What is design thinking? What characterizes the approach?

Design thinking is an iterative and customer-centric method for solving complex problems and developing new ideas. Design thinking is one of the agile approaches, such as Scrum and Kanban. Agile approaches offer teams and companies the opportunity to react to changes in a short space of time, for example to quickly adapt a project to changing customer requirements.

In contrast to Scrum and Kanban, which are used to implement ideas/solutions that are already established, the design thinking method is particularly suitable for the early phases of the innovation process, for example when there is no business idea yet. The open process allows for many ideas, many of which are discarded until a convincing idea or solution is found.

The design thinking method owes the first part of its name to the way designers work, following an intuitive process based on observation and focusing on utilization. The second part of the name "Thinking" stands for the research and investigation of the feasibility and economic viability of the proposed solutions.

Design thinking has evolved from industrial design, which focuses on the development of innovative products and services with a strong focus on customer needs. Design thinking combines the open, creative and flexible with the systematic and structured - an unbeatable team for different questions and problem areas.

Essential factors of the Design Thinking method:

• Team:Design thinking is characterized by a great openness to ideas, feedback, different opinions and diversity. The more diverse, i.e. interdisciplinary, a team is made up of - according to the approach - the more different perspectives come together, enrich the process and can create a variety of innovations.
• Room:Typical of design thinking is the flexible and freely configurable working environment, for example with movable furniture, high tables, whiteboards, etc. It is also important to have a large selection of working materials so that the team can quickly create a prototype.
• Iteration:Finally, the iterative design thinking process is central. This means that the teams repeat the individual steps until they have found a solution that the user likes. Overall, the design thinking process consists of six phases: Understanding, observing, defining perspectives, finding ideas, developing prototypes, testing.

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