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What is a Design Thinking Process and How to Present It?

Just as the title suggests, Design Thinking or DT (how we’ll abbreviate it at times throughout this article) is a process that can also be referenced as an ideology, a methodology, and even a framework. By the end of this article, these facts will be more precise. 

This article includes a definition of design thinking, its main advantages and disadvantages, the necessary steps to present design thinking process results to your coworkers, and even a couple of case studies for real-life application. At the bottom section of this article, you can find a selection of slide templates tailored for presenting design thinking processes. 

Table of Contents

What is Design Thinking?

• Advantages and disadvantages of applying a design thinking process

Step 1 – First, think about the precise content you’ll need to include

Step 2 – state the need being solved, step 3 – the process that led to defining the problem as such, step 4 – the ideation phase.

• Step 5 – Getting feedback from your coworkers
• Step 6 – Presenting the prototype
• Step 7 – Testing results
• Step 8 – Debating the experience

Case 1: Developers creating a banking app with an easier-to-navigate UI than current competitors

Case 2: teachers releasing a new online course based on previous student experiences, suggested design thinking templates at slidemodel.

Design thinking is a user-centric approach whereby the people executing it look for “alternative solutions to various problems.” These are truly complex issues. 

Still referencing our previously-linked definition, DT looks for “a deep understanding of the user, challenging the ongoing assumptions, and redefining problems.” As Berlin-based CareerFoundry says, DT is “all about solving complex problems in a user-centric way.”

A design thinking process in the case of a corporation, especially, allows a company to work on complex issues. They do so by “taking the processes and approaches that designers use and applying them to problems that designers don’t typically encounter,” says Camren Browne for CareerFoundry. 

A design thinking methodology can bring great results to a company by effectively dealing with problems that seem impossible or truly difficult to solve. 

Advantages and disadvantages of applying a design thinking process 

The first clear advantage of applying a Design Thinking process is how effective and innovatively a problem can be solved. That also spreads out to the creation of an innovative culture. This can mean a significant competitive advantage for any company or a standing-out point for any group. Take into account all the benefits of a bottom-up approach as part of these advantages. 

Since this methodology is user-centric, another primary benefit is how well it tends to end-users. 

As for the cons, time constraints might be worth mentioning. This method can take months to implement. And the need for user input must also be counted. As for a last-third disadvantage, consider how this innovative, user-centric ideology can clash with other beliefs or strategies. It can impact other systems or measures already in place within an organization or culture. 

How to create a Design Thinking Process Presentation Step-by-Step

As we mentioned, follow the steps below to present design thinking process results to your coworkers. 

For this, consider the 5 stages of design thinking, which are: 

Consider each step carefully. 

For the empathy stage, talk to your users. Get to know them. Then carefully consider everything they tell you. You’re looking to empathize with them here to truly grasp what they need, how they feel, their concerns, likes, and dislikes. 

What insight can you get from observing them? You’ll need to include your findings first in your presentation. 

Accompany the above with due research. What you find on the side is also essential to your design thinking methodology. 

Bear in mind you’ll also need to signal a problem you’ve chosen as your primary area for improvement. We’ll get to that point next, but contemplate how you’ll need to express your ideas clearly, every single thought around solving the specific problem you chose. A prototype will also be required, mentioning its respective testing. We say this so you can prepare for all the content you’ll need to include in your presentation. Once you’ve gathered everything related, it’s time to think about the second step. 

Clearly state what it is you’re solving. You’re on the definition stage here for phase two. For it, be precise on what ultimate problem you defined as the main one to solve. Expand on the exact necessity for which you require a solution. This can also be seen as your problem statement. Center on your core trouble here. 

If it helps, come up with personas in this process. Doing so can help stay centered on the user experience.

As you express your choice, you’ll need to elaborate on how you reached that conclusion. Elaborate on the exact process that made you decide on a specific problem as the one requiring your attention. Include your reasoning, the roadblocks or obstacles you noted, and how you think this main problem will be the one addressing a broader complexity worth solving. 

Now that you’ve defined exactly what the work ahead is, it’s time to start asking questions. This is what we call the ideation stage. The goal is to develop new ideas, so throw the ball around! For that, focus on the problem at hand and ponder about it. Seek to change your perspectives as you do so. You can also look for different ideation techniques to help you out here. Our creative thinking article can be of help. 

However you go about it, let yourself think freely on this step. Group and foster free-thinking. You’re looking for innovative approaches and thinking outside the box. No thought is ever too silly to consider in this process. 

On the contrary, stimulate wild thinking, especially by clearing the most senseless solutions out of the way early. Once you’ve brainstormed and considered all possible solutions, decide on the best new thoughts you have on the matter. Portray those in your presentation.

Step 5 – Getting feedback from your coworkers

Then, take your analysis outside your group to get further feedback from your peers. Get as much insight into your proposed ideas as possible. Be open to this criticism; you want everything anyone has to so you can continue thinking about your proposed problem and solution. 

