If you’re like many people, while you may have heard the terms “design thinking” or “human-centered design,” you may likely be wondering just what exactly do they mean? I fortunately had the experience of participating in a design thinking bootcamp last week, in which we covered the entire design thinking process — from start to finish.

To begin, like most projects, a designer must embark on the process of conducting research. Although similar to other forms of research in many ways (e.g., interviews, questionnaires, etc.), what distinguishes design research from other forms is that it places a premium on immersing the researcher (or research team) into the actual context of the problem they’re trying to solve, in order to not only gather useful data but also gain empathy with those they are learning about. Transcribing interviews is a beneficial tool for design researchers during this process, as it allows them to later reflect on what participants had to convey.

After they feel they have conducted enough research, the designers go to work on trying to make sense of it. In this process — referred to as “synthesis” — the researchers are attempting to draw inferences. But unlike some other forms of research, the designer must externalize what they have learned by taking the knowledge from their head (or computer or piece of paper, etc.) and putting it in the form of chunks of data that are usable. Doing so allows them to combine participant feedback in various ways, create new insights, and identify underlying patterns or anomalies.

Next, the designer begins to ideate. In this phase of the design thinking process, the designer is suspending their judgement, and simply creating new opportunities that were revealed from user needs uncovered by the previous research and synthesis processes. This type of thinking if often called “divergent thinking,” and is the process of generating lots and lots of ideas while turning off your inner critic.

As opposed to divergent thinking, in the final design thinking phase, “convergent thinking” begins to take place, in which the designer begins to sort ideas that are more plausible from those that seem impossible or unhelpful in solving the design problem they’re working on. In this phase of prototyping and testing, the designer actually begins to bring ideas to life. In an attempt to validate their hypothesis, they make things and build models, which are then used by real people in the real world. As the prototype gains popularity and traction with the people actually using it, the designer begins to shift from lower fidelity models to higher fidelity ones — ultimately, until a final product, service or solution is created.

Note that although the processes are presented in a linear fashion, they are often adaptive in nature (i.e., iterative or incremental, as in agile project management) and non-linear.