design thinking and ux research

The Importance of UX and Design Thinking

There’s significant overlap between UX and Design Thinking. Like UX, Design Thinking is an iterative process where ideas breathe life based on the needs, thoughts, and behaviors of real users.

By Igor Dinuzzi

Igor leads brands like Facebook, L’Oréal, and Samsung to deliver integrated content across a wide range of customer-facing touchpoints.

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Every few years, some trailblazing designer or well-known agency develops a new design method. Names are made. Books are sold. Lines are drawn.

Within the UX community, we love to debate the merits of one method over another. We form rivalries and champion our views. It’s Human Centered Design vs Lean UX vs Design Sprints vs the latest approach trending online.

Despite our differences, our adoption of design methods expresses a common desire. We aspire to bring order to the chaos of creation. Without methods, we’re susceptible to the unpredictability of design.

Deadlines change. Ideas fail. Feedback isn’t what we expect, and we lose our bearings. But if we have a logical way to investigate problems and test solutions, we can maintain focus no matter what obstacles lie in our path.

As UX designers , we seek to understand what people need, how they think, and why they act the way they do. Our efforts must move us closer to the chief aim of UX design–creating delightful user experiences. Whatever design method we prefer, people are the focus.

Such is the case with Design Thinking.

The Origins of Design Thinking

In 1969, Nobel Prize-winning economist Herbert Simon sowed the seeds of Design Thinking in the pages of a book titled Sciences of the Artificial . Simon defined design as the “transformation of existing conditions into preferred ones” and stated that “design thinking is always linked to an improved future.”

In the 1980s, academics like Nigel Cross and Bryan Lawson identified a “designerly” approach to problem solving. According to Cross, design is the process of producing “a large range of satisfactory solutions rather than attempting to generate the one hypothetically-optimum solution.” Within the same decade, Peter Rowe, former director of urban design at Harvard, reflected on the “situational logic and decision making process of designers” in his book Design Thinking .

At the start of the ’90s, the trajectory of Design Thinking shifted from theoretical to commercial. “How do designers think,” became, “How to think like a designer.” Led by IDEO , Design Thinking was marketed as an innovative approach to overcoming complex, organizational challenges.

From the ’90s onward, Design Thinking experienced a steady rise in popularity as its influence bypassed the borders of design and sparked change in industries ranging from finance to information technology.

Design Thinking Explained

Design Thinking is not a designer-only endeavor. It’s a method in which various stakeholders and users are collaborative partners, even co-designers. There are five steps to Design Thinking:

Countless tools and strategies may be employed throughout the Design Thinking process, and the steps are not strictly sequential. They are flexible, repeatable, and cyclical. Empathy is the north star by which all efforts are oriented.

What’s it like to walk in the user’s shoes? In order to uncover the right problems, Design Thinking practitioners need to identify with the people they’re trying to help. UX designers will find that a number of familiar exercises are possible at this stage:

Field Studies

Observe how users interact with products and navigate experiences in their natural environments.

User Personas

Create composites of semi-fictional users in order to synthesize the findings of user research (like field studies).

User Experience Maps

Visualize the average user’s end-to-end journey through an experience and outline the goals that are accomplished at each step.

Understanding users isn’t a one-time occurrence. It’s an ongoing concern that influences decisions large and small throughout the Design Thinking process.

After empathizing, Design Thinking practitioners must clearly define the problems users are facing. This process involves mapping potential roadblocks, interpreting user research, and planning logistical details.

Problem statements ought to be specific and user-centric. Design Thinking is derailed when business goals overshadow user needs in problem statements.

With problems defined, Design Thinking transitions to ideation. There are numerous exercises: brainstorming, word banking, mind mapping , and more. The goal is thoughts made visual, quickly. Rudimentary tools like post-its and pens will suffice. And remember, ideation and refinement can’t occur simultaneously.

Prototypes are an excellent way to build on the efforts of ideation, but they don’t need to be fancy. They can be comprised of sketches, interactive wireframes, or paper models. Prototypes help designers gauge feasibility as early as possible, without squandering manpower or money.

Of course, many of today’s collaborative design programs come with advanced prototyping capabilities, including animation. However, they can also cause designers to waste time refining concepts that will never make it to market.

In the final stage of Design Thinking, users are invited to participate in moderated testing. During this time, a facilitator presides over the test, and users speak out loud while interacting with a product. With feedback in hand, the design team decides which issues to address, and improvements are made.

Testing is a reality check for many designers. Frustrating UX issues are brought to light, and everyone is forced to question how much feedback to incorporate while simultaneously guarding against feature creep.

UX and Design Thinking Go Hand in Hand

Design is frequently confused for the artifacts it yields. Design equals a website, a sofa, or a smartphone. The equation is faulty. Design is not an artifact. It’s a systematic approach to solving problems.

Design Thinking is one way to solve problems. It’s an iterative process where ideas breathe life based on the needs, thoughts, and behaviors of real users. If there’s no collaboration between designers and users, it’s not Design Thinking .

The overabundance of design methods is an asset. No approach works for every designer, team, or company. No process uncovers the needs of all users. Design thinking is a method, not magic, but its user-centricity makes for a natural pairing with UX design.

Further Reading on the Toptal Blog:

• Exploring the Reasons for Design Thinking Criticism
• The Value of Design Thinking in Business
• Breaking Down the Design Thinking Process
• Design Strategy – A Guide to Tactical Thinking in Design
• Shopping for Apparel in an Online World: UI/UX Design for Virtual Clothing Try-on
• What Is Strategic Design Thinking and How Can It Empower Designers?
• Advance Your Organization’s UX Maturity With User Personas
• How Thinking Like a Designer Can Help Solve Complex Business Problems

Understanding the basics

When should you use design thinking.

UX and Design Thinking are both user-centric approaches to design, and both are aimed at creating delightful experiences. Design Thinking is especially useful when addressing “Wicked Problems” or thorny design issues that don’t comply with traditional notions of right and wrong.

What is the intent of design thinking?

The intent of Design Thinking and UX are quite similar: Prioritize the needs of users in order to create delightful user experiences and products. Design Thinking may be applied to a range of industries, from education to information technology, but the aim is always the same: user-centricity.

How can design thinking help?

Design Thinking, much like the user experience design process, helps designers identify the most pressing needs of users. It also provides a flexible system in which to address complicated design issues from multiple angles, while simultaneously fostering collaboration between multiple disciplines.

What is a design thinking approach?

Much like UX design methodology, Design Thinking is a process in which the needs of users are tantamount at every step. Additionally, users are actually invited to participate in Design Thinking, thereby acting as co-designers. If users aren’t involved, it’s not Design Thinking.

What are the five steps of the design process?

Some aspects of user experience methodology may appear difficult, but they can be approached systematically. For instance, UX designers can use Design Thinking, a process with five clearly defined steps: 1) Empathize; 2) Define; 3) Ideate; 4) Prototype; 5) Test

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Igor Dinuzzi

Madrid, Spain

Member since May 24, 2018

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What is design thinking?

Discover what is design thinking and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Deep dive into a few case studies and learn how to apply design thinking.

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Design thinking is a mindset that breeds innovation. While it’s based on the design process, anyone in any profession can use it when they’re trying to come up with creative solutions to a problem. 

In this guide, we’ll walk you through what design thinking is and why it’s important, including the five stages of design thinking. Then we’ll present a couple of design thinking case studies and wrap up with a primer on how to apply design thinking. And don’t worry, this guide is broken down into easily digestible chunks, as follows:

Let’s get started!

What is design thinking? A definition

Design thinking is an approach used for problem-solving. Both practical and creative, it’s anchored by human-centred design.

Design thinking is extremely user-centric in that it focuses on your users before it focuses on things like technology or business metrics. 

Design thinking is also solution-based, looking for effective solutions to problems, not problem-based, which looks at the problem itself and tends to focus on limitations. 

Design thinking is all about getting hands-on with solutions. The aim is to quickly turn your ideas into testable products so you can see what works and what doesn’t.

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Why is design thinking important? 

Design thinking is important because it challenges assumptions and fosters innovation. While many ways of thinking rely on the habits and experiences we’ve formed, they can limit us when it comes to thinking of design solutions. Design thinking, however, encourages us to explore new ideas. 

It’s an actionable technique that allows us to tackle “wicked problems,” or problems that are ill-defined. For example, achieving sustainable growth or maintaining your competitive edge in business count as wicked problems, and on a broader scale, poverty and climate change are wicked problems too. Design thinking uses empathy and human-centred thinking to tackle these kinds of problems.

Who uses design thinking?

The short answer? Everyone! Design thinking can help you in whatever your role or industry. People in business, government, entertainment, health care, and every other industry can benefit from using design thinking to come up with innovative solutions. 

The most important thing design thinking does is help people focus on their customers or end users. Instead of focusing on problems to fix, design thinking keeps things user-centric, which boosts customer engagement. 

What are the 5 stages of design thinking?

According to the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University (known as d-school), the five stages of design thinking are: 

Although these stages appear to be linear, following one after the other, design thinking isn’t a linear process. Stages are often run in parallel or out of order, or repeated when necessary.

Phase 1: Empathise 

Your goal here is to research your users’ needs to gain an empathic understanding of the problems they face. You’ll get to know your users and their wants and needs so you can make sure your solutions put them front and centre. This means setting aside your own assumptions and getting to know your users on a psychological and emotional level. You’ll observe, engage, watch and listen. 

Phase 2: Define

Here you state your users’ needs by compiling the information you gathered during the Empathise phase and then analysing it until you can define the core problem your team has identified. 

You do this by asking questions like: what patterns do you see in the data? What user issues need to be resolved? The conclusion of this phase comes when you’ve figured out a clear problem statement that is defined by the users’ needs. For example, “Bank customers in Glasgow need…”

You can learn more about how to write a problem statement in this guide.

Phase 3: Ideate

In this phase, you’ll generate ideas and solutions. You and your team will hold ideation sessions where you can come up with as many ideas as possible. No idea is too silly for this stage. The important thing is getting all ideas out on the table. There are a variety of techniques you can use, like brainstorming and mind mapping, to come up with solutions. This phase ends when you’ve managed to narrow down your ideas to just a few of the best ones.

Phase 4: Prototype

Your goal in this phase is to find the best solution to the problem by prototyping —that is, producing scaled down versions of the product or its features found in the previous phase. You’ll put each solution to the test by improving, redesigning, accepting, or rejecting it.