Take out of this session what seem to be the best thoughts and work with these on a prototype, which you’ll present next. 

Step 6 – Presenting the prototype

Bring this forth as engagingly as possible. You can present a prototype, and have it function in front of your audience, present a demo, show pictures, or create images…be as compelling as possible as you bring your work forth.  Avoid using buzzwords and communicate clearly.

Note that your solutions should act clearly in what you present here as a prototype. And, just in case, consider how this is still part of a very early stage in your entire development process, so keep costs as manageable within your budget as possible. You can do imaging or paperwork on this to get to a cost-effective prototype that will allow your design process to evolve. 

Step 7 – Testing results 

For prototyping, of course, you’ll have engaged in the last of the five design process steps: comprehensive testing. Bear that in mind; you’re still testing ideas and results. 

For your presentation, consider how to best present the data you’ve gathered so far and everything you’ve been able to determine based on your testing. For your slide presentation, also cover how you’ll apply any corrections that may be needed on your intended product or service. Make sure you do that based on research, as well. 

Step 8 – Debating the experience

And then open the room up for discussion. As you did for the feedback stage, be open and seek critical evaluations. Conduct this debate to lead you to specific, actionable items. Group suggestions to allow you to move seamlessly through your design thinking cycle. Remember, this is a process, a methodology, and, as such, it isn’t static. 

On the contrary, you’re looking to test your chosen problems and allow yourself to move back and forth between stages to make improvements. You’re expected to need alterations and to go back to a particular stage to refine your process. As a thought process, the main goal is to provide alternative solutions based on your continuing findings. Be flexible in this approach. You might also find our Critical thinking to achieve business goals article to be of help. 

Case Studies: Hands-on examples of design thinking processes

Below you can see two case studies where we consider how to apply design thinking process presentations for excellent results.

Imagine you have a group of developers working on a new app in the banking industry. Pleasing users, especially millennials , will require much work understanding their needs. Yet, an excellent job at a more engaging and fulfilling user experience with this app can quickly generate a competitor advantage in a very competitive field. Banking needs to modernize, and the latest tech is here to help. But, for that, a lot of outside-the-box thinking is required.

Product thinking as a problem-solving technique can help designers during product planning. In this case, the design thinking process needs to center on users and how the product, along with all its features, will be developed to excel at meeting user needs. 

Step 1 – Think about the content to include

In this case, a product-thinking PowerPoint template can help. The material is suited with a creative process flow diagram, for example, to make the visualization of the DT process easier to see. It should ease how you collectively look at the bigger picture. You can also edit the template to suit your design preference with the tools you find in the world of procreate brushes . This presentation would focus not only on the target audience, answering clearly who exactly needs the product, but it also integrates how you’ll get it working as you present your proposed solution. As a third critical step, the template is ready to state expected outcomes, which will act as the groundwork for new feature development.

Consider the current state of the banking website’s platform. How does it help customers to solve their needs, and how many services does it offer (paying utility bills, investments, etc.).

Observe what your competitors are doing and what your customers require to improve their lives.

This step should start by auditing your current performance on digital platforms, how much time the average user spends online, errors reported, etc.

Document each element that gives extra information on the issue to solve. It will support your project as a reference on why you took a decision or not.

Step 4 – The Ideation Phase

Let’s assume the team of developers behind the app project offer the bank three different mockups of what the app would look like. The mockup idea comes after a brainstorming session with the banking team, where these points were covered:

• Color scheme to meet the institutional design
• Loading time for the app
• Security stages for login
• Validation methods for the transactions processed
• Information to display on the home screen
• Troubleshooting screens and how to contact support
• Menu designs

After two tentative versions of the app are created for a test environment, it’s time to submit the app to an extended group of workers at the bank institution. They will test the app and give the developers and product managers feedback.

A meeting between the different departments involved has to happen, with a presentation to brief on the initial findings. After there’s consensus on which version to go for, then the developers will release a test version to a selected group of “potential customers” – people that will experience the app as end users, without revealing sensitive data to competitors.

Step 7 – Testing results

The “potential customers” will perform extensive tests on this app, reporting their findings to the developers and any user experience feeling to the product managers from the bank.

This ensures that customers get an interactive experience when using the app, with a product tailored to their needs.

With the conclusion from the testing team, it’s time for the bank to review its experience with this app creation process. Not just the end-result product, but also which areas of this process could be improved, what key points can affect other processes, etc.

It’s a rich experience to help the team grow, think outside the box, and come up with new, creative results for the organization.

Moving from the corporate world into the classroom, we’re considering all those webinars we could’ve created for an online audience. They probably work wonders as online courses students can take at any point! Yet, prior experiences with our students sometimes shape our new content, making it more ideal for our classrooms with every iteration. In those cases, we can easily make those processes visible. 

For that, consider this design thinking PowerPoint template . The slide template is filled with fully-editable PowerPoint vectors and focused on a process whereby you understand, create, and deliver. 

