A while back, I captured this provocation on LinkedIn by Darren Hood, which got me thinking. What does it take to “Let Designers think”? Thinking is the value we bring. Let's discuss more ways to carve out “thinking” time.

The comment was then punctuated by Pavel Samsonov, who touched on the difference between corporate decision-making via “design thinking” and “thinking like a designer.” Unfortunately, there remains a gap between “design thinking” as designers practice it and how companies implement “design thinking.” But regardless, there is still an impulse among design practitioners to “think”. Let’s quickly review how we got here.

Design Thinking refresher Design Thinking is the process (popularized by IDEO and the Stanford D-school) for how designers move through a problem-solving process. Empathy > Define > Ideate > Prototype > Test is the shorthand for the types of things “designers think” about as they produce solutions.

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