting into the customers’ mindset is easier said than done. Design thinking offers several
tactics for empathizing with customers.

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 Interviewing
The most direct way to understand users is to ask them about their experience. Stanford’s
d.school, a recognized hub for innovation and design thinking, endorses the idea of
“interviewing for empathy” by slowly building rapport, evoking stories, and exploring emotions.
Interviewers continually ask “why,” even when they think they know the answer. They should
avoid asking binary questions (those that can be answered with one word) and suggesting
answers. Ask simple questions and give interviewees time to think and speak.

The d.school further recommends that teams focus at least some interviews on “extreme
users”—those who use your company’s product or service to a deeper extent than most. For
example, in terms of the grocery shopping experience, professional shoppers would be extreme
users. Extreme users often have interesting shortcuts and workarounds that the design thinking
team can leverage.8

Customer Journey Mapping

A customer journey map is a depiction of a customer’s key interactions with the organization.
The maps incorporate data about customer behavior, feelings, and motivations. Typically
presented in a visual format, customer journey maps help design thinking teams walk through
the complete customer experience.

Analogous Empathy
Sometimes, it’s difficult to observe or find an interviewee for a particular user experience. In
these instances, design teams can use analogous empathy. Identify specific aspects of the
experience, and then brainstorm other situations that match those experiences.9 For example, if
you wanted to understand the experience of a non-English-speaking customer ordering at an
American fast food restaurant—but did not have a translator to observe or interact with such a
customer—you could discuss and analyze similar experiences that project team members had in
foreign countries.

DEFINE
The second step in the design thinking process is to unpack what you discovered in the empathy
stage in order to define a specific challenge. To move forward in the process, you need an
actionable problem statement. It should not be so general that it creates endless solutions (e.g.,
“customers need better service”) nor so specific that the solution is pre-determined (e.g.,
“customers need an app”).

Saturate and Group

Saturate and group is a methodology for unpacking empathy insights with your team. Each team
member writes insights—user quotes, key data points, questions, and ideas—on post-it notes.
Then, team members stick the post-it notes on a wall and group like insights together. This
approach helps teams synthesize findings, especially when team members interview or observe
different users.

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 Laddering
Laddering is a technique for driving deeper into the findings gathered during the empathy stage.
The team starts with one of the user needs and writes it on a whiteboard. Then, the team asks
why the user has this need. The answer is framed as another need. The team keeps asking why
and writing down needs until they reach a very abstract need. Then, the team asks “how”
questions to articulate more specific needs. Climb up (“why”) and down (“how”) in branches to
flesh out a complete set of user needs (Figure 4).

Laddering: Illustrative Example

Figure 4

2x2 Matrix
The 2x2 matrix is a method that design thinking teams often use to evaluate empathy findings
against the available solutions in the market. Pick two spectra that your users care about and
plot items on the matrix. Empty quadrants often signal a great opportunity—or a very bad
idea.10 Figure 5 presents an example of market competitors in a matrix for a fast food customer
who wants a meal that’s both quick and nutritious.

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 2x2 Matrix: Illustrative Example

Figure 5

IDEATE
During the ideate stage, the design thinking team generates a multitude of potential solutions to
the user’s need or problem. The leader should create a positive and open environment by
emphasizing that there are no wrong answers and ideas do not need to be perfect or fully-
formed.

Brainstorm
Brainstorming is one of the most common ideation techniques. The team leader should present
ground rules such as:

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  defer judgment,
 stay focused on the topic,
 encourage wild ideas,
 build on others’ contributions, and
 one conversation at a time.
Good brainstorming sessions begin with a warm up or icebreaker. Then, the leader should ask
questions that encourage everyone to contribute ideas. The leader or designated note taker
records ideas on a whiteboard or flipchart. During the session, be sure to save time at the end
for reflection and grouping similar ideas.

How Might We
Another common ideation technique is “How Might We” (HMW) questioning. Start by looking at
the insights identified during the define stage. Try rephrasing them by adding “How might we”
at the beginning. A single insight or problem statement can suggest several HMW questions.
HMW questions should be broad enough to generate multiple ideas, but narrow enough to
frame where to start.11

Encourage creativity by taking it to the extreme, focusing on emotions, exploring the opposite,
and questioning assumptions.12 For example, given the insight, “customer wants healthy food,”
HMW questions could include:
 HMW offer food that’s healthier than eating at home?
 HMW offer a restaurant experience that makes the customer feel healthy?
 HMW make the most calorie-dense food?
 HMW we make french fries healthy?

