What is design thinking?

What is design thinking? For me design thinking is two simple things. Design thinking is an attitude to the world and it is a way of organising design action in the world. 

First, design thinking is simply an attitude to the world. I think of it as a way of seeing the world, an openness to seeing things differently from time to time. This mode of design thinking needs us to be awake to the ways we encounter the world, things, and interactions because most of the time most of these happenings are kind of invisible, subliminal.

The second way of thinking about design thinking is that it is simply a way of organising design action in the world. This is the public version of design thinking that we see in the IDEO videos or presented as design sprints. And design action in this sense is the process of finding challenges, problems, envisaging and idea generation, solution proposal and creation, testing and feedback, and again and again.

This post by Kristen Seversky also offers a short but thoughtful take on design thinking in the realm of software development. Kirsten describes herself as a "product-owning, design-thinking, code-writing, people person striving to make tech more meaningful and inclusive." In Design thinking and my journey from software developer to product owner she reflects that:

``Design thinking isn’t a set of laws; it’s a shift in focus that re-centers humans at the core of our work. We’re a bunch of humans building solutions that humans will use. Maintaining exposure to their realities is our only means of actually solving problems instead of indirectly creating new ones. It’s an ethical agenda.''