Design+Thinking

Design Thinking
What is the Design Thinking Process?

The design thinking process is a process for creating products that begins by considering the needs of the people who will use them. It has five steps:
 * 1) **Empathize**: empathizing is the process of getting to know your potential users. You must **identify the user** (be specific) and **find out about them** through observations and interviews. Note that observation is valueless and does not involve interpretation of what you see. Just record what happens, try to understand it later.
 * 2) **Define**: after you understand the person who will use the product, define the problem it will solve. What problems does your user have that you could solve? A good problem statement is open to many possible solutions. Create a specific and meaningful challenge.
 * 3) **Ideate**: brainstorm as many solutions to the problem as possible. The goals are volume and diversity. Evaluation of ideas as either good or bad will happen later - this stage just calls for more ideas.
 * 4) **Prototype**: create an example of part of the product. A prototype is not fully featured. It is anything in a physical form - post-its, role plays, objects, and storyboards are all prototypes as long as they demonstrate some aspect of the potential product. The goal is to show not tell about the product and to understand the problem and users better. Prototyping is fast and low-cost; failure helps you improve future products
 * 5) **Test**: get feedback on the prototype from users. Refine and create new prototypes based on tests. "Prototype as if you know you're right and test as if you know you're wrong."

More Information Much of the information here came from the K-12 design wiki

This process was also used in the Technovation Challenge curriculum