10 Design Thinking Tools

The '10 Design Thinking Tools Action Guide', from UVA Darden School of Business Professor Jeanne Liedtka, offers valuable practical advice on how to use design thinking to create value in your organization:

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Design Thinking is based on a methodology used by designers and architects to solve complex problems. Rather than being analytical and problem-focused, it is solution focused, taking a practical approach to creativity and providing a valuable time and cost saving process for driving innovation in organizations.

Design used to be something that happened far downstream in the development process and was focused on making new products aesthetically attractive or enhancing the organization's brand. Design Thinking brings the designer’s mindset to bear on all aspects of innovation at an early stage, and is used to improve a wide range of organizational processes and services as well as products and to create ideas rather than to simply dress them up.

In the action brief Professor Liedtka, a renowned design thinking expert, shares a few of the tools from the process, including:

Visualization - use imagery to share new ideas instead of trying to explain with words,' so that everyone ‘sees’ the same concept

Value Chain Analysis - determine how to create the most value for customers by understanding the capabilities and intentions of your suppliers

Rapid Prototyping - leverage storyboarding, user scenarios, etc. to obtain input on concepts from primary stakeholders before committing to development of a new product

Click on ‘Download this Resource’ above to read the Guide