Phase 5: Test

Here you’ll try out the solutions you arrived at in the previous phases by user testing them. However, while this is the final stage of design thinking in theory, it’s rarely the final stage in reality. Design thinking often includes going back to previous phases to find other solutions or to further iterate or refine your existing solution.

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Design thinking examples and case studies

Now that you understand the theory and process of design thinking, let’s look at some examples in action where design thinking had a real-world impact.

Case Study 1: American Family Insurance’s Moonrise App

American Family Insurance, a company that offers life, business, auto, and home insurance, came to design company IDEO with the goal of innovating in a way that would help working families. 

Stages 1 & 2: Empathise and Define

While American Family thought their customers might benefit from budgeting tools, IDEO found from their research in the Empathise phase that, actually, people needed a way to build up their savings against unforeseen needs.

They noticed a lot of people had meticulously planned budgets, which made budgeting tools a moot point. But they were living just within their means and an extra expense, like a doctor’s visit or kid’s basketball uniform, could throw their budget off. These people didn’t want to take on debt though, they wanted extra work so they could have a cushion.

Stages 3 & 4: Ideate and Prototype

IDEO took that idea and ran with it, creating Moonrise, an app that matches people looking for work with extra hours and income. Today’s businesses depend on on-demand work but the temp agencies they work with tend to want permanent placements. Moonrise does things differently. It enables companies to find people who are already employed elsewhere for short-term work through a simple text message interface. The employers can list shifts on the platform and workers are paid as soon as they finish their shifts.

Stage 5: Test

To test the app, 11 Moonrisers, six employers, and a team of designers and programmers were assembled for a one week period to work out the kinks in the platform. 

Based on the test’s success, American Family Insurance now owns the startup Moonrise, which launched in Chicago in 2018 and has since expanded to additional states. In 2018, over 7,000 shifts have been fulfilled and over $500,000 has been earned by people on the app.

Case Study 2: GE Healthcare’s Scanning Tools

GE Healthcare has cutting-edge diagnostic imaging tools at its disposal, but for kids they’re an unpleasant experience. 

“The room itself is kind of dark and has those flickering fluorescent lights…. That machine that I had designed basically looked like a brick with a hole in it,” explained Doug Dietz , a designer who worked for GE. How could they make the experience better for kids?

The team at GE began by observing and gaining empathy for children at a daycare centre and talking to specialists who knew what paediatric patients went through. The team then recruited experts from a children’s museum and doctors from two hospitals. This gave them a lot of insight into what children went through when they had to sit for these procedures and what could be done to lessen the children’s stress.

Stages 3, 4 & 5: Ideate, Prototype, and Test

The first prototype of the new and improved “Adventure Series” scanner was invented. Through research and pilot programs, the redesign made imaging machines more child-friendly, making sure they have other things to focus on than the scary looks and sounds of the machine. For example, the Coral City Adventure in the emergency room gives children an underwater experience where they get into a yellow submarine and listen to the sound of harps while their procedure takes place.

Patient satisfaction scores increased to 90% and children no longer suffer such anxiety about their scans. The children hold still for their procedures more easily, making repeats of the scans unnecessary. There’s also less need for anesthesiologists, which improved the bottom line for those hospitals that used the scanning machines because more patients could get scanned each day.

How to apply design thinking 

If you want to apply design thinking in your own work, follow these steps and best practices:

• Improve design thinking skills. Use training to explain, improve, and practically implement the phases of design thinking. You can do this in several ways such as workshops, online courses, or case studies shared with your team.
• Identify the correct problem. Listen to users and ask them unbiased questions in order to understand their perspectives. Engage with everyone and stay open-minded, so you can identify the correct problem, not the problem you or your organisation thinks users are having. 
• Have more debriefs. Be open about what went right and what went wrong in your process. Openly discuss why things succeeded or failed and why. View failure as learning, not as an excuse to give up.
• Iterate and iterate some more. The goal of design thinking is finding the best answer possible—and that probably won’t come in the first round of iteration. You’ll need to test and iterate as much as possible with new ways to solve the problem.

Design thinking is so popular—and so effective—because it places the user’s needs front and centre. For more user-centric design tips, learn how to incorporate user feedback in product design , get to grips with user research ethics , and learn how to conduct effective user interviews .

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4 June 2024

What Is Design Thinking In UX / UI Design?

If you’re thinking about becoming a UX/UI product designer, you should be familiar with the design thinking approach. Read this article to learn everything you need to know about design thinking.

If you’re thinking about becoming a UX/UI product designer , it’s time to get familiar with the design thinking approach. This concept is central to creating innovative, user-centric products and services, like websites, apps, or even coffee makers.

Design thinking isn’t limited to UX/UI design — it’s used across all industries and is taught at leading universities around the world. To that end, global brands such as Samsung and Google have embraced the approach. If you’re ready to level up as a UX/UI Designer, this is a skill you need to know.

Driving Innovation with design thinking? 

So, what is design thinking in UX/UI design ? Why is it so popular? And how does it drive innovation? We’ll explore the meaning of design thinking, the five-stage process for coming up with effective products and services, and where you can get started with design thinking for UX/UI design.

What’s covered?

What is design thinking?

• Empathy – understand the user’s needs
• Define – state the user’s needs and problems
• Ideation – come up with innovative ideas
• Prototype – start coming up with solutions
• Test out solutions

Where can I learn design thinking for UX/UI design?

• What Design Thinking courses are available?

Design thinking is a human-centric design methodology first mentioned in 1969 by cognitive scientist and Nobel Prize laureate Herbert A. Simon. But, the idea didn’t stop there. Design thinking has only continued to develop with the exponential growth of the tech industry.

Design thinking is now considered a key concept in user-centered design. That being said, an understanding of the approach is fundamental for people looking to get started as UX/UI Designers.

To expand, design thinking is an approach to problem-solving that focuses on innovation and creation. UX/UI Designers use the design thinking process to discover problems and come up with creative solutions by thoroughly understanding their users’ goals, frustrations, and end-task.

Goals of design thinking 

Their goal is to design products that are easy to use, rather than expecting users to adapt to said products.

As the world becomes increasingly complex, many organizations have successfully implemented design thinking to find solutions for little-known problems. (That is, problems we didn’t even know we had!)

Take Amazon or Airbnb, for example. Amazon, in particular, has revolutionized the way we shop. The platform is easy to use and adds value by making shopping fast and fun. Design teams for companies such as these identify and reframe everyday “problems” in ways that focus on what is ultimately important for users.

For example, let’s consider the everyday vegetable peeler. What was once a metal peeler with a metal handle, Sam Farber’s wife spoke up that the peeler was quite uncomfortable on her arthritic hands. Sam set out to make a more comfortable peeler. But first he needed to focus on the user’s needs to understand what was hurting and how.

Sam made many revisions such as a wider handle and a softer material (rubber) that would also provide a more stable grip. All of the revisions he made were an improvement for his wife who had arthritis, but also proved helpful for people without arthritis.

Why? Because the product was easier and more comfortable to use overall. 

This is design thinking in action. 

Design thinking in UX/UI design

Especially important in user experience (UX) design, design thinking helps to address changes in users’ environments and behaviors that may not be immediately apparent. This is good news for both users and the company bottom line, as designers are continuously researching, testing, and improving products.

UX designers put themselves in the user’s shoes, becoming empathetic to their desires and grievances. They also follow a set of hands-on steps (often used interchangeably with phases and stages). Ultimately, using design thinking allows UX teams to do better research, prototyping, and usability testing to address human needs in the modern age.

The five phases of design thinking:

However, design thinking is a non-linear process. This means that designers can re-visit each phase in an iterative way. That is, they continuously re-examine the product and processes to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions. Since product design teams are prolific in their approach, creativity and problem-solving are valuable skills for both UX and UI designers .

The importance of feedback in design thinking

Feedback is also critical in the design process. According to Oxford Languages , feedback is, “information about reactions to a product, a person’s performance of a task, etc. which is used as a basis for improvement.”

Design teams utilize user feedback to come up with improved versions of their ideas or products. However, the feedback isn’t static. Rather, it’s cyclical. Therefore, design teams may establish feedback loops in order to maximize user feedback.

In feedback loops, design teams quickly build, measure, and learn from users in an cyclical fashion. They continuously tweak their products and ideas until the best possible outcome is reached.

In order to obtain feedback during usability testing, teams may:

• Administer anonymous surveys
• Observe user’s during testing
• Ask open ended questions during interviews
• Announce ideas in a public forum and monitor response

There is also room for experimentation in the design process . Design Thinking for Public Policy Innovators puts it this way, “By embracing experimentation we push ourselves to stay experimental, to build to think, to engage people with artifacts, and to elicit and receive feedback in a way that will help us learn more about both our designs and about design thinking.”

Throughout the feedback process, it’s essential to focus on the average user rather than the extreme of either end of the spectrum. It’s simply not necessary to spend time and energy on perceived issues that may only affect the user’s perspective incrementally. Instead, it’s more productive to focus only on collecting and using feedback that will change the core user experience to a greater degree.

The five stages of the design thinking process

Design thinking is a five-stage process as defined by the Hasso-Plattner-Institute of Design and based on the original method developed at Stanford (also known as d.school ). The stages are flexible and do not always need to be followed in order. Teams may run them in parallel or out of order and re-visit stages as needed in the iterative process.

Stage 1: Empathy — understand the needs of people

The first stage of the design thinking process is to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Understanding the human point of view is crucial.

This is when designers go into detective mode to get to know the user and understand their desires, needs, and objectives when interacting with a product or service.

This detective-designer will come to understand the “problem space,” or what is currently hindering the completion of the task. This looks like conducting user research by observing people and/or asking questions.

During this phase, designers set aside their own beliefs and assumptions.

Instead, they get into the mind of the user on an emotional and psychological level to come up with actionable insights. And then use insights from stage one to inform the remaining stages.

Stage 2: Define — state the user’s needs and problems

Next, the designer must clearly define the user’s needs and problems. They begin by making sense of the data and observations gathered during stage one, for example:

• What patterns do they see?
• What did they hear most often?
• What difficulties did the users have?

This is also the stage in which designers create user personas to remind them to keep the discussion on the end-user. Once the team has identified core issues with the product or service, they formulate a problem statement. The problem statement should remain user-centric. For example, “Millenials in NYC will…” rather than, “Our team will….”

