A recent Vox article shared a short video of Tim Brown, CEO at design firm IDEO, giving an explanation of Design Thinking. IDEO has used this methodology to grow from as a successful product design firm, then later into designing experiences and complex systems.

I encourage you to watch the video. Below, I share the outline of steps with my thoughts on the process and how leaders can change the world with design thinking (I also included a couple of bonus thoughts from Tim Brown).

1. Observation

Observe the world around you. Formally and informally. Look for things that aren’t working. You may notice people who need to collaborate sit too far apart from each other. You may see people enter your building and seem confused about where they should go. By observing the daily habits of workers, you may identify unnecessary steps they go through because of redundant paperwork or bloated software.

2. Ideation

This term got a bad rap at the turn of the century because of its overuse by consultants, but ideation is really just idea generation. Following design thinking, you would take the insights from your observations and begin to imagine solutions. How could you put the right people in proximity to each other? What are some ways to guide visitors when they enter? How can you streamline work processes?

3. Prototyping

IDEO encourages RAPID prototyping. You don’t want to spend a too much time or money at this stage. This may mean sketching or using a simple software tool to mock up new office layouts. You could create hand-drawn signs, or print them on the office printer as a proof of concept. Maybe you create a flowchart of a workflow before changing any software your people use.

4. Testing

Try it out. See how the prototype works. This restarts the cycle as you now observe again and can iterate new ideas to improve possible solutions.

Brown adds another element to this process:

Storytelling

Once you design your solution, you need to tell others about it. For an external product or service, this may be a marketing campaign. For an internal project, this could be a communication strategy as a part of your change management process. Just because you created a great solution doesn’t mean everyone will automatically and intuitively “get it.” Help them through the process.

Brown also emphasizes how useful it is to have teams involved in design thinking, not just an individual.

You need lots of brains with different perspectives, different creative contributions …working together to get to an outcome that is literally rich enough and sophisticated enough to behave like a system instead of being like an object.

Tim Brown

This highlights the importance of teamwork, which requires strong leadership. Without leaders creating environments where people can implement processes like design thinking, teams will never  collaborate in creative ways to produce new ideas. Leaders have to create space for observations and ideation. They need to champion prototypes and testing. They foster workplace cultures that makes design thinking possible.

When leaders set the stage to use design thinking, they cultivate teams who change the world.