PROTOTYPE
In the fourth stage of the design thinking process, the team starts prototyping ideas. The team
should prototype multiple ideas rather than selecting one “perfect” idea to prototype. Team
leaders often impose a time restriction on the prototyping stage, which helps ensure that team
members build simple prototypes.

“Prototyping is the mindset of build-to-think,” said Andrew Webster. “It’s a focus less on ‘How
do I shove this idea thought?’ and more on ‘What are the things that I’m learning and what
direction does this point me in?’”

Identify a Variable
Design teams often create multiple prototypes around a single variable. This allows the team to
fully test one specific, key feature. For example, a team that’s prototyping a “healthy salad that
customers want” might isolate the variable “salad dressing” and leave all the other ingredients
(e.g., lettuce, cucumber, tomato) the same for each prototype.

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 User-Driven Prototyping
Some design teams involve users in the prototyping process. This can reveal hidden
assumptions, needs, and insights. User-driven prototyping can involve asking users to draw
something, make something, or act out a behavior. For example, to perform user-driven
prototyping on the idea “healthy salad that customers want,” the team might set out a wide
variety of ingredients and ask the user to choose which they would want on their healthy salad.

TEST
In the final phase, the team evaluates which prototypes performed best, refines those
prototypes, and tests them with real users.

Test with Users

When testing your prototypes with users, it’s important
to “show, don’t tell.” Don’t walk the user through exactly
how to use the prototype. Instead, let them play with it Design has been a way to scale the
and figure out what to do. Actively observe the user and probability of excellent outcomes.
ask questions about what they are thinking and feeling as
they interact with the prototype. Don’t correct the user if —Phil Gilbert
they are using the prototype in a way you did not General Manager, IBM Design
intend.13

Integrate Agile
Agile is a project management methodology that stresses iteration, collaboration, and customer
centricity. Agile and design thinking are complementary methodologies. Employees that know
Agile are an asset for all design thinking stages. They are especially helpful during the testing
phase, though, because they know the methodology for turning a minimum viable product into
a pilot then into production. Agile team members can provide additional insights and benefit
from observing the testing phase.

HOW LEADING ORGANIZATIONS DO IT

IBM
IBM uses design thinking across a diverse portfolio of projects and services. The organization has
an in-house innovation lab, IBM Design Thinking, and 30 studio spaces allocated for design
thinking work. IBM achieved significant bottom-line results though design thinking. The
organization:
 doubled design and execution speed for projects,
 reduced development and testing time by 33%,
 cut design defects in half,
 accelerated time to market increased by $182,000 per minor project and $1.1 million per
major project, and
 streamlined processes to reduce costs by $9.2 million.14

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 MASSMUTUAL
American life insurance company MassMutual used design thinking to tackle a major challenge:
getting young people to buy life insurance. By empathizing with their target customers,
MassMutual learned that young people did not want to buy a life insurance product. However,
they were interested in learning to prepare for their financial future.

In 2014, the organization launched “Society of Grownups,” a multichannel experience with

digital budget and financial planning cools, library customers could visit, and a rich curriculum of
online courses and how-to videos. The “Society of Grownups” positions itself as a “master’s
program for adulthood” and is designed to evolve as participants provide MassMutual with
insights into their needs.15

ROTTERDAM EYE HOSPIT AL

The Rotterdam Eye Hospital leveraged design thinking to create a more comfortable and
welcoming patient experience. A design thinking team composed of the organization’s CEO,
CFO, managers, staff, and doctors started by exploring how patients felt. They learned that
patients’ foremost emotion was a fear of going blind. The team looked in and beyond their
industry for examples of welcoming environments. They leveraged their findings to run a series
of small-scale, inexpensive experiments.

In the end, the organization made a variety of big and small organizational changes to create a
welcoming environment. For example, they:
 created an iPad app for patients to track their progress,
 introduced whimsical and colorful elements into the children’s department; and,
 created a fear-reduction training program inspired by the safety and training programs of
airlines.
These innovations brought bottom-line results. Rotterdam Eye Hospital’s patients heal faster
and have a more positive experience. The hospital staff can now conduct 95 percent of all
procedures without an overnight stay and the hospital scores 8.6 (out of 10) on its customer
satisfaction surveys.16

CHALLENGES
APQC’s design thinking survey found that organizations struggle most with the functional
components of adopting design thinking (Figure 6).