Once designers have put the problem into words, they start to come up with solutions and ideas. It’s now time for stage three.

Stage 3: Ideation phase — come up with innovative ideas

Here comes the fun part! Design teams get to be wildly creative when problem-solving in the third stage — ideation. With an understanding of the end-user and a clear problem statement, designers hold collaborative ideation sessions and use ideation techniques . Brainstorm, Worst Possible Idea, and SCAMPER are all ideation techniques that designers use to come up with possible solutions.

The goal of an ideation session is to look at the problem from all angles and generate as many ideas as possible. 

For example, the “Worst Possible Idea” ideation technique works as a great icebreaker, putting teams at ease as they come up with the worst ideas and then seek alternatives.

Brainstorming leverages the collective thinking of the team, generating many more ideas than an individual writing his or her own list.

Lastly, teams can take an existing product, service, or idea and go through the SCAMPER list ( S ubstitute, C ombine, A dapt, M odify, P ut to another use, E liminate, R everse) in order to improve it. To start practicing this skill, begin Freewriting regularly — setting a timer and letting your ideas flow uninterrupted and without judgement — and then going back to pull out the best ideas.

At the end of the ideation stage, the best ideas will move forward to the next phase, prototyping.

Stage 4: Prototype — start creating solutions

The next step in the design thinking process is prototyping . It’s about taking all the ideas from stage three and creating tangible products to experiment with. With the concept fleshed out, UX designers are now able to produce several inexpensive, scaled-down versions of the product or specific features found within the product.

This is important because it allows designers to test and validate their ideas quickly and cheaply. It also may bring forth additional iterations of the product’s initial concept before final execution, avoiding costly mistakes.

Prototypes can take many forms — low-tech sketches, storyboards, and rough paper prototypes to mocked up, coded apps on the high end.

With the high or low-fidelity prototypes , it’s time to investigate and run experiments to see if the solutions generated in the previous stages function. Although a designer may personally like one prototype the best, this phase aims to identify the best possible solution for each of the problem statements, always keeping the end-user in mind. It’s essential that teams work together to test and highlight any flaws, and accept, improve, or reject the ideas based on data.

Once you’ve agreed on the best prototype, you are ready to test your product in the last stage.

Stage 5: Test — try out solutions

In the last stage, evaluators rigorously test the complete product. Although this is the last stage in the design thinking process, it’s not likely the end. The results either confirm or challenge the solutions from a previous stage. Since design thinking is iterative, designers examine the results and head back to previous steps, constantly making changes, refining, and improving.

Remember, these hands-on steps are not necessarily sequential, and teams may revisit them as needed. The main goal throughout is to gain a deeper understanding of the users and what their ideal product would look like.

Let us not forget that behind every good product, there’s a business to be run. It’s obvious that design thinking is a factor in running a successful business , especially in the age of technology.

If you want to become a UX/UI Designer or a digital product designer, you will definitely need to be familiar with the design thinking process. Luckily, you can get started online. Start by checking out these resources:

Media & web:

• Check out Tim Brown’s blog’s Design Thinking Pioneer for recent developments in the field.
• For a compelling look at the approach, watch this documentary .
• Study other examples of design thinking projects .

• The Design of Everyday Things (Don Norman, Revised 2013) – In this influential book, the author provides examples of flawed designs such as the now-famous “Norman door,” a must-know notion for any product designer.
• Interaction Design (Sharp, Preece & Rogers, 5th Edition) – Students and professionals will benefit from this resource for learning the interdisciplinary skills needed for interaction design, human-computer interaction, information design, and web design.

The Design Thinking Playbook: Mindful Digital Transformation of Teams, Products, Services, Businesses and Ecosystems (Lewrick, Link & Leifer, 2018) – This book describes how design thinking is applied across a variety of industries and is full of actionable information for digital transformation.

What design thinking courses are available.

• IBM has free tools and courses to help designers bring a focused approach to their businesses.
• IDEO U has short courses to dip your toe into design thinking.
• Ready to go all in? The Product Design course at Flatiron School covers UX and UI design in depth, and encompasses design thinking. It teaches you everything you need to know to become a product designer.

In this article, you’ve learned what design thinking is and how to implement it in five stages. You have also come to understand that it’s all about the user. Lastly, you understand how it’s implemented in product design to construct best possible solutions to everyday products and services, both digital and physical.

If you’re ready to put these ideas into action and become a product or UX/UI Designer, consider taking an online bootcamp!

Flatiron’s Product Design Course 

To learn how to engage in design thinking at Flatiron School, check out our Product Design program .

Disclaimer: The information in this blog is current as of June 8, 2021. Current policies, offerings, procedures, and programs may differ.

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How to Use UX Research Methods in Design Thinking

While design thinking provides a systematic approach to problem-solving with the user at the center, UX research supplements this process with practical, data-driven insights about the user.

Yet, the integration of UX research methods into design thinking isn't always straightforward, and it's an art that requires understanding and practice.

In this blog post, we'll explore the five stages of design thinking and identify the UX research methods that align with each stage, providing you with a comprehensive guide on how to harness the power of UX research within a design thinking framework. 

If you’d like to jump right into collecting user feedback, check out this wildly popular Net Promoter Score survey template:

Understanding design thinking and UX research

Before delving into the application of UX research methods in design thinking, let’s explain what these concepts entail.

Design thinking is a problem-solving approach that encourages designers to think from the users' perspective. It involves understanding users' problems, brainstorming solutions, prototyping, and testing these solutions to iteratively improve the design.

It consists of five iterative stages: 

User experience (UX) research , on the other hand, is a process of understanding users’ behaviors, motivations, and needs through observation techniques, task analysis, and other feedback methodologies. 

Some of the methods used in UX research include:

• user interviews
• focus groups
• card sorting
• A/B testing
• data analysis

UX research is a key part of design thinking as it uncovers how users interact with a product and what they expect from it, providing designers with actionable insights to enhance the overall user experience. 

Now, how do you combine these two strategies? Let's explore this by looking at each stage of the design thinking process.

Stage 1: Empathize

The first stage of design thinking involves empathizing with the users and trying to understand their needs, behaviors, and pain points. This is where UX research methods play a pivotal role.

Conducting user interviews is a great way to gather qualitative data about your users. The open-ended format of interviews allows you to delve deep into your user's thoughts, feelings, and attitudes towards a product.

Observation studies, which involve observing users interact with your product in their natural environment, can also provide provides firsthand information about their needs and behavior.

Surveys are particularly useful for gathering quantitative data from a large number of users. Here’s an example of a UX audit survey that can help you discover problematic areas of your mobile app:

Stage 2: Define

After gaining insights about users, design thinking moves to the 'Define' stage, where the user information you collected is compiled to define the problem or opportunity. UX research can further refine your understanding of the problem with user personas and journey mapping. 

User personas are fictional, generalized representations of your user base created with the data you collected in the Empathize stage. They help in understanding the users' needs, experiences, behaviors, and goals in a structured manner. 

Journey mapping involves creating a visual narrative of the users' interactions with the product to identify potential pain points , emotions, and moments of truth in the user journey and reveal opportunities for enhancing the user experience.

Stage 3: Ideate

The Ideation stage involves brainstorming and coming up with creative solutions for the defined problem. 

UX research supports this process through competitive analysis , which consists of studying competing products to generate ideas for potential features and improvements. This can help in identifying gaps in the market that your product can potentially fill, offering a competitive advantage.

It’s also a good idea to use co-creation sessions, which involve users in the ideation process through co-creation workshops to generate unique, user-centric ideas, at this stage. 

Stage 4: Prototype

The Prototyping stage involves developing a scaled-down version of your product to visualize the solution. At this stage, you might benefit from usability testing to observe how your users interact with your prototype. 

Surveys such as the one below can complement usability testing insights with a wealth of quantitative data:

Stage 5: Test

The final stage of design thinking is Testing. Here, the prototype is refined based on user feedback. It’s time to analyze the insights you collected and make further improvements. 

At this stage, you can use A/B testing to compare two or more versions of a feature to determine which one performs better, as well as other UX methods such as surveys and usability testing. 

Automate your UX surveys with Survicate

Among the various UX research methods, surveys are one of the most potent tools. They help you gather valuable quantitative and qualitative data directly from your users, providing an insightful snapshot of their preferences, behaviors, and perceptions. 

Yet, managing surveys can become a daunting task, especially when you're handling large user bases.

With Survicate, an intuitive and easy-to-use survey tool, you can automate your survey distribution across various touchpoints, be it within your product, on your website, via email, or even on social media. 

The platform's smart targeting capabilities allow you to reach the right user at the right time, ensuring high response rates and quality feedback.

Sign up for a 10-day free trial today to discover the power of automated surveys, real-time insights, and integrated data analytics to create exceptional user experiences that truly resonate.

We’re also there

What is design thinking?

Design and conquer: in years past, the word “design” might have conjured images of expensive handbags or glossy coffee table books. Now, your mind might go straight to business. Design and design thinking are buzzing in the business community more than ever. Until now, design has focused largely on how something looks; these days, it’s a dynamic idea used to describe how organizations can adjust their problem-solving approaches to respond to rapidly changing environments—and create maximum impact and shareholder value. Design is a journey and a destination. Design thinking is a core way of starting the journey and arriving at the right destination at the right time.

Simply put, “design thinking is a methodology that we use to solve complex problems , and it’s a way of using systemic reasoning and intuition to explore ideal future states,” says McKinsey partner Jennifer Kilian. Design thinking, she continues, is “the single biggest competitive advantage that you can have, if your customers are loyal to you—because if you solve for their needs first, you’ll always win.”

Get to know and directly engage with senior McKinsey experts on design thinking

Tjark Freundt is a senior partner in McKinsey’s Hamburg office, Tomas Nauclér is a senior partner in the Stockholm office, Daniel Swan is a senior partner in the Stamford office, Warren Teichner is a senior partner in the New York office, Bill Wiseman is a senior partner in the Seattle office, and Kai Vollhardt is a senior partner in the Munich office.

And good design is good business. Kilian’s claim is backed up with data: McKinsey Design’s 2018 Business value of design report  found that the best design performers increase their revenues  and investor returns at nearly twice the rate of their industry competitors. What’s more, over a ten-year period, design-led companies outperformed  the S&P 500 by 219 percent.

