Hi and welcome back. In today’s episode, I’m going to provide an overview of design thinking.

Design thinking is a process for solving problems.

According to PwC innovation, problem solving and creativity are some of the most highly sought after skills in today’s modern world. And when we combine the fact that the world is changing faster than ever, it compels companies to reinvent and innovate in order to remain competitive.

Design thinking process can unlock imagination to envision what does not already exist, generate ideas and innovate by implementing creative ideas.

At its core, design thinking is humancentered. First of all, it seeks to understand what is desirable by people and then validate that and determine whether there is something that is technologically feasible or feasible within the setting of that organization and lastly, whether the idea is commercially viable.

The design thinking model has often five phases, empathize, define, ideate prototyping testing and iterating.

One of the best models that I’ve come across is the DUCTRI model and that was created by Dr. Christian Walsh. Sounds funny, but it is an acronym for Discovery, Understanding, Creating, Testing, Resourcing and Implementation.

We’re going to be discovering a lot of that in the upcoming episodes.

The design thinking principles, of which there are four, are firstly, people centric. After all, it’s all about people. People solving problems for people in the real world.

Diverse collaboration. So in collaborating with people of many varied backgrounds, viewpoints and cognitive styles in order to increase the chances of more robust insights and solutions emerging.

And, we do that all with an optimistic growth mindset. Being optimistic has proved to allow more creative thinking, whereas constraints are seen as creative opportunities and problems are embraced and viewed as solvable, no matter how big the problem is or how small.

Underpinning everything is a design thinking mindset. Design thinking itself is a philosophy. It has an overarching way of thinking about problem solving in a human centric way. And it’s these mindsets that are essential.

The key takeaway for today about design thinking is that design thinking has the power to transform businesses and solve big and small problems.

While you don’t need to be a creative person, following and trusting the process and the techniques that we’re going to explore in later episodes is essential to uncover customer needs, to consider possible solutions and deliver desirable, feasible and viable solutions.

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Until next time, here’s to your success.