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 Top 4 Design Thinking Challenges

Figure 6

These challenges are common in the adoption of any new methodology. The key to overcoming
them is to understand the explicit value drivers. Once you understand what design thinking is
for—tackling complex, ill-defined problems—you can figure out the right use cases, integrate it
with existing tools, and pinpoint who to train.

Some individuals in the organization resist design thinking because they think it’s a fad. Design
thinking is growing more popular and penetrating more industries, so it’s little wonder that
voices against it are growing louder. For example, a recent article in the Chronicle of Higher
Education called design thinking a “boondoggle” and “little more than floating balloons of
jargon.”17

Help naysayers understand the value of design thinking by showcasing internal successes and
external company examples. You might also just need to give detractors time to come around.
When Catherine Courage implemented design thinking across Citrix, some teams resisted. “This
taught us to be patient when there isn’t traction,” she said. “In one case, it took a year until a
team that hadn’t been interested before called on us for help on a project. We’ve learned to
help fuel the team with relatable examples of success for sources both internal and external.”18

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 CRITICAL SUCCESS FACTORS
Organizations should set realistic expectations if they want to be successful with design thinking.
Design thinking projects don’t always result in a ready-to-market product. Sometimes, design
thinking reveals uncomfortable truths about the organization’s products, services, customers, or
business model. Executives should be open to the ambiguity of design thinking and know that is
not a silver bullet. Design thinking is an excellent methodology for tackling complex, user-
related problems. For other business challenges, more traditional improvement tools like Lean
and Six Sigma are more effective.

Design thinking works best when it’s not siloed. The strongest design thinking teams have
members from different areas of the company. This not only improves outcomes for the project
team: it also helps the methodology spread throughout the organization, which in turn
promotes customer centricity and creativity as organizational values. “You need to make it
[design thinking] part of all processes and not just something you do on select projects,” said
Catherine Courage. “Starting by looking through the customer lens has to be ingrained in
everything you do. Developing that foundation and creating that cultural change across all
projects and initiatives is what it takes.”19

ABOUT APQC
APQC helps organizations work smarter, faster, and with greater confidence. It is the world’s
foremost authority in benchmarking, best practices, process and performance improvement,
and knowledge management. APQC’s unique structure as a member-based nonprofit makes it a
differentiator in the marketplace. APQC partners with more than 500 member organizations
worldwide in all industries. With more than 40 years of experience, APQC remains the world’s
leader in transforming organizations. Visit us at www.apqc.org, and learn how you can make
best practices your practices.

1
Tim Brown, “Design Thinking.” Harvard Business Review (2008).
2
Jeanne Liedtka, “Innovative Ways Companies are Using Design Thinking.” Strategy &
Leadership (2014).
3
Jan Schiedgen, Holger Rhinow, Eva Köppen, and Chrisoph Meniel. Parts Without a Whole? –
The Current State of Design Thinking Practice in Organizations (2015).
4
In “Innovative Ways Companies are Using Design Thinking.”
5
Jeneanne Rae, “The Power and Value of Design Continues to Grow Across the S&P 500,”
dmi:Review (2016).
6
Parts Without a Whole? – The Current State of Design Thinking Practice in Organizations.
7
Hugo Sarrazin and Hyo Yeon, “Applying design thinking across the business: An interview with
Citrix’s Catherine Courage.” McKinsey & Company (2015).
8
“Design Thinking Bootleg.” d.school, The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (2018).
9
Ditte Mortensen, “Stage 1 in the Design Thinking Process: Empathize with Your Users.”
Interaction Design Foundation (2017).
10
“Design Thinking Bootleg.”
11
“How Might We.” Design Kit (2018).
12
“How Might We Questions.” d.school, The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford
(2018).

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 13
“Design Thinking Bootleg.”
14
“The Total Economic Impact of IBM’s Design Thinking Practice.” Forrester (2018).
15
Tim Brown and Rodger L. Martin, “Design for Action.” Harvard Business Review (2015).
16
“Dirk Deichmann and Roel van der Heijde, “How Design Thinking Turned One Hospital into a
Bright and Comforting Place.” Harvard Business Review (2016).
17
Lee Vinsel, “Design Thinking Is a Boondoggle.” The Chronicle of Higher Education (2018).
18
“Applying design thinking across the business: An interview with Citrix’s Catherine Courage.”
19
“Applying design thinking across the business: An interview with Citrix’s Catherine Courage.”

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