As you may have guessed by now, design thinking goes way beyond just the way something looks. And incorporating design thinking into your business is more than just creating a design studio and hiring designers. Design thinking means fundamentally changing how you develop your products, services, and, indeed, your organization itself.

Read on for a deep dive into the theory and practice of design thinking.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Design Practice , and check out McKinsey’s latest Business value of design report here .

How do companies build a design-driven company culture?

There’s more to succeeding in business than developing a great product or service that generates a financial return. Empathy and purpose are core business needs. Design thinking means putting customers, employees, and the planet at the center of problem solving.

McKinsey’s Design Practice has learned that design-led organizations start with design-driven cultures. Here are four steps  to building success through the power of design:

Understand your audience. Design-driven companies go beyond asking what customers and employees want, to truly understanding why they want it. Frequently, design-driven companies will turn to cultural anthropologists and ethnographers to drill down into how their customers use and experience products, including what motivates them and what turns them away.

Makeup retailer Sephora provides an example. When marketing leaders actually watched  shoppers using the Sephora website, they realized customers would frequently go to YouTube to watch videos of people using products before making a purchase. Using this information, the cosmetics retailer developed its own line of demonstration videos, keeping shoppers on the site and therefore more likely to make a purchase.

• Bring design to the executive table. This leader can be a chief design officer, a chief digital officer, or a chief marketing officer. Overall, this executive should be the best advocate for the company’s customers and employees, bringing the point of view of the people, the planet, and the company’s purpose into strategic business decisions. The design lead should also build bridges between multiple functions and stakeholders, bringing various groups into the design iteration process.
• Design in real time. To understand how and why people—both customers and employees—use processes, products, or services, organizations should develop a three-pronged design-thinking model that combines design, business strategy, and technology. This approach allows business leaders to spot trends, cocreate using feedback and data, prototype, validate, and build governance models for ongoing investment.

Act quickly. Good design depends on agility. That means getting a product to users quickly, then iterating based on customer feedback. In a design-driven culture, companies aren’t afraid to release products that aren’t quite perfect. Designers know there is no end to the design process. The power of design, instead, lies in the ability to adopt and adapt as needs change. When designers are embedded within teams, they are uniquely positioned to gather and digest feedback, which can lead to unexpected revelations. Ultimately, this approach creates more impactful and profitable results than following a prescribed path.

Consider Instagram. Having launched an initial product in 2010, Instagram’s founders paid attention to what the most popular features were: image sharing, commenting, and liking. They relaunched with a stripped-down version a few months later, resulting in 100,000 downloads in less than a week and over two million users in under two months —all without any strategic promotion.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Design Practice .

What’s the relationship between user-centered design and design thinking?

Both processes are design led. And they both emphasize listening to and deeply understanding users and continually gathering and implementing feedback to develop, refine, and improve a service.

Where they are different is scale. User-centered design focuses on improving a specific product or service . Design thinking takes a broader view  as a way to creatively address complex problems—whether for a start-up, a large organization, or society as a whole.

User-centered design is great for developing a fantastic product or service. In the past, a company could coast on a superior process or product for years before competitors caught up. But now, as digitization drives more frequent and faster disruptions, users demand a dynamic mix of product and service. Emphasis has shifted firmly away  from features and functions toward purpose, lifestyle, and simplicity of use.

Introducing McKinsey Explainers : Direct answers to complex questions

McKinsey analysis has found that some industries—such as telecommunications, automotive, and consumer product companies— have already made strides toward combining product and service into a unified customer experience . Read on for concrete examples of how companies have applied design thinking to offer innovative—and lucrative—customer experiences.

Learn more about our Operations Practice .

What is the design-thinking process?

McKinsey analysis has shown that the design-thinking approach creates more value  than conventional approaches. The right design at the right price point spurs sustainability and resilience in a demonstrable way—a key driver of growth.

According to McKinsey’s Design  Practice, there are two key steps to the design-thinking process:

• Developing an understanding of behavior and needs that goes beyond what people are doing right now to what they will need in the future and how to deliver that. The best way to develop this understanding is to spend time with people.
• “Concepting,” iterating, and testing . First start with pen and paper, sketching out concepts. Then quickly put these into rough prototypes—with an emphasis on quickly. Get feedback, refine, and test again. As American chemist Linus Pauling said : “The way to get good ideas is to get lots of ideas and throw the bad ones away.”

What is D4VG versus DTV?

For more than a decade, manufacturers have used a design-to-value (DTV) model  to design and release products that have the features needed to be competitive at a low cost. During this time, DTV efforts were groundbreaking because they were based on data rather than experience. They also reached across functions, in contrast to the typical value-engineering approach.

The principles of DTV have evolved into design for value and growth (D4VG), a new way of creating products that provide exceptional customer experiences while driving both value and growth. Done right, D4VG efforts generate products with the features, form, and functionality that turn users into loyal fans .

D4VG products can cost more to build, but they can ultimately raise margins by delivering on a clear understanding of a product’s core brand attributes, insights into people’s motivations, and design thinking.

Learn more about our Consumer Packaged Goods Practice .

What is design for sustainability?

As consumers, companies, and regulators shift toward increased sustainability, design processes are coming under even more scrutiny. The challenge is that carbon-efficient production processes tend to be more complex and can require more carbon-intensive materials. The good news is that an increased focus on design for sustainability (DFS), especially at the research and development stage , can help mitigate some of these inefficiencies and ultimately create even more sustainable products.

For example, the transition from internal-combustion engines to electric-propulsion vehicles  has highlighted emissions-intensive automobile production processes. One study found that around 20 percent of the carbon generated by a diesel vehicle comes from its production . If the vehicle ran on only renewable energy, production emissions would account for 85 percent of the total. With more sustainable design, electric-vehicle (EV) manufacturers stand to reduce the lifetime emissions of their products significantly.

To achieve design for sustainability at scale, companies can address three interrelated elements at the R&D stage:

• rethinking the way their products use resources, adapting them to changing regulations, adopting principles of circularity, and making use of customer insights
• understanding and tracking emissions and cost impact of design decisions in support of sustainability goals
• fostering the right mindsets and capabilities to integrate sustainability into every product and design decision

What is ‘skinny design’?

Skinny design is a less theoretical aspect of design thinking. It’s a method whereby consumer goods companies reassess the overall box size of products by reducing the total cubic volume of the package. According to McKinsey analysis , this can improve overall business performance in the following ways:

• Top-line growth of 4 to 5 percent through improvements in shelf and warehouse holding power. The ability to fit more stock into warehouses ultimately translates to growth.
• Bottom-line growth of more than 10 percent . Packing more product into containers and trucks creates the largest savings. Other cost reductions can come from designing packaging to minimize the labor required and facilitate automation.
• Sustainability improvements associated with reductions in carbon emissions through less diesel fuel burned per unit. Material choices can also confer improvements to the overall footprint.

Read more about skinny design and how it can help maximize the volume of consumer products that make it onto shelves.

Learn more about McKinsey’s Operations Practice .

How can a company become a top design performer?

The average person’s standard for design is higher than ever. Good design is no longer just a nice-to-have for a company. Customers now have extremely high expectations for design, whether it’s customer service, instant access to information, or clever products that are also aesthetically relevant in the current culture.

McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies  over a five-year period in multiple countries. Advanced regression analysis of more than two million pieces of financial data and more than 100,000 design actions revealed 12 actions most correlated to improved financial performance. These were then clustered into the following four themes:

• Analytical leadership . For the best financial performers, design is a top management issue , and design performance is assessed with the same rigor these companies use to approach revenue and cost. The companies with the top financial returns have combined design and business leadership through bold, design-centric visions. These include a commitment to maintain a baseline level of customer understanding among all executives. The CEO of one of the world’s largest banks, for example, spends one day a month with the bank’s clients and encourages all members of the company’s C-suite to do the same.
• Cross-functional talent . Top-performing companies make user-centric design everyone’s responsibility, not a siloed function. Companies whose designers are embedded within cross-functional teams have better overall business performance . Further, the alignment of design metrics with functional business metrics (such as financial performance, user adoption rates, and satisfaction results) is also correlated to better business performance.
• Design with people, not for people . Design flourishes best, according to our research, in environments that encourage learning, testing, and iterating with users . These practices increase the odds of creating breakthrough products and services, while at the same time reducing the risk of costly missteps.
• User experience (UX) . Top-quartile companies embrace the full user experience  by taking a broad-based view of where design can make a difference. Design approaches like mapping customer journeys can lead to more inclusive and sustainable solutions.

What are some real-world examples of how design thinking can improve efficiency and user experience?

Understanding the theory of design thinking is one thing. Seeing it work in practice is something else. Here are some examples of how elegant design created value for customers, a company, and shareholders:

• Stockholm’s international airport, Arlanda, used design thinking to address its air-traffic-control problem. The goal was to create a system that would make air traffic safer and more effective. By understanding the tasks and challenges of the air-traffic controllers, then collaboratively working on prototypes and iterating based on feedback, a working group was able to design a new departure-sequencing tool  that helped air-traffic controllers do their jobs better. The new system greatly reduced the amount of time planes spent between leaving the terminal and being in the air, which in turn helped reduce fuel consumption.
• When Tesla creates its electric vehicles , the company closely considers not only aesthetics but also the overall driving experience .
• The consumer electronics industry has a long history of dramatic evolutions lead by design thinking. Since Apple debuted the iPhone in 2007, for example, each new generation has seen additional features, new customers, and lower costs—all driven by design-led value creation .

Learn more about our Consumer Packaged Goods  and Sustainability  Practices.

For a more in-depth exploration of these topics, see McKinsey’s Agile Organizations collection. Learn more about our Design Practice —and check out design-thinking-related job opportunities if you’re interested in working at McKinsey.

