The first phase of Design Thinking begins by assembling a cross-functional team and working with stakeholders define the design challenge, that is the problem you are attempting to solve. This ensures that even for the most challenging problems the team is able to take into account changing conditions and expectations of stakeholders to identify, scope, and frame the problem for maximum success. At times it might be necessary throughout the project lifecycle to reframe the problem in order to achieve greater success for the project, making the definition of the Design Challenge an on-going activity within the project.

Design Thinking takes a holistic approach to problem solving and champions the use of 360° Analysis to explore all relevant influences. In addition to the understanding business and technological parameters, Design Thinking commonly looks at external market influences, physical environments, adjacent business contexts, the human and organizational constraints, etc. As with the other aspects of Design Thinking, the analysis is continual; whether it is researching customer or validating prototypes, or keeping a vigilant eye on the changing organizational or market demands, Design Thinking provides a framework for the team to constantly and efficiently assess their efforts ensuring alignment and acceptance of the solution.

Synthesis provides the team and its stakeholders the ability to generate both opportunity insights and actionable ideas and to create alternative responses to these business opportunities for the organization. In addition to identifying how to potentially improve the problem condition, Synthesis generates a framework for prioritizing and selecting the best ideas. There are many methods for turning insight into action, the goal of Synthesis is for the multi-disciplinary team to organize their research, create actionable insights, define design principles and generate alternative solutions. In addition to developing the ideas to improve the execution of the problem this section will also show you how to effectively select those ideas that best solve the problem based on user needs, business opportunities and practical feasibility.

The mantra of Design Thinking is “make to think”. Prototyping is fundamental to Design Thinking. Rapidly iterate on prototypes, evaluate proposed solutions, gather feedback about them, and refine solution by incorporating feedback, accepting and learning from failures. Design Thinking is a continual process of iteration and refinement, building and validating prototypes in order to continually insure the design challenge will deliver value to the customer and the organization. Prototypes provide teams with the ability rapidly develop multiple solutions and how to use them to align the organization around the implications for each alternative. This section will provide you with the tools and methods for rapidly building a range of prototypes and the ability to select what type of prototype, from simple paper prototypes to complex functional systems; best meets the team’s goals. It will also give you the means for gathering feedback and refine prototypes. As well as the how to best accept and learn from the teams failures—not all the prototypes the team build will work. But even failures provide insight and value!