Requirements

 The video essay is 5 minutes max.

Criteria
The video essay will be assessed according to the first to criteria:
1. Understanding of design thinking.
2. Know design tools and methods.

Module Description
 Clearly explain the method and mindset of design thinking.
 Show understanding of its purpose.
 Illustrate understanding with examples.
 Show a critical attitude towards design thinking theory and application.
 Show recognition of all design thinking tools of the design sprint and show awareness of their
purpose.
 Distinguish between different tools in each step of the design thinking process.
 Be critical.

During the design sprint you will use the Design Thinking methodology and mindset to solve a
complex problem. Besides the group assignment of the sprint, you will create a video essay as an
individual assessment.
In the video essay you need to describe and visualize your personal learning journey of the design
sprint. Show you understand what design thinking is. Show which design thinking tools you have
applied in the design sprint and how you have applied them. Show an in-depth reflection on your
mindset and capabilities as a designer in each step (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test).

The content should be like an essay, and since it's video I expect that you use the advantages of
visuals (so do'nt film yourselve speaking into the camera, unless you have things to show). Make
your own story, don't copy sentences from articles. Quotes are allowed, as long as you mention the
reference. Include your personal experience and learnings. What went good, and what went not so
good, what was your role.... Make it short and to the point. Since you already gave a good
presentation, a lot of content that you can use is already there. Good luck! Rosanne
Almost every innovative company in the world uses some form of design thinking. And that’s for
good reasons, because it has transformed the way in which we approach solving problems. So, its
really important for you, whether you are an entrepreneur, designer, or product manager, to
understand what it is. Because design thinking isn’t just for designers, it’s a way of thinking that
can be used by anyone to solve problems.
So, this video is a quick overview of design thinking. In it, I will also take a look at my personal
learning journey of a recent design sprint. The aim is to help you understand what design thinking is
and to take you a step further into how my mindset as a designer has changed through the process.

First, I would like to discuss the basics of design thinking. In essence, design thinking is the
combination of a philosophy, framework and a set of tools that is used to help us solve problems
creatively. What distinguishes design thinking from other problem solving techniques is it’s human
centric approach. It’s about empathizing with the target audience and figuring out what their needs
are. The result is an approach that helps people come up with superior solutions, with lower costs
risks.
There are five main steps to any design thinking process, even though the specific process of each
of these steps might vary. Different tools may also be used such as journey mapping, assumption
testing, and customer co-creation. Now, I will take you through the five steps of the design sprint
and share the observations and learnings gathered while doing a design sprint.

Step number one is empathize. The goal of this stage is to understand the people we’re trying to
design a product or service for. It’s about doing interviews and getting to the core of your target
audience. Some key questions in this stage are; who are we targeting? what is their problem? And,
what do they do? What I learned during this stage was that you need to set your own assumptions
aside and learn as much as you can. Essentially, you need to become like a sponge that absorbs as
much relevant information as possible. Also, its about questioning everything and not being
satisfied with thinking you understand something. We need to make sure that our own experiences
aren’t filling in the blanks, but that we ask our target audience to fill in these blanks.

Moving on to the define step, where we use all of the information gathered in the previous steps to
define a sprint target. It’s about defining the needs, challenges, and problems of your end-users.
Some great tools to use during this stage is the empathy map canvas and how might we questions.
These help us to transition from all of the information obtained to a concrete problem that’s worth
solving. During this stage, I learned that, even though you’re doing the design sprint in a team, it is
important to reflect on things and brainstorm on your own to come up with a wide variety of
options.

Step three is to ideate. Now, you’re using everything you’ve learned in the previous two steps to
come up with solutions and ideas in relation to the sprint target. This stage is all about diverging
and coming up with as many ideas as possible. Various brainstorming techniques can be used here
such as visual association, brainwriting, and solution sketching. During this stage, it became clear to
me that it is critical to have this session in person so that the team can collaborate well.
Step four is prototyping. Now, what you’re doing is converging. You’re taking all of the ideas from
the previous step and selecting a limited amount of them that you want to develop further. Then,
those ideas get turned into prototypes that can be tested. A key part of this stage is checking all of
the assumptions you have that need to be true for your idea to succeed. The most important once
should be focused on and tested through the prototype. These prototypes should be as simple as
possible while being representable of the idea you’re trying to test. Often, they are just facades. In
my personal design sprint, this stage was split across two days. This made it hard for the team to see
a progression. It often felt as if the process was holding back the team and making the progression
slower and more tiresome then it should have been. As a result, the team lost some of it’s initial
motivation throughout this stage.
That brings me to the final step, which is where you test your idea on real people. This stage is
about getting feedback on the prototype you’ve created. In my own experience, this is where we
stopped the design sprint. But, the result of this stage is a lot of new insights that need to be
processed and adjusted for. Therefore, you should now move back to the define phase and move on
from there to come up with new ideas and prototype. This iterative process is one of the key
elements of the design thinking approach. It’s about reviewing results and improving on initial
assumptions and ideas.

This brings me to the key difference between a design sprint and the design thinking approach.
Design thinking is a fluent approach that does not include specific exercises and techniques. On the
other hand, design sprints are predefined and highly structured. Design sprints are more like a
recipe, while design thinking is a philosophy and mindset. In my opinion, this makes design
thinking a more useful approach then design sprints. The reason for this is that it can be adjusted
easily to fit the needs of the specific project. But, the design sprint is easier to successfully run
because of it’s simplicity and predefined steps.

So, I hope that this quick overview helped you to understand the basics of design thinking. The key
here is to understand the philosophy behind design thinking, which can be applied in many ways.
What is design thinking and why is it so popular?
Design thinking is fundamentally a user-centric approach to solving problems. It revolves around
understanding the people who will use our products and services. It is especially useful when
tackling problems that are not clearly defined. Most of all, it is a hands-on approach to problem
solving with a clear structure. You should not understand the phases as a hierarchical or step-by-
step process. Instead, you should look at it as an overview of the modes or phases that contribute to
an innovative project, rather than sequential steps. Empathizing with customers is key in design
thinking.
Tim Brown also emphasizes that Design Thinking techniques and strategies of design belong at
every level of a business. Design thinking is not only for designers but also for creative employees,
freelancers, and leaders who seek to infuse design thinking into every level of an organization,
product or service in order to drive new alternatives for business and society.
Advantages:
 Lower costs
 Certainty
 Better solutions
 Tested
 Natural flow from research
Design thinking in general
“Design is about coming up with solutions, art is about raising questions.”
“Creativity isn’t about stepping out of the box; it’s about using the box to your advantage. We need
limitations to be creative, so use the box!”