Articles referenced:

• “ Skinny design: Smaller is better ,” April 26, 2022, Dave Fedewa , Daniel Swan , Warren Teichner , and Bill Wiseman
• “ Product sustainability: Back to the drawing board ,” February 7, 2022, Stephan Fuchs, Stephan Mohr , Malin Orebäck, and Jan Rys
• “ Emerging from COVID-19: Australians embrace their values ,” May 11, 2020, Lloyd Colling, Rod Farmer , Jenny Child, Dan Feldman, and Jean-Baptiste Coumau
• “ The business value of design ,” McKinsey Quarterly , October 25, 2018, Benedict Sheppard , Hugo Sarrazin, Garen Kouyoumjian, and Fabricio Dore
• “ More than a feeling: Ten design practices to deliver business value ,” December 8, 2017, Benedict Sheppard , John Edson, and Garen Kouyoumjian
• “ Creating value through sustainable design ,” July 25, 2017, Sara Andersson, David Crafoord, and Tomas Nauclér
• “ The expanding role of design in creating an end-to-end customer experience ,” June 6, 2017, Raffaele Breschi, Tjark Freundt , Malin Orebäck, and Kai Vollhardt
• “ Design for value and growth in a new world ,” April 13, 2017, Ankur Agrawal , Mark Dziersk, Dave Subburaj, and Kieran West
• “ The power of design thinking ,” March 1, 2016, Jennifer Kilian , Hugo Sarrazin, and Barr Seitz
• “ Building a design-driven culture ,” September 1, 2015, Jennifer Kilian , Hugo Sarrazin, and Hyo Yeon

Want to know more about design thinking?

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World Leaders in Research-Based User Experience

Design Thinking 101

July 31, 2016 2016-07-31

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In This Article:

Definition of design thinking, why — the advantage, flexibility — adapt to fit your needs, scalability — think bigger, history of design thinking.

Design thinking is an ideology supported by an accompanying process . A complete definition requires an understanding of both.

Definition: The design thinking ideology asserts that a hands-on, user-centric approach to problem solving can lead to innovation, and innovation can lead to differentiation and a competitive advantage. This hands-on, user-centric approach is defined by the design thinking process and comprises 6 distinct phases, as defined and illustrated below.

The design-thinking framework follows an overall flow of 1) understand, 2) explore, and 3) materialize. Within these larger buckets fall the 6 phases: empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test, and implement.

Conduct research in order to develop knowledge about what your users do, say, think, and feel .

Imagine your goal is to improve an onboarding experience for new users. In this phase, you talk to a range of actual users.  Directly observe what they do, how they think, and what they want, asking yourself things like ‘what motivates or discourages users?’ or ‘where do they experience frustration?’ The goal is to gather enough observations that you can truly begin to empathize with your users and their perspectives.

Combine all your research and observe where your users’ problems exist. While pinpointing your users’ needs , begin to highlight opportunities for innovation.

Consider the onboarding example again. In the define phase, use the data gathered in the empathize phase to glean insights. Organize all your observations and draw parallels across your users’ current experiences. Is there a common pain point across many different users? Identify unmet user needs.

Brainstorm a range of crazy, creative ideas that address the unmet user needs identified in the define phase. Give yourself and your team total freedom; no idea is too farfetched and quantity supersedes quality.

At this phase, bring your team members together and sketch out many different ideas. Then, have them share ideas with one another, mixing and remixing, building on others' ideas.

Build real, tactile representations for a subset of your ideas. The goal of this phase is to understand what components of your ideas work, and which do not. In this phase you begin to weigh the impact vs. feasibility of your ideas through feedback on your prototypes.

Make your ideas tactile. If it is a new landing page, draw out a wireframe and get feedback internally.  Change it based on feedback, then prototype it again in quick and dirty code. Then, share it with another group of people.

Return to your users for feedback. Ask yourself ‘Does this solution meet users’ needs?’ and ‘Has it improved how they feel, think, or do their tasks?’

Put your prototype in front of real customers and verify that it achieves your goals. Has the users’ perspective during onboarding improved? Does the new landing page increase time or money spent on your site? As you are executing your vision, continue to test along the way.

Put the vision into effect. Ensure that your solution is materialized and touches the lives of your end users.

This is the most important part of design thinking, but it is the one most often forgotten. As Don Norman preaches, “we need more design doing.” Design thinking does not free you from the actual design doing. It’s not magic.

“There’s no such thing as a creative type. As if creativity is a verb, a very time-consuming verb. It’s about taking an idea in your head, and transforming that idea into something real. And that’s always going to be a long and difficult process. If you’re doing it right, it’s going to feel like work.”  - Milton Glaser

As impactful as design thinking can be for an organization, it only leads to true innovation if the vision is executed. The success of design thinking lies in its ability to transform an aspect of the end user’s life. This sixth step — implement — is crucial.

Why should we introduce a new way to think about product development? There are numerous reasons to engage in design thinking, enough to merit a standalone article, but in summary, design thinking achieves all these advantages at the same time.

Design thinking:

• Is a user-centered process that starts with user data, creates design artifacts that address real and not imaginary user needs, and then tests those artifacts with real users
• Leverages collective expertise and establishes a shared language, as well as buy-in amongst your team
• Encourages innovation by exploring multiple avenues for the same problem

Jakob Nielsen says “ a wonderful interface solving the wrong problem will fail ." Design thinking unfetters creative energies and focuses them on the right problem. 

The above process will feel abstruse at first. Don’t think of it as if it were a prescribed step-by-step recipe for success. Instead, use it as scaffolding to support you when and where you need it. Be a master chef, not a line cook: take the recipe as a framework, then tweak as needed.

Each phase is meant to be iterative and cyclical as opposed to a strictly linear process, as depicted below. It is common to return to the two understanding phases, empathize and define, after an initial prototype is built and tested. This is because it is not until wireframes are prototyped and your ideas come to life that you are able to get a true representation of your design. For the first time, you can accurately assess if your solution really works. At this point, looping back to your user research is immensely helpful. What else do you need to know about the user in order to make decisions or to prioritize development order? What new use cases have arisen from the prototype that you didn’t previously research?

You can also repeat phases. It’s often necessary to do an exercise within a phase multiple times in order to arrive at the outcome needed to move forward. For example, in the define phase, different team members will have different backgrounds and expertise, and thus different approaches to problem identification. It’s common to spend an extended amount of time in the define phase, aligning a team to the same focus. Repetition is necessary if there are obstacles in establishing buy-in. The outcome of each phase should be sound enough to serve as a guiding principle throughout the rest of the process and to ensure that you never stray too far from your focus.

The packaged and accessible nature of design thinking makes it scalable. Organizations previously unable to shift their way of thinking now have a guide that can be comprehended regardless of expertise, mitigating the range of design talent while increasing the probability of success. This doesn’t just apply to traditional “designery” topics such as product design, but to a variety of societal, environmental, and economical issues. Design thinking is simple enough to be practiced at a range of scopes; even tough, undefined problems that might otherwise be overwhelming. While it can be applied over time to improve small functions like search, it can also be applied to design disruptive and transformative solutions, such as restructuring the career ladder for teachers in order to retain more talent. 

It is a common misconception that design thinking is new. Design has been practiced for ages : monuments, bridges, automobiles, subway systems are all end-products of design processes. Throughout history, good designers have applied a human-centric creative process to build meaningful and effective solutions.

In the early 1900's husband and wife designers Charles and Ray Eames practiced “learning by doing,” exploring a range of needs and constraints before designing their Eames chairs, which continue to be in production even now, seventy years later. 1960's dressmaker Jean Muir was well known for her “common sense” approach to clothing design, placing as much emphasis on how her clothes felt to wear as they looked to others. These designers were innovators of their time. Their approaches can be viewed as early examples of design thinking — as they each developed a deep understanding of their users’ lives and unmet needs. Milton Glaser, the designer behind the famous I ♥ NY logo, describes this notion well: “We’re always looking, but we never really see…it’s the act of attention that allows you to really grasp something, to become fully conscious of it.”

Despite these (and other) early examples of human-centric products, design has historically been an afterthought in the business world, applied only to touch up a product’s aesthetics. This topical design application has resulted in corporations creating solutions which fail to meet their customers’ real needs. Consequently, some of these companies moved their designers from the end of the product-development process, where their contribution is limited, to the beginning. Their human-centric design approach proved to be a differentiator: those companies that used it have reaped the financial benefits of creating products shaped by human needs.

In order for this approach to be adopted across large organizations, it needed to be standardized. Cue design thinking, a formalized framework of applying the creative design process to traditional business problems.

The specific term "design thinking" was coined in the 1990's by David Kelley and Tim Brown of IDEO, with Roger Martin, and encapsulated methods and ideas that have been brewing for years into a single unified concept.

We live in an era of experiences , be they services or products, and we’ve come to have high expectations for these experiences. They are becoming more complex in nature as information and technology continues to evolve. With each evolution comes a new set of unmet needs. While design thinking is simply an approach to problem solving, it increases the probability of success and breakthrough innovation.

Learn more about design thinking in the full-day course Generating Big Ideas with Design Thinking .

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Applying Service Design Thinking to UX Research: A Case of Smart Campus Dance Experience Design

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• Lingdi Chen 10 ,
• Minxin Huang 10 ,
• Zhen Liu 10 ,
• Yushu Jiang 10 &
• Tong Wu 10  

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Smart Campus is an important part of smart city construction, running through the chain of campus education and life services. At present, digital campus services are facing a new challenge that needs to develop from the original B-End business for schools to operation and value-added services for C-End student consumers. However, the current digital solutions ignore the role of user experience (UX) research techniques and tools, lack holistic thinking in the stages of exploration, the definition of user needs, function transformation and service output, and cannot provide a compelling end-user experience. The study proposed a new user experience research process for methodologically integrating service design (SD) thinking into the exploration of users’ psychological aspirations through a smart campus design project, as a complement to the existing usability and human-centered design (HCD) paradigms. The study focuses on improving students’ dance experience, taking the dance studio of the South China University of Technology as an example. Research has shown that taking and sharing dance videos stimulates generative activity in student dancers and makes them feel happy later. Therefore, the project designed a system combining an app and smart mirror and offered a scenario-based solution for the user group. The design process improved and applied in this study explores best practices in service design thinking and UX research and should be of value to practitioners wishing to design positive user experiences.

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Stickdorn, M., Schneider, J., Andrews, K., Lawrence, A.: This is Service Design Thinking: Basics, Tools. Cases. Wiley, Hoboken (2011)

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Chen, L., Huang, M., Liu, Z., Jiang, Y., Wu, T. (2023). Applying Service Design Thinking to UX Research: A Case of Smart Campus Dance Experience Design. In: Marcus, A., Rosenzweig, E., Soares, M.M. (eds) Design, User Experience, and Usability. HCII 2023. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 14031. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-35696-4_5

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Tutorial 1 : An Introduction to User Experience Design

Hello and welcome to your free UX Design for Beginners Course! You’ve taken the first step to exploring your new career path and we’re glad to be here for it.

