What is Design Thinking?

Patti P. Phillips, Ph.D., Chief Executive Officer ROI Institute, Inc.
Jack J. Phillips, Ph.D., Chairman, ROI Institute, Inc.

Design thinking is a process that has its roots in innovation. Essentially the process suggests that, you should set your goals around what you want to achieve in detail and mobilize the entire group of people who are involved to design the product, service, or process to achieve the goals. That’s not necessarily a new idea. The results from learning (the goal) was not clearly defined previously. More specifically, design thinking involves these elements:

• A way to take on design challenges by applying empathy
• An approach to collective problem solving
• A framework to balance needs and feasibility
• A means to solve complex or wicked problems
• A mind-set for curiosity and inquiry
• A fixed process and a tool kit
• A problem-solving approach to handle problems on a systems level
• A culture that fosters exploration and experimentation1

In terms of learning and development, it means that all stakeholders work in a very collaborative way to design for the results desired from learning. The results desired could be any or all of these outcomes:

This is a chain of value that must exist for learning to drive business impact. This flow of outcome data is a classic logic model where the results at one level is a pre-condition for the next.  For example, to drive business impact, application results must be there.

The results desired by executives, our funders and supporters, is business impact.² Even in the government or non-profit sectors, business impact measures of output, quality, cost, and time exist.  In that setting, learning helps to get more work done, have better quality of work, save time as the tasks are completed faster, and even reduce the cost of work.  Regardless of the type of organization, there is a need to connect learning to the business. Consequently, learning success must be defined as delivering business value.  How do you do it?  We will discuss this in our next blog post.

 References:

1. Mootee, Idris. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley, 2013.
2. Phillips, Jack J. and Patti P. Phillips. Measuring for Success: What CEOs Really Think about Learning Investments. Alexandria, VA: ASTD Press, 2010.