RELATED TERMS:
Design thinking is a human-centric approach to assist businesses to improve their existing products and generate new ideas about possible products and services. It is a creative approach to problem solving. Although not invented by IDEO, it has come to be closely associated with the five-step method developed by that design practice. An evolving approach, its five steps were initially formalised as: Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test.
The three criteria applied to determining whether a design is possible are: desirability, from a human point of view; feasibility from a technological perspective; and viability, from an economic perspective. Its key values, therefore, relate to: the human, technology and economy. In the words of Tim Brown, CEO and president of IDEO, a key figure associated with design thinking, it is an “approach to innovation that draws from the designer’s toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”
Note that the design of narrative environments, in orienting itself towards the values of human, narrative and environment, takes the position that design is not simply or narrowly defined as a problem solving process. Rather the outputs of design practices are situated responses to wicked challenges. While they make interventions into those challenges they cannot be said to ‘solve’ them ‘finally’. Rather, they alter the situation, perhaps making improvements but perhaps also raising other challenges in the process.
References
Brown, T. (2008) Design thinking, Harvard Business Review, 86(6), pp. 85–92. Available at https://new-ideo-com.s3.amazonaws.com/assets/files/pdfs/IDEO_HBR_DT_08.pdf [Accessed 15 September 2021]
Di Russo, S. (2016) Understanding the behaviour of design thinking in complex environments [PhD thesis]. Swinburne University of Technology. Available at: https://figshare.swinburne.edu.au/articles/thesis/Understanding_the_behaviour_of_design_thinking_in_complex_environments/26292853?file=47659087 (Accessed: 19 July 2025).
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