Being an Industrial Design Engineer I am academically trained to 'think like a designer'. However, after 5 years of study, if anyone would ask me 'What is design thinking?', I would not have been able to give you a clear answer. The problem is that I was taught 'to think like a designer' implicitly. This means through 'learning by doing'. But, then it is difficult to articulate what it is that you learned. As someone passionate about learning and teaching, this has plagued me for a very long time.

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Many years later, I decided to do 7 Design Thinking courses, from a well-known popular provider. This resulted in 3 certificates, including 'Advanced Design Thinking'. However, again I was not able to tell you what Design Thinking really is, except for showing you a 5-step process and explaining you how to execute the individual activities. A 5-step process does not teach you (the foundations of) Design Thinking, even though, a 5-step process can entice design thinking. I knew there was more to it than a simple (5-step) process! So I started to research what Design Thinking actually is. And more than 3 years of full-time study later, I am able to tell you what I found.

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One of the findings is that there are two streams of 'design thinking': an academic one ('how designers think' or 'designerly ways of knowing'), and a popular stream called 'design thinking in business'. Unless you are an academically trained designer you have probably only heard of the latter. I studied both, in-depth.

 

The academic path to learn Design Thinking will take you many years. Published research on 'how designers think' goes rather deep and is difficult to access and comprehend. On the other hand the popular way to learn 'design thinking' is quick and easy, and only takes a few days of (online or in-person) courses, after which you can apply the given framework.

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I then asked myself the question (being a researcher and a designer), can I develop something that makes it easy to learn, communicate and apply the results of the academic stream of Design Thinking?' The model (and system) presented on this site, and the accompanying document (a printable guide) is the result of this.

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A 24 page guide, explaining the details of the system, is available upon request.