Design Thinking is a 5-stage iterative process that involves empathizing with users to understand problems, defining the core problems, ideating potential solutions, prototyping solutions, and testing them. It is a human-centered approach useful for solving ill-defined problems. The 5 stages are empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test. Design thinking helps businesses optimize processes, the IT industry develop solutions that meet user needs, education institutions address student challenges, and healthcare lower costs while improving quality.

1. Design Thinking

2. What is Design Thinking??
Design Thinking is an iterative process in which we seek to understand
the user, challenge assumptions, and redefine problems in an attempt
to identify alternative strategies and solutions that might not be
instantly apparent with our initial level of understanding. At the same
time, Design Thinking provides a solution-based approach to solving
problems. It is a way of thinking and working as well as a collection of
hands-on methods.

3. Importance of Design Thinking
Design Thinking is extremely useful in tackling problems that are ill-
defined or unknown, by re-framing the problem in human-centric ways,
creating many ideas in brainstorming sessions, and adopting a hands-
on approach in prototyping and testing. Design thinking gives you an
opportunity to take a look at problems from a completely different
perspective.

4. 5 stages of Design Thinking
1. Empathize
The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an empathic
understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. This involves
consulting experts to find out more about the area of concern through
observing, engaging and empathizing with people to understand their
experiences and motivations, as well as immersing yourself in the
physical environment so you can gain a deeper personal understanding
of the issues involved.

5. 2. Define (The Problem)
During the Define stage, you put together the information you have
created and gathered during the Empathise stage. This is where you
will analyse your observations and synthesise them in order to define
the core problems that you and your team have identified up to this
point.
3. Ideate
During the third stage of the Design Thinking process, designers are
ready to start generating ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users
and their needs in the Empathise stage, and you’ve analysed and
synthesised your observations in the Define stage, and ended up with a
human-centered problem statement. With this solid background, you
and your team members can start to "think outside the box" to identify
new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created, and you can
start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem.

6. 4.Prototype
The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled
down versions of the product or specific features found within the
product, so they can investigate the problem solutions generated in the
previous stage. Prototypes may be shared and tested within the team
itself, in other departments, or on a small group of people outside the
design team. This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify
the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during
the first three stages.

7. 5.Test
Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the
best solutions identified during the prototyping phase. This is the final
stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative process, the results
generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one or
more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the
conditions of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to
empathise.

8. Applications of Digital Marketing
• Business
Design thinking helps in businesses by optimizing the process of
product creation, marketing, and renewal of contracts. All these
processes require a companywide focus on the customer and hence,
design thinking helps in these processes immensely. Design thinking
helps the design thinkers to develop deep empathy for their customers
and to create solutions that match their needs exactly. The solutions
are not delivered just for the sake of technology.

9. • Information Technology
The IT industry makes a lot of products that require trials and proof of
concepts. The industry needs to empathize with its users and not
simply deploy technologies. IT is not only about technology or
products, but also its processes. The developers, analysts, consultants,
and managers have to brainstorm on possible ideas for solving the
problems of the clients. This is where design thinking helps a lot.
• Education
The education sector can make the best use of design thinking by
taking feedback from students on their requirements, goals and
challenges they are facing in the classroom. By working on their
feedback, the instructors can come up with solutions to address their
challenges.

10. • Healthcare
Design thinking helps in healthcare as well. The expenditure on
healthcare by the government and the cost of healthcare facilities is
growing by the day. Experts worldwide are concerned about how to
bring quality healthcare to people at low cost.

11. About Henry Harvin
Henry Harvin® is a leading career and competency development
organization with focus on value creation. We are into the business of
training, skill development, assessment centres, content services and
higher education. Our dream is to establish 'Henry Harvin®' in line with
the vision of Mr.Henry Dunster 400 years ago which now resonates in
the form of a prestigious educational institution respected worldwide.

12. If you are interested to know more about Design Thinking, join the
Design Thinking Certification Course by Henry Harvin®.