The Design Thinking Workbook

Design thinking solves human-centered problems.

While new technology, like artificial intelligence, can measure and predict human behavior, it doesn’t answer the question of why people act they way they do – such as why people buy one type of soap over another. Creating solutions that actually address human-centered problems involves designing from the consumer’s point of view.

Companies that embrace this style of design thinking grow twice as fast and receive 75% higher returns for their stakeholders. Focusing on customer insights – such as, people buy soap based on how refreshing it sounds – rather than market trends – such as, people buy a lot of colorful soap – leads to three times the “operating income” and twice the amount of “return on assets.”

Design thinking is a lengthy process that works particularly well in solving complex, unclear people problems. For example, if you work at a hospital and notice that patients almost never return for their follow-up appointments, design thinking can help you determine why, and how you could innovate a solution to get people to come back.

Many people have come up ...