This course is designed to give you a solid introduction to UX design —what it is, why it matters, and the basics of how to do it. You’ll also get a good look at how (and why!) to kickstart a career in UX design. And the best part? You’ll get a taste of what it’s like to actually be a UX designer with the hands-on exercises we’ve included along the way.

Each tutorial should only take around 30 minutes to complete, depending on how deep you go into the exercises and additional resources linked throughout. Feel free to work at your own pace and complete the course in as much or as little time as you need!

But before we get there, let’s make sure you’re set up for success from the start. This first UX design tutorial lays the foundation for the rest of the course. By the end of this tutorial, you’ll:

• Understand the demand and career outlook for UX designers
• Know what UX design is, and the basics of the Design Thinking process
• Get an overview of the course content and structure

Here’s what we’ll cover:

• Start with the basics: What is UX design and what does a UX designer actually do?

How much do UX designers earn?

Ux career paths.

• Course overview (what’s coming next)
• What to do now

1. Start with the basics: What is UX design and what does a UX designer actually do?

User experience (UX) design is the process of designing effective, efficient, highly usable, inclusive, and even delightful experiences for human beings. In the context of the field of UX design, this typically relates to digital product experiences—meaning mobile apps and websites.

To put it even more simply, UX design is the process of designing great digital product experiences that work well for the people who use those products.

So what do UX designers actually do? UX designers are empathetic critical thinkers and creative problem solvers who:

• Take the time to understand what people actually need in a digital product experience
• Identify problems and pain points in the user experience
• Design to meet users’ needs and solve problems and pain points
• Design in ways that also meet business needs and constraints
• Test and iterate on their designs to ensure that the experience continuously evolves to meet users’ needs (even as those needs change!)

In short (because you’ll learn more throughout the course), this means that UX designers spend their time:

• Conducting user research
• Synthesizing their research and extracting actionable insights
• Meeting with stakeholders to understand their priorities and any constraints that affect the project (budget, deadlines, etc.)
• Leading workshops and creating key deliverables (journey maps, personas, etc.) that help communicate insights and cultivate empathy across their team and the company as a whole
• Distilling user research and business needs into their work as they use any variety of design tools to build wireframes and prototypes
• Test their prototypes to ensure that their design solutions actually work well
• Hand their designs over to UI designers and developers to polish it all up and turn it into an actual live product that people can use

As you can see, a UX designer’s skillset is broad and varied! To get a fuller picture of the skills you’ll cultivate as you build your UX design career, read about the key skills you’ll need to be an amazing UX designer . And to learn more about what it’s like to be a UX designer, check out our complete guide: What Does a UX Designer Actually Do?

2. Outlook and career paths for UX designers

As you consider starting a career in UX design, you’re likely wondering if UX designers are really in demand and where your career path might take you. So before we dive into the design process, let’s consider the industry outlook and some of the specializations that could make you really stand out to potential employers or clients.

If you’re looking to start a career in a field with high growth, high pay, and satisfying daily work, UX design could be a great fit for you. Because UX designers are an integral part of the digital product development process—and because they have such a broad skillset—the need for good UX is everywhere.

And because UX designers are advocates for human needs, and work at the intersection of design and business goals, the work is often varied and fulfilling. In fact, HR Forecast lists UX/UI design in its 2023 list of top tech skills to master, and CNN Money predicts that the demand for UX designers will grow by 19% between 2017-2027. To learn more about the demand for UX designers, read our complete guide: Are UX Designers in Demand?

🪄 Not only is the UX design field growing; it’s also constantly evolving. With the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), a whole new world of opportunity is opening up for UX designers. From large-scale data analysis to generative design, from simulation-based product testing to advanced personalization—the opportunities AI brings to the tech industry are vast 😲

In tomorrow’s tutorial we’ll explore more about how AI tools can complement your work as a UX designer, but in the meantime, we recommend reading this article to learn more how AI will impact the UX design industry.

UX designer salaries can vary quite a bit depending on where you live, the company you work for, your seniority and experience level, and any specialized skills you’ve developed. But on the whole, the salaries are competitive—with room for growth!

Here are the salary ranges for UX designers in several countries to give you an idea of what salary you might earn:

United States

Low: US$69,600

High: US$114,300

Low: CA$50,000

High: CA$101,800

Low: AU$59,500

High: AU$115,600

Low: €34,500

High: €70,000

Low: ¥126,000

High: ¥297,000

United Kingdom

Low: £30,600

High: £65,700

For more information on current UX designer salaries, check out our complete salary guide: What Salary Will I Earn as a UX Designer?

As we mentioned before, part of what factors into your salary is the specialized knowledge and skills you bring with you. It’s important to start with a strong foundation in UX—which is what the best UX design training programs will give you. But once you have that, you’ll be ready to explore new directions with specialized skills.

There’s been such an increased demand for some of these specialized skills that they’ve grown into UX roles in their own right. Here are some of the top UX career paths you might take:

UX/UI design

Where UX design focuses on usability and functionality for the people who use digital products, UI (user interface) design focuses on the aesthetics of the experience—which is not to say that UI isn’t every bit as important as UX! In fact, both aspects are so important to product design that UX designers who have a strong UI design skillset increase their earning potential and stand out to employers. And the average UX/UI designer salary? In the US, it’s around $91,950.

💡 To learn more about the differences between UX and UI design, check out this guide:  The Difference Between UX and UI Design: A Beginner’s Guide .

UX research

You’ll learn a little more about UX research later in this course, but in a nutshell, it’s all about connecting with the people who use digital products to find out what design problems actually need to be solved. If you find you really enjoy this part of the process, you might be a great UX researcher ! And UX designers who specialize in UX research make an average of $108,500 in the US.

💡 Want to learn more about UX research? Check out this video from CareerFoundry graduate Tanya Lerma, sharing her career change story and discussing her job as UX researcher at Peloton!

UX strategy

If you have a knack for business, you might want to consider specializing in UX strategy. UX strategists work at the intersection of user-centered design and business strategy, applying UX design principles to broader business strategies to ensure that key business decisions align with what users actually want and need. The average salary for UX strategists in the US is around $92,000!

💡 Recommended reading:  What Does a UX Strategist Actually Do?

Finally, if you have a way with words and find that you’re passionate about the words that live within user experiences, you’ll want to explore UX writing as a specialization. UX writers create the conversation that drives the user experience forward, applying UX design principles to the microcopy that users interact with. In the US, the average UX writer salary is around $110,000.

💡 Get stuck in and check out this workshop to learn more: An Introduction to UX Writing

Whew! Well, now you’ve got the lay of the land. It might feel a little overwhelming here at the start, but there’s no need to decide what kind of specialized knowledge and skills you want to develop right now. That can come later. The most important skills to develop are the foundational UX design skills. And that all starts with the Design Thinking process, which is what the rest of this course will focus on.

3. The Design Thinking process

So what is the Design Thinking process and how does it work? Design Thinking is both an ideology and a process that places people at the center of product design and seeks to solve complex problems in user-centric ways. Placed more specifically in the context of UX, Design Thinking is the approach UX designers take to find and test creative solutions to practical problems.

As a UX designer, your goals in taking this approach are to:

• Keep your focus as human-centric as possible
• Understand which problems actually need to be solved
• Look at those problems in new ways, embracing some ambiguity as you go along (the answers won’t always be clear!)
• Design and re-design to meet user needs
• Make your designs as tangible as possible before they’re implemented to see (and test) how they’ll actually work for users

With all this in mind, we’re ready to explore the five stages of the Design Thinking process. Bear in mind that for now, this will be a simplified overview—we’ll dig deeper into each stage in subsequent tutorials (and give you hands-on exercises to try it out for yourself). And feel free to check out the excerpt from one of our free live events below, in which one of our CareerFoundry mentors walks you through the Design Thinking process.

The five stages of the Design Thinking process

In the first stage of the process, the UX designer connects with product users (or potential users) to understand their needs and goals, and to get a sense of what problems or pain points could use some design thinking magic to solve. Much of this stage consists of UX research —user interviews and surveys, as well as other forms of research to help generate user-centered data.

The second stage of the process is all about organizing the research results, sorting through the data, and looking at it from various perspectives. The goal is to identify patterns and actionable insights that will help the UX designer to formulate solutions. This is where things like affinity diagrams , user personas , and journey maps come into play—among other key deliverables. The goal of this stage is to clearly define which problem(s) to focus on for the time being.

The ideation stage is where UX designers come up with as many ideas as they can for how to solve the problem they’ve defined. There are any number of ideation methods they might use to accomplish this (and we’ll explore some of those in Tutorial 3 ), but the goal is to ideate without too many constraints or filters—no idea is a bad idea. Later in this stage, the UX designer can work with others in their team or company to figure out which idea works best for the user and best meets business goals.

In the fourth stage of the process, the UX designer turns the top idea(s) into reality—to a certain extent. The goal of this stage is to create a working model (known as a prototype ) of the idea to see how it will operate, and to work out any major issues in the design before moving forward.

Finally, the UX designer tests the prototype with actual users to understand whether or not the solution meets users’ needs the way they expected, to find out if there are aspects of the problem that they’ve overlooked, and to see if the solution itself creates any new issues to be resolved.

But this isn’t where the process ends. In its truest form, the Design Thinking process is recursive and iterative—meaning that it repeats over and over again, and that the stages won’t always be followed in this particular order.

For example, let’s say you’re working on a meditation app. 🧘 You’ve already done user research (empathize), defined the problems that you’ll solve, came up with some great ideas, and prototyped them. But in the testing stage, you realized that the solutions you’ve come up with don’t quite solve users’ pain points the way you thought they would—or maybe the solutions have caused other goals or pain points to surface.

Technically, you’ve completed the design thinking process, but you’re not likely to check it off and consider the product “done”. Instead, you’ll probably go back and do a little more research and ideation to fine tune your ideas 🔧

Each stage is there for UX designers to return to as needed, and as they see how their designs work for their users!

4. Course overview (what’s coming next)

The rest of this course will be structured to follow the Design Thinking process. In each tutorial you’ll tackle one or two stages, taking a project through to completion. If that sounds like just a ton of work, don’t worry! We’ve built the course so that you can complete simple hands-on exercises, then have opportunities to complete bigger (optional) projects as you go along—depending on your interests and the time you’re able to devote to the course.

