Why care about design thinking?

Design Thinking is more than just a process designers follow to solve problems – it is an ideology that anyone can apply to almost any problem.

It turns out it's pretty good for solving business problems too. This is why Harvard Business Review, MIT and IBM encourage leaders to take Design Thinking seriously.

A study by McKinsey found the best design performers increased their revenues at nearly twice the rate of their industry competitors.

But how do you adopt it? Let's start with a quick example.

Design Thinking in a nutshell, with an example

Imagine you're the CMO for a retail chain, and you noticed your shopping cart conversion rate is lower for mobile customers. These customers add things to their basket, but few complete the transaction.

Using design thinking, you'd take the following steps to explore and resolve the problem.

Empathise : We solve problems to help people. Empathy means understanding the viewpoint of people. In this case, you might speak to a handful of mobile customers who abandoned their carts. You learn more about their situation, what makes them tick, how they shop. It becomes apparent that customers like to add items to their basket whilst out and about, as a kind of temporary shopping list. But they end up just going to the bricks and mortar store to get the goods, because it's quicker than waiting 3 days for delivery.

Define : With this new insight, you want to reframe the problem you're solving. The problem you really need to solve is, "How do allow customers to get faster delivery so they don't just use their shopping cart as a shopping list?". Design thinking teams are comfortable spending a lot of time framing the problem because a well understood problem is so much easier to solve. 

Prototype : You create a mock up of the new experience you want to offer to customers. There's something about seeing your ideas come to life that helps you hone them. Prototyping is relatively inexpensive, which is just one way that design thinking helps reduce costs. In this example, you chose to try the faster and more expensive delivery option during checkout. 

Test : You then test this prototype on 20 customers and get feedback. You could do this by showing customers a popup, inviting them to take part of a survey. Or you might run user tests on a tool such as UserBrain.

Implement :  The feedback was pretty good, 60% of customers chose the faster delivery time and reacted positively to the prototype. This suggests the investment will be a good one, it will bring a significant uplift in mobile conversions. So, you decide to move forward with this change. If the results were not acceptable, it's time to take the data and feedback and go back through the process. Perhaps you're solving the wrong problem? Or you had another idea that looked promising? Or, you simply need to invest more time in a stronger prototype?

It's a contrived example, but hopefully shows the process. Let's now look a little closer at where Design Thinking, starting from its origins.

Where it came from

The foundations of Design Thinking emerged in the early 1900s when companies began prioritising user needs before engineering solutions. This marked a significant shift from the traditional "build first, design later" approach. Instead of letting technical constraints drive product development, organisations started asking, "What do our users actually need?"

The term "Design Thinking" was formalised in the 1990s by IDEO founders David Kelley and Tim Brown, who helped transform it from a theoretical framework into a practical methodology for innovation. Their work demonstrated how putting human needs at the centre of the problem-solving process could lead to breakthrough solutions. Today, the approach has evolved beyond its design studio origins and is embraced by organisations worldwide, from tech startups to Fortune 500 companies, as a proven way to drive innovation and create more successful products and services.

To learn more, check out this article by NNGroup or the inventor, David Kelly.

Why it works for your users

Design Thinking is not just about achieving user-focused designs or accurate data; it is as much about the approach to solving the problem as the problem itself. It shifts the focus to put the end-user in the role of Expert. This one simple act – of prioritising users at every step of design – has a knock-on effect, as all data must be collected from users, about users, and in the context of real use cases. Subsequently, any artefacts you take back to users for testing will already be ticking some of their boxes.

Why it works for you

Innovation is built into Design Thinking from the start, as it encourages the exploration of various radical approaches to a single problem, and utilises user responses to hone a crafted solution. By taking multiple possibilities for your users to test, you drill deeper into their needs and wants, catch edge cases before they catch you, and pick up on things they didn’t even know they needed. Adopted company-wide, it facilitates team collaboration, and maximises collective knowledge, giving everyone the opportunity to suggest approaches and iterating on the results.

Why Pocketworks uses design thinking

When we develop apps and digital products, our immediate focus is on who your users are: what problems do they face, and how can we solve them? Using a Design Thinking approach to your problems, we make sure that we (and you) are putting your customers first, which is all the more vital in the age of social media, viral stories and bad PR.

How to embrace Design Thinking in your organisation

Design Thinking is not just for designers, but for anyone facing complex challenges that impact people. We've seen this firsthand in our design workshop practice, where teams from various backgrounds use these principles to solve complex business challenges.

Whether you're a business leader working to improve customer experience, a team manager solving internal workflows, or an entrepreneur developing new services, the principles remain the same: understand your users deeply, frame problems thoughtfully, explore multiple solutions, and test ideas before making major investments.

What makes Design Thinking particularly valuable is how it combines rigorous methodology with creative freedom. By following its structured approach—empathise, define, ideate, prototype, and test—teams can deliver solutions that truly resonate with users whilst managing risk and resources effectively. As business challenges grow increasingly complex, this human-centred approach to problem-solving becomes not just useful, but essential.