How to Use Design Thinking in Your Business

How to Use Design Thinking in Your Business

Design Thinking is a human-centred, iterative process for creative problem-solving, moving beyond aesthetics to focus on user needs and rapid experimentation. 

Popularised by IDEO and the Stanford d.school, the framework consists of five key stages: Empathise with users, Define their problem, Ideate solutions, create a Prototype, and Test it. 

By using this structured approach, businesses can reduce innovation risk and develop products, services, and strategies that are genuinely desirable to their customers.

First, Forget the 5-Step Diagram You've Seen.

You’ve probably seen the diagram. It looks clean and orderly: 1. Empathise, 2. Define 3. Ideate, 4. Prototype, 5. Test. It gives the impression of a neat, linear process.

That is a lie.

Thinking this is a step-by-step recipe is the first and most common mistake. It’s not a ladder you climb. It's a loop. In reality, the process is messy, chaotic, and beautiful. 

You'll be in the middle of prototyping something and realise you've completely misunderstood the user, which sends you hurtling right back to the empathy stage. 

You'll test a prototype and discover you've solved the wrong problem, forcing you to go back and redefine it.

The five phases aren't a recipe; they are a map. They give you a sense of where you are and where you might need to go next. Think of them as modes of thinking, not rigid project plan stages.

Phase 1: Empathise (Stop Guessing, Start Watching)

The goal of the Empathise phase is to understand the user's experience, motivations, and problems from their perspective. It’s the foundation of the entire process.

But the word “empathy” has been weaponised by business gurus and diluted into a soft, fluffy concept. 

Genuine empathy in a business context isn't about feeling sorry for your customers. It's about the rigorous, unsentimental observation of their behaviour to find opportunities they can't articulate.

You must ignore what people say they want and focus obsessively on what they do.

Practical, Low-Cost Methods for Empathy

• Pure Observation: Watch people. That's it. When P&G wanted to improve cleaning products, they didn't just run focus groups. They sent researchers into homes to watch people mop their floors. They saw the frustration, the mess, the whole tedious process. Out of those observations came the Swiffer—a revolutionary product born from watching, not asking. For your business, this could mean watching a screen recording of someone trying to use your website or spending 3 hours standing silently in a corner of your shop, just observing customer flow.
• The Right Kind of Interview: Don't ask, “What do you want?” That question invites lazy, uninspired answers. Instead, ask about past behaviours. Ask them to tell you a story. Use the “5 Whys” technique, popularised by Toyota, to get to the root of an issue. If a customer says, “I don't like your checkout process,” don't stop there.
  1. Why? “It asks for too much information.”
  2. Why is that a problem? “I was in a hurry and didn't have my credit card.”
  3. Why were you in a hurry? “I was trying to buy it during my 10-minute coffee break.” The problem isn't the number of fields; the problem is the context of the user—a time-crunched break.
• Empathy Mapping: This is a simple tool to process your learning. Draw four quadrants: Says, Thinks, Does, Feels. After an observation or interview, map out what the person literally said, what you infer they were thinking, what actions they took, and what emotions you observed. It forces you to move beyond surface-level comments and synthesise a more holistic view of their experience.

Phase 2: Define (Frame the Right Problem)

This is the most critical phase, and the one most businesses rush through. The goal here is to take all your observations from the Empathy phase and synthesise them into a clear, actionable problem statement.

A brilliant solution to the wrong problem is completely and utterly worthless.

You're not just defining a problem; you are framing an opportunity. Your perspective here will dictate the entire direction of your work. 

If you define the problem as “our sales are down,” your solutions will be generic. If you define it as “our customers feel overwhelmed by choice,” your solutions will be focused and powerful.

How to Craft a Powerful Problem Statement

The best way to frame a problem is with the “How Might We…” (HMW) format. This simple phrasing, popularised at the Stanford d.school, is genius because it does three things:

1. “How” assumes a solution exists.
2. “Might” permits you to explore ideas that might not work.
3. “We” make it a collaborative, shared challenge.

The template is simple: How Might We [Action Verb] for [User] so that [Desired Outcome]?

Let's use a hypothetical coffee shop as an example.

• Initial (bad) problem: “We need to get more morning customers.”
• Empathy findings: You observed commuters looking at your shop, then at their watches, and walking on. You interviewed a few and found they were stressed about being late for work.
• “How Might We…” Statement: “How Might We reduce the time it takes for hurried commuters to get their coffee so they don't have to skip their daily caffeine fix?”

See the difference? The first is a business-centric goal. The second is a human-centred challenge that sparks immediate ideas.

Phase 3: Ideate (Go for Quantity, Not Quality… At First)

Now that you have a well-framed problem, the Ideate phase is about generating the broadest possible range of potential solutions.

The single most important rule of ideation is to defer judgment. At this stage, there are no bad ideas. The goal is to fill the wall with possibilities. 

You are aiming for quantity, not quality. 

The innovative solution is often hidden behind a dozen obvious or silly ones. Criticising ideas early is the fastest way to kill creativity.