Here’s how the rest of the course will be structured:

Tutorial 2: How to develop empathy and define UX problems. In this tutorial, you’ll look at some user research, and based on that data, create a problem statement that will set the stage for the rest of the process. You’ll also get an introduction to some AI tools that can help you as a designer.

Tutorial 3: Intro to UX ideation techniques. This tutorial will introduce you to a few ideation methods and take you step by step through an ideation session of your own. You’ll also learn how AI tools like ChatGPT can support you in the process.

Tutorial 4: Intro to prototyping in UX . In this tutorial, you’ll turn your idea into a simple hand-sketched prototype. Don’t worry—most UX designers aren’t fancy artists, so nothing here needs to be perfect! We’ll suggest a few ways AI technology could help you here too!

Tutorial 5: How to conduct user testing. This tutorial will guide you through one of two ways that you can test your prototype (you’ll get to choose which method works best for you).

Tutorial 6: Next steps and how to become a UX designer. In this tutorial, you’ll review your work in the larger context of the design process and learn more about what it takes to become a UX designer. You’ll also have an optional final test to check your knowledge.

5. What to do now

Congratulations on completing your first UX Design for Beginners tutorial!  👏

Since this was your intro tutorial, without a hands-on exercise to dig into, we’d recommend going back through and checking out some of the guides and other resources we’ve linked throughout. This will build your UX knowledge and make you much more confident as you go into Tutorial 2 and start your very own Design Thinking project.

See you in the next tutorial!

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Intrigued by a career in UX design? Arrange a call with your program advisor today to find out if UX design is a good fit for you—and how you can become a certified UX designer from scratch with the full CareerFoundry UX Design Program .

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The Next Generation of Design is Inclusive

• May 16, 2024

MFA Interaction Design at the School of Visual Arts paves the way for more thoughtful future designers. 

Lead banner: A snapshot of a tabletop at MFA Interaction Design filled with inclusive design tools and inspiration. Photo by Adriana Valdez Young

“The second years are starting to redesign our bathrooms today!” Adriana Valdez Young welcomed me into a sunbathed design studio at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Chelsea. With a two-toned bob, scuffed white sneakers, and a sparkle in her eye, her enthusiasm for refreshing the porcelain palace was infectious. Redesigning bathrooms? In a graduate interaction design program? 

“I’ve always been working towards a world in which design for people, design for good, inclusive design, is just good design,” said Young, design researcher and acting chair of the MFA Interaction Design program at SVA. For decades thought leaders have been working to pinpoint the future of good design–and educators have been simply trying to keep up. Now they’re shaping the future themselves. This year, Young collaborated with Pinar Guvenc, partner at the award-winning global design firm SOUR , to construct the first year-long, graduate-level Inclusive Design course in the United States. 

Designed to train the next generation of strategic, collaborative, thoughtful, and yes, inclusive designers, Inclusive Design I & II is SVA’s response to corporate reconstruction across industries. Since November 2023, interaction has seen mass layoffs from design leaders like IDEO and technology mega-companies including Google and Microsoft, citing “weak consumer demand .” 

There is demand, just not for their products. People with disabilities hold about $490b in purchasing power in the United States , while 68% of Gen Z prioritizes sustainable shopping . With these two groups holding consumer power, organizations have come to understand that corporate sustainability means social responsibility. Solutions are scarce, as design and tech hemorrhage capital in search of a new ‘new normal.’ 

With an undefined future, the leadership at MFA Interaction Design chose to focus on the only two constants in design — people and their problems. “Every designer is a social impact designer,” said Young. “Whether they like it or not, they’re having an impact on society and people.” 

Instilling inclusion, co-creation, and engagement into design processes may provide the necessary salve to these wounds, setting a strong foundation for our future. It’s the curb cut effect when a design created for a few changes the lives of many. Think of the touch screen on your trusty smartphone, rubber grips on vegetable peelers, or closed captioning; all universal products initially designed with the disabled community in mind. “If you’re not co-creating with people, what you’re putting out there is not going to stick or it’s not going to last, and therefore it’s not going to sustain,” said Guvenc. 

Initially designed in two parts stretching over the second year of the MFA program, the course starts slow—painfully slow. Much of Inclusive Design I is spent slowing down, observing, deepening vocabulary, and unlearning traditional design processes. The MFA program defines inclusive design as designing with, not for, communities we aim to serve, recognizing that lived experiences are equally as important as professional expertise. The first few classes are simple yet complex, differentiating inclusive from accessible, universal, or equitable design and exploring what it means to actively invite participants into the process as co-designers. 

From early January to May 2024, the second year students in Inclusive Design II were given the mammoth task of redesigning their studio bathrooms. Though interaction design is often seen as a technological field, SVA broadens this definition to include the vast system of networks, services, narratives, products, and experiences shaping our daily lives. “Inclusion, where it differs from accessibility, is not necessarily concerned about the baseline axis,” said Guvenc. “It is concerned about the entire journey and the experience.” Because of this, the faculty chose to focus on a physical, universal human experience to frame the class project in the course’s pilot year. 

This initial class has proven to be a fruitful struggle. Designing for inclusion is a complex, intentional process, filled with co-creation, value-setting, shifting mindsets, community research, and detailed prototyping. As students began conducting anonymous surveys, Guvenc and Young found the emerging designers stuck in habitual thinking and linear processes; many of the students’ first drafts included problematic language and ableist assumptions. Several final prototypes raised an eyebrow, including one with signage depicting a male and female icon perpetuating the gender binary. 

“These deeply ingrained mindsets and habits take time to break,” said Young. “For me, it’s about being patient; knowing that we have planted the seed and that seed might sprout later in their design careers.”

The students’ thinking evolved greatly, even if there wasn’t a sharp pivot in their work this year. “Inclusive design is a mindset I can keep with myself, in all types of design,” said Fan Fang, product designer and soon-to-be MFA Interaction Design graduate. “[The course] helped me learn how to decentralize my role as a designer.” Fan Fang’s thesis project focuses on democratizing gaming for those who are visually impaired, designing a tactile controller for blind people to play video games and access information traditionally only visually available. Other graduate projects this year range from apps embracing generative AI to nurture critical thinking for middle schoolers (ThinkKee by Amogh Gharpure), creating a better experience for people with mobility impairments to navigate ride-share platforms in New York City (Unit by Jennie Yang), to tools supporting young people in learning to care for their hands and prevent chronic injury from extensive technology use (Handy by Mihira Patel). 

Under Young’s leadership, the MFA Interaction Design program is turning the needle toward crafting more inclusive designers. Across courses, from entrepreneurial design to game design, students have been tasked with prioritizing ethics and inclusive values, asking them to go deeper into the same projects with these contexts in mind. This year the thesis project requirements have been redesigned to include community engagement, video stories, and a detailed body of work consisting of at least three different design prototypes addressing each student’s research, deepening their understanding of design and its impact. 

Looking to the future of the program, Young and Guvenc are hopeful. Inclusive design is still in its early stages as common practice, but its impact is clear. As Black Lives Matter invigorated new diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts in leadership, and the deadline for the 2025 European Accessibility Act looms, companies have a need for lower and mid-level employees who bring a thoughtful lens to their work. “I feel like there was this portal that opened to making inclusive, accessible, and community-centered design this new norm,” said Young, “and we’re jumping through this portal to help future-proof our students.” Beyond future-proofing students, inclusive design just might be the key to future-proofing our world; we’ll just have to wait and see. 

co-24: MFA Interaction Design Thesis Exhibition, a walk-through exhibition of works by 21 emergent designers exploring the themes of collaboration, connection, compassion, and construction towards a more intentionally inclusive future. May 16-17, 136 W. 21st St. Visit www.festival.interactiondesign.sva.edu to RSVP.

• Accessibility , Design , Interaction Design , UX Magazine

Brooke Viegut , Brooke Viegut is a narrative-driven experience designer, audience-centric theater maker, design critic, live entertainment researcher, donut connoisseur, cultural producer, collector of silly little things, and the creative lead at for.play . She is the author of Anonymous Intimacy (coming 2024) and holds an MA in Design Research, Writing, and Criticism from the School of Visual Arts.

• The article explores the MFA Interaction Design program at the School of Visual Arts, focusing on its emphasis on inclusive design principles and the impact of its innovative curriculum.

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The 5 Stages in the Design Thinking Process

Design thinking is a methodology which provides a solution-based approach to solving problems. It’s extremely useful when used to tackle complex problems that are ill-defined or unknown—because it serves to understand the human needs involved, reframe the problem in human-centric ways, create numerous ideas in brainstorming sessions and adopt a hands-on approach to prototyping and testing. When you know how to apply the five stages of design thinking you will be impowered because you can apply the methodology to solve complex problems that occur in our companies, our countries, and across the world.

Design thinking is a non-linear, iterative process that can have anywhere from three to seven phases, depending on whom you talk to. We focus on the five-stage design thinking model proposed by the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (the d.school) because they are world-renowned for the way they teach and apply design thinking.

What are the 5 Stages of the Design Thinking Process

The five stages of design thinking, according to the d.school, are:

Empathize : research your users' needs .

Define : state your users' needs and problems.

Ideate : challenge assumptions and create ideas.

Prototype : start to create solutions.

Test : try your solutions out.

Let’s dive into each stage of the design thinking process.

• Transcript loading…

Hasso-Platner Institute Panorama

Ludwig Wilhelm Wall, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

Stage 1: Empathize—Research Your Users' Needs

Empathize: the first phase of design thinking, where you gain real insight into users and their needs.

© Teo Yu Siang and the Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

The first stage of the design thinking process focuses on user-centric research . You want to gain an empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Consult experts to find out more about the area of concern and conduct observations to engage and empathize with your users. You may also want to immerse yourself in your users’ physical environment to gain a deeper, personal understanding of the issues involved—as well as their experiences and motivations . Empathy is crucial to problem solving and a human-centered design process as it allows design thinkers to set aside their own assumptions about the world and gain real insight into users and their needs.

Depending on time constraints, you will gather a substantial amount of information to use during the next stage. The main aim of the Empathize stage is to develop the best possible understanding of your users, their needs and the problems that underlie the development of the product or service you want to create.

Stage 2: Define—State Your Users' Needs and Problems

Define: the second phase of design thinking, where you define the problem statement in a human-centered manner.

In the Define stage, you will organize the information you have gathered during the Empathize stage. You’ll analyze your observations to define the core problems you and your team have identified up to this point. Defining the problem and problem statement must be done in a human-centered manner .

