Thinking about Design Thinking

How might you change the following description of Design Thinking?

Design Thinking is a human-centered problem-solving mindset that deliveries value by challenging status quo to realize preferred future states. This comes from ideation centered on end-to-end needs of people, informed by sources of innovation, enabled through collaboration. Design Thinking begins and ends with people, flaring and focusing ideas by asking, "How might we..."

I was thinking about this recently after a colleague asked me how Design Thinking is different from Service Design, User Experience, Customer Experience and other Design mindsets and methods.

I answered this by saying, "How might we think about that differently? There are many mindsets that can add value by bringing new ideas into the world; to help people, to grow business through improved loyalty, better employee engagement or other outcomes. The tricky part is defining the right problem to solve, then getting the right people together to generate ideas in a right and fast way."

I have seen "Design Thinking" referenced and applied in many domains, from supply chain logistics to healthcare and other services.

Many mindsets can be leveraged in these same domains to improve processes and experiences, including some not mentioned above such as Six Sigma.

However, I think Design Thinking elevates and more rapidly propagates thinking across channels and lifecycle. In my experience this mindset delivers ideas even more collaboratively, broadly and further into the future than other mindsets.

This elevation is important, to enable Designers and stakeholders (many people are Designers - see Herbert Simon) to think about the current states of experiences, then ideate preferred future states, prioritize ideas on impact and constraints, and plan execution (a process I call flaring and focusing). While doing this, teams need to maintain a mindset that drives toward intuitive end-to-end experiences that add value for multiple parties.

Design Thinking is a continuous process, just as sources of innovation change continuously.

I think the meaning of the phrase "Design Thinking" matters. However, what matters more is the ability of leaders to clearly describe the objectives, methods and demonstrated outcomes of the mindset.

Just as "innovation" has often been described as a prescriptive process, I have heard Design Thinking described as a sequential set of methods that, when strung together, result in disruptive, value-added experiences. However, this mindset was never meant to prescribe a process. It was meant to challenge linear thinking and enable teams to leverage subject matter expertise and the voices and experiences of customers to form new ideas.

My main objective as an experience design leader is to demonstrate the value of different ways of thinking to collaboratively generate new ideas to inform strategy and deliver new, sustainable value, fast.

Embedding a human-centered, value-driven, end-to-end mindset in organizations requires active listening, patience and tenacity. It also requires training and conversations with leaders and other influencers, contractors and supporting vendors, to enable people with mindsets and methods that are applicable to their daily work and to problems they are facing right now.

How have you instilled a Design Thinking mindset in your organization? What examples can you share about the way you train and influence leaders to fund and participate in collaborative ideation?

What do you think?