The Five Phases of Design Thinking are: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
Phase 1: Empathize: Empathy provides the critical starting point for Design Thinking. The first stage of the process is spent getting to know the user and understanding their wants, needs and objectives. This means observing and engaging with people in order to understand them on a psychological and emotional level. During this phase, the designer seeks to set aside their assumptions and gather real insights about the user.
Phase 2: Define: The second stage in the Design Thinking process is dedicated to defining the problem. You will gather all of your findings from the empathize phase and start to make sense of them: what difficulties and barriers are your users coming up against? What patterns do you observe? What is the big user problem that your team needs to solve? By the end of the define phase, you will have a clear problem statement. The key here is to frame the problem in a user -centered way; rather than saying ―We need to, frame it in terms of your user: ―Retirees in the Bay area need. Once you have formulated the problem into words, you can start to come up with solutions and ideas — which brings us onto stage three.
Phase 3: Ideate: with a solid understanding of your users and a clear problem statement in mind, it’s time to start working on potential solutions. The third phase in the Design Thinking process is where the creativity happens, and it’s crucial to point out that the ideation stage is a judgement -free zone! Designers will hold ideation sessions in order to come up with as many new angles and ideas as possible. There are many different types of ideation technique that designers might use, from brainstorming and mind mapping to body storming (role -play scenarios) and provocation — an extreme lateral -thinking technique that gets the designer to challenge established beliefs and explore new options and 15 alternatives. Towards the end of the ideation phase, you will narrow it down to a few ideas with which to move forward. You can learn about all the most important ideation techniques here.
Phase 4: Prototype: The fourth step in the Design Thinking process is all about experimentation and turning ideas into tangible products. A prototype is basically a scaled -down version of the product which incorporates the potential solutions identified in the previous stages. This step is key in putting each solution to the test and highlighting any constraints and flaws. Throughout the prototype stage, the proposed solutions may be accepted, improved, redesigned or rejected depending on how they fare in prototype form. You can read all about the prototyping stage of Design Thinking in this in -depth guide.
Phase 5: Test After prototyping comes user testing, but it’s important to note that this is rarely the end of the Design Thinking process. In reality, the results of the testing phase will often lead you back to a previous step, providing the insights you need to redefine the original problem statement or to come up with new ideas you had not thought of before.