Simple Ideation Techniques That Work

• Brainstorming (With Rules): Most brainstorming sessions are useless because they have no rules. Here are the only ones that matter:
  • Defer judgment: No criticising, no debating.
  • Encourage wild ideas: It's easier to tame a wild idea than to inject life into a boring one.
  • Build on the ideas of others: Use “Yes, and…” thinking instead of “No, but…”
  • Go for quantity: Set a goal, like “100 ideas in 20 minutes.”
• Worst Possible Idea: This is a fantastic way to break the tension when a group is stuck. Ask, “What is the worst way we could solve this problem?” It's fun, it's low-pressure, and in dissecting why an idea is terrible, you often uncover the principles of a great one.
• Analogous Inspiration: Look at how other industries solve a similar problem. For our coffee shop's speed problem, how do Formula 1 pit crews handle speed? How do hospital emergency rooms triage patients? These analogies can spark novel solutions you wouldn't find by looking at other cafes.

Phase 4: Prototype (Make Your Ideas Tangible and Cheap)

Ideas are worthless until you make them real. The Prototype phase is about building a low-cost, testable version of your best ideas.

This is where you stop talking and start making. The fundamental purpose of a prototype is to learn. It is a tool for asking a question. It is not a smaller version of your final product. 

The lower the fidelity, the better, especially at the beginning. If you spend too much time making a prototype beautiful, you'll become emotionally attached to it and won't be open to the negative feedback you desperately need.

Prototypes You Can Build in an Afternoon

• Sketches & Storyboards: Visualise the user's experience. A simple, hand-drawn comic strip showing how customers interact with your new service is a powerful prototype. It costs nothing but a pen and paper.
• Role-Playing: If your idea is a service, act it out. Set up a fake “express lane” for the coffee shop and have a team member play the hurried commuter. This immediately reveals friction points in the process.
• A “Wizard of Oz” Prototype: This is a fantastic technique for digital products. Create a simple front-end interface (like a landing page or a form) and manually perform the back-end functions yourself. The user thinks they are interacting with a sophisticated system, but you are behind the curtain pulling the levers. It's the fastest way to test if anyone wants the thing before writing a single line of code.

Remember the classic Airbnb story. The founders hypothesised that people weren't booking rooms because the amateur photos looked untrustworthy. 

Their prototype wasn't a new website; they went out with a rented camera and took beautiful pictures of one of their listings. 

When that listing's bookings shot up, they had validated their idea. That was a cheap, fast, effective prototype.

Phase 5: Test (Get Feedback and Kill Bad Ideas Quickly)

In the Test phase, you put your prototype before real users to see how they react.

Your mindset here is critical. You are not selling or defending your idea. You are a scientist seeking the brutal, unvarnished truth. 

You should be actively looking for flaws in your thinking. Whenever a user gets confused or frustrated by your prototype, that's a win. It's a valuable piece of learning that just saved you time and money.

How to Run a Useful Test

• Show, Don't Tell: Give the user the prototype and a simple task. For example, “Show me how you would order a coffee for pickup using this.” Then, the most crucial part: shut up and watch. Resist the urge to explain or guide them. Let them struggle. Their struggle is your data.
• Focus on a Small Sample: You don't need a huge, statistically significant sample size for this kind of qualitative testing. The Nielsen Norman Group famously showed that you can uncover over 80% of the major usability issues in an interface by testing with just five users.
• Iterate: The output of a test is not a finished product. The output is a list of learnings. These learnings will almost always send you back to an earlier phase. The feedback might force you to tweak your prototype, generate new ideas, or even go back to the Empathise phase because you discovered you were solving a problem nobody actually has. This loop—Build, Measure, Learn—is the engine of Design Thinking.

The Real Enemy: Avoiding “Innovation Theatre”

Remember the villain we talked about? Let's revisit it. Many organisations love the idea of Design Thinking but lack the courage to follow through. They run the fun workshop but baulk at the messy reality of prototyping and testing.

This is my biggest pet peeve. The two-day “Design Thinking bootcamp” that generates a thousand sticky notes and a fancy PowerPoint deck but leads to zero action is worse than doing nothing. It creates cynicism and gives innovation a bad name.

Here are the warning signs that you're slipping into Innovation Theatre:

• There's no clear, well-defined problem statement (a “How Might We…”) before the workshop begins.
• There's no dedicated, if small, budget or time allocated for prototyping and testing after the workshop.
• The focus is on the “fun” of the ideation session, not the hard work of validating the ideas.
• Success is measured by the number of ideas generated, not the number of hypotheses tested.

Real Design Thinking is a disciplined process for de-risking investment. It's about making intelligent, validated decisions about where to put your time and money. 

This is the same thinking that underpins a powerful brand strategy. It’s not about guessing what might work; it's about deeply understanding who you serve and building a brand that solves their real problems.

Your Next Step: Just Start Small

You don't need a consultant or a dedicated “innovation lab” to use Design Thinking. You just need a nagging problem and a bit of curiosity.

Don't try to boil the ocean. Pick one small, frustrating aspect of your business. Maybe it’s a high rate of abandoned shopping carts. Perhaps it’s the confusing intake form you send to new clients. Maybe it's the way customers physically move through your retail space.

Then, just try one thing from this guide.

Spend an hour just watching. Interview three customers. Sketch out a new process on a piece of paper and show it to someone. The goal isn't to “do Design Thinking” perfectly. The goal is to solve the customer's problem. This framework is just a tool to help you get there.

How to Use Design Thinking (FAQs)

Obsessing over customers' needs isn't just a step; it's the foundation of a brand that lasts. When you know precisely what problem you solve for them, every part of your brand—from your logo to your language—becomes more powerful.

If you're ready to build a brand based on real insight instead of guesswork, our Brand Strategy services might be the logical next step. We help you define who you are by first understanding who you serve.

See how we approach it at Inkbot Design.