For example, you should not define the problem as your own wish or need of the company: “We need to increase our food-product market share among young teenage girls by 5%.”

You should pitch the problem statement from your perception of the users’ needs: “Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in order to thrive, be healthy and grow.”

The Define stage will help the design team collect great ideas to establish features, functions and other elements to solve the problem at hand—or, at the very least, allow real users to resolve issues themselves with minimal difficulty. In this stage, you will start to progress to the third stage, the ideation phase, where you ask questions to help you look for solutions: “How might we encourage teenage girls to perform an action that benefits them and also involves your company’s food-related product or service?” for instance.

Stage 3: Ideate—Challenge Assumptions and Create Ideas

Ideate: the third phase of design thinking, where you identify innovative solutions to the problem statement you’ve created.

During the third stage of the design thinking process, designers are ready to generate ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and you’ve analyzed your observations in the Define stage to create a user centric problem statement. With this solid background, you and your team members can start to look at the problem from different perspectives and ideate innovative solutions to your problem statement .

There are hundreds of ideation techniques you can use—such as Brainstorm, Brainwrite , Worst Possible Idea and SCAMPER . Brainstorm and Worst Possible Idea techniques are typically used at the start of the ideation stage to stimulate free thinking and expand the problem space. This allows you to generate as many ideas as possible at the start of ideation. You should pick other ideation techniques towards the end of this stage to help you investigate and test your ideas, and choose the best ones to move forward with—either because they seem to solve the problem or provide the elements required to circumvent it.

Stage 4: Prototype—Start to Create Solutions

Prototype: the fourth phase of design thinking, where you identify the best possible solution.

The design team will now produce a number of inexpensive, scaled down versions of the product (or specific features found within the product) to investigate the key solutions generated in the ideation phase. These prototypes can be shared and tested within the team itself, in other departments or on a small group of people outside the design team.

This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three stages . The solutions are implemented within the prototypes and, one by one, they are investigated and then accepted, improved or rejected based on the users’ experiences.

By the end of the Prototype stage, the design team will have a better idea of the product’s limitations and the problems it faces. They’ll also have a clearer view of how real users would behave, think and feel when they interact with the end product.

Stage 5: Test—Try Your Solutions Out

Test: the fifth and final phase of the design thinking process, where you test solutions to derive a deep understanding of the product and its users.

Designers or evaluators rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified in the Prototype stage. This is the final stage of the five-stage model; however, in an iterative process such as design thinking, the results generated are often used to redefine one or more further problems. This increased level of understanding may help you investigate the conditions of use and how people think, behave and feel towards the product, and even lead you to loop back to a previous stage in the design thinking process. You can then proceed with further iterations and make alterations and refinements to rule out alternative solutions. The ultimate goal is to get as deep an understanding of the product and its users as possible.

Did You Know Design Thinking is a Non-Linear Process?

We’ve outlined a direct and linear design thinking process here, in which one stage seemingly leads to the next with a logical conclusion at user testing . However, in practice, the process is carried out in a more flexible and non-linear fashion . For example, different groups within the design team may conduct more than one stage concurrently, or designers may collect information and prototype throughout each stage of the project to bring their ideas to life and visualize the problem solutions as they go. What’s more, results from the Test stage may reveal new insights about users which lead to another brainstorming session (Ideate) or the development of new prototypes (Prototype).

It is important to note the five stages of design thinking are not always sequential. They do not have to follow a specific order, and they can often occur in parallel or be repeated iteratively. The stages should be understood as different modes which contribute to the entire design project, rather than sequential steps.

The design thinking process should not be seen as a concrete and inflexible approach to design; the component stages identified should serve as a guide to the activities you carry out. The stages might be switched, conducted concurrently or repeated several times to gain the most informative insights about your users, expand the solution space and hone in on innovative solutions.

This is one of the main benefits of the five-stage model. Knowledge acquired in the latter stages of the process can inform repeats of earlier stages . Information is continually used to inform the understanding of the problem and solution spaces, and to redefine the problem itself. This creates a perpetual loop, in which the designers continue to gain new insights, develop new ways to view the product (or service) and its possible uses and develop a far more profound understanding of their real users and the problems they face.

The Take Away

Design thinking is an iterative, non-linear process which focuses on a collaboration between designers and users. It brings innovative solutions to life based on how real users think, feel and behave.

This human-centered design process consists of five core stages Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.

It’s important to note that these stages are a guide. The iterative, non-linear nature of design thinking means you and your design team can carry these stages out simultaneously, repeat them and even circle back to previous stages at any point in the design thinking process.

References & Where to Learn More

Take our Design Thinking course which is the ultimate guide when you want to learn how to you can apply design thinking methods throughout a design thinking process. Herbert Simon, The Sciences of the Artificial (3rd Edition), 1996.

d.school, An Introduction to Design Thinking PROCESS GUIDE , 2010.

Gerd Waloszek, Introduction to Design Thinking , 2012.

Hero Image: © the Interaction Design Foundation, CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

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Associate Director of Experience Design

Posted 20 May 2024

Burlington, Massachusetts - United States

Req Id 275160

Work Your Magic with us!  Start your next chapter and join MilliporeSigma.

Ready to explore, break barriers, and discover more? We know you’ve got big plans – so do we! Our colleagues across the globe love innovating with science and technology to enrich people’s lives with our solutions in Healthcare, Life Science, and Electronics. Together, we dream big and are passionate about caring for our rich mix of people, customers, patients, and planet. That's why we are always looking for curious minds that see themselves imagining the unimaginable with us.

The Digital & eCommerce Customer Experience organization is seeking a dynamic and strategic leader to serve as the Senior Manager of eCommerce Experience Design. In this pivotal role, you will lead teams responsible for crafting end-to-end user experiences, content presentation & publishing, and personalization strategies across our digital platforms.  You and your teams will create the experiential design that engages and empowers our customers across the eCommerce experience.  You will partner closely with product owners, customer insights teams, and other stakeholders to develop differentiated experiences that drive both customer satisfaction and business value.

Key Accountabilities:

Experience Design:

• Create a design system that delivers a consistent and on-brand experience throughout all digital experiences, both website and mobile experiences
• Stay abreast of best-in-class ecommerce trends, ai-enabled experiences, voice-interaction experiences, location-based services and future of communities
• Own the entire design approach, methodology and best practices for experience design, overseeing the rapid development of site maps, user flows, wireframes, mocks, and final designs
• Deploys best practices and an iterative design process for the team to design for the full life cycle, from early strategy to requirement refinement to high-fidelity prototypes
• Use a design approach informed by real-time data, UX research, web analytics, and A/B testing.
• Inspire and work closely with technical / engineering teams to understand and incorporate technical considerations in design efforts.
• Translate product requirements and user research in order to define, design, and launch end-to-end best-in-class customer experiences
• Advocate for the business value of design & content and work with business partners to understand the outcomes expected from the design & content work
• Create novel points of view in evaluating problems and potential solutions and be a champion for centering design around user needs
• Empower our designers with the right frameworks and toolkits
• Lead design thinking projects. Generate innovative experiences that push boundaries and can inform our product roadmaps

Collaboration and Communication:

• Collaborate with and influence senior business partners, ensuring alignment with customer needs and strategic growth opportunities
• Proactively collaborate with cross-divisional, cross-functional and external experts to support Millipore Sigma’s e-commerce innovation strategies
• Share complex information across the organization through storytelling, whether new concepts or the reframing of existing ideas

Leadership and Team Management:

• Define a vision for the Design team, capturing the value the design team brings to the business and customers
• Establish new Design competencies such as Service Design which will support enterprise and customer experience level priorities
• Lead and inspire a team of designers and content publishers
• Support digital product strategic vision and roadmaps, fostering effective cross-functional partnerships with Product Owners in an Agile environment
• Ability to lead through influence and collaborating closely with other functions to gain alignment and support
• Reinforce a working culture emphasizing accountability, transparency, and data-driven decision-making

Education and Thought Leadership:

• Define best practices, frameworks, and provide thought leadership to business leads for optimizing and prioritizing work
• Promote a culture of rapid test, learn, and scale as a daily routine

Budget and Vendor Management:

• Develop an annual plan and budget for the Experience Design team to be leveraged across UX design, service design, and content strategy & design
• Leverage strategic assets to create a valuable relationship with suppliers which enhance Millipore Sigma’s growth with new perspectives and challenge conventional thinking

Who You Are:

Minimum Qualifications

• B.A./B.S. in Design Human-Computer Interaction. Product Management, User Experience, Business Management or related field
• required. 7+ years of proven experience in senior-level eCommerce customer experience roles, preferably within an enterprise-level direct to consumer or B2B landscape
• 5+ years of hands-on professional experience designing and executing customer experience strategies, focusing on software tools, complex enterprise applications, or e-commerce
• Experience leading and managing senior-level teams, with a genuine passion for developing and growing others
• Deep understanding of UX processes, design research, service design, and 'jobs to be done' frameworks
• Proficiency in design and rendering software such as Figma, content management systems such as Adobe Experience Manager, and personalization applications
• Strong problem-solving skills and the ability to develop innovative solutions aligned with user needs and technical feasibility
• Proven experience creating and gaining approval of business case/financial cases requiring multi-million dollar/EUR investments
• Excellent communication and presentation skills, with the ability to effectively convey and drive alignment around complex ideas and strategies with stakeholders at all levels
• Proven track record of collaborating cross-functionally, educating, and influencing teams to achieve common goals

Preferred Qualifications

• Advanced degree (M.Sc. or PhD preferred, MBA a plus)
• Specialization in Interactive, Service or Brand Design
• Experience in collaborating with the design and development of websites focused on education, lead generation, and transactions
• Exceptional strategic thinking abilities and the ability to develop and execute digital strategies that align with business objectives
• Experience with agile principles and execution
• Proven track record of leading design thinking projects and generating innovative experiences that inform product roadmaps

What we offer: We are curious minds that come from a broad range of backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences. We celebrate all dimensions of diversity and believe that it drives excellence and innovation, strengthening our ability to lead in science and technology. We are committed to creating access and opportunities for all to develop and grow at your own pace. Join us in building a culture of inclusion and belonging that impacts millions and empowers everyone to work their magic and champion human progress!   Apply now and become a part of our diverse team!

If you would like to know more about what diversity, equity, and inclusion means to us, please visit https://www.emdgroup.com/en/company/press-positions.html  

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