There are ten professional slides to allow teachers to fully convey the iterative and cyclical steps that have taken their material to what it is today, rather than seeing content production as a linear sequence. The diverse and differently-colored graphs are a great guide to display your material, aside from being a compelling design that accurately portrays the movement in the design thinking process that has led to all of your new online course material. 

For this group of teachers, their need is to attend to those students that cannot be present for a live course. This could be either because of health-related issues, work schedules, or even students from far distant places from the University.

The process of defining this problem can be tackled from these points:

• Surveys led by the University to gather data on students’ work situation, living conditions, health conditions, etc.
• Surveys led by the University on the quality of the courses being taught. This also implies which areas could be improved for those courses.
• Requests made by students in the past 3 years about changing an evaluation date, or schedule for the course and similar adducing conflicts with their work situation.

Multiple ideas can come up from this need. For starters, the teachers can opt to make a course out of recorded webinar sessions pertinent to a course being taught at the moment. Like an in-depth session for those students who wish to know more about the subject.

Another option could be to record the lessons while giving the live lecture as usual, which involves adapting the classroom to fit cameras, microphones, sound-insulation for better audio quality, etc.

And finally, they can opt to work twice as hard, giving the face-to-face course as usual, plus record the entire course in a dedicated room tailored for video production, with a whiteboard or similar nearby.

The teachers opted to gather in a meeting to discuss the potential of this project. Some teachers could raise questions about working extra hours to produce the content. Others may feel there are areas lacking attention, such as how to respond to the questions raised by students.

Finally, the teaching crew of the University voted for the webinar-into-course option, since it’s already recorded material and would only require minor editing sessions to put the material together into a landing page.

A meeting is held to present the potential platform for the students, how to log in, how to interact with teachers/other students for tasks or questions, and how to browse the video lessons.

A selected group of students will test the platform for a three-week period. After that, they will report the experience based on these key points:

• Platform’s usability
• Errors and bugs to report
• Video & audio quality
• Content quality
• If the online learning process enriched their education or not

With the test results shown in a report presentation, teachers can now debate the quality of the end-product created, the process that created the course, and how to improve it for future instances.

Design thinking is a process that teams can use to understand their users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. The process involves five phases: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. At SlideModel, we don’t just have a single design thinking template . We have a wide offer of diverse design thinking presentation templates with different design thinking slide designs. We offer different kinds of design thinking PowerPoint backgrounds, as well. Look for the design thinking PowerPoint template that best suits your precise needs. 

1. Service Delivery Process Diagram for PowerPoint

Our Service Delivery Process Diagram for PowerPoint is a 5-step template featuring a design-thinking concept, for example. It works well to represent the sequence of the user-concentric model. Using meaningful graphics and images can especially help you reference the process with this one.

Use This Template

2. Design Thinking Models PowerPoint Template

Our Design Thinking Models PowerPoint template is a creative solution framework designed in a creative circular diagram with arrows. It helps users effectively plan out business strategies and innovation with an infographic that integrates a customer-focused design model instead of a problem-focused solution. See unmet customer needs and business limitations while framing the opportunity and scope of innovation, generating creative ideas, testing, and refining solutions.

3. Design Thinking Lean Startup Agile Diagram for PowerPoint

On the other hand, the Design Thinking Lean Startup Agile Diagram for PowerPoint is perfect for project methodologies. Set on a visual diagram, it combines design thinking, lean startup, and agile to drive digital innovation. Display circular loops of activities over graph charts to demonstrate all the different directions in the concrete and abstract, business problem solving and execution, customer problem, and solution.

4. Design Thinking Double Diamond for PowerPoint

And last but not least, we have our Design Thinking Double-Diamond Presentation for PowerPoint . With it, it can be easier to understand problems and creative ways of solving complex troubles. Based on two diamond shapes, the double diagram uses two types of thinking to solve a problem; one is divergent while the other is convergent thinking. Explore all facts and possibilities with an open mind while focusing on a limited number of critical issues and solutions. This four-step process flow also comes with an infographic diagram. Discover, define, develop, and deliver while you use an evolving stage for improvement and upscaling techniques.

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Present Design Thinking Process with Sleek PowerPoint Diagrams

Last Updated on March 24, 2024 by Rosemary

Do you use the design thinking process in or on behalf of your business? Whether you’re literally developing design concepts with a team or are innovating your offerings with this approach, using impactful visuals will help you make your points.

Explore our Business Performance PPT Reports category on the website for more resources to boost your presentation impact.

Why present design thinking visually?

Having a clear, visual flow chart will help you stay on track and help your audience follow along. They will benefit from simple, easy-to-follow visuals.

Articulate your plans and thoughts clearly and concisely with modern graphics. Make your otherwise busy content look professional with ease. See the full Design Thinking PowerPoint Diagrams set by clicking here.

Look at these examples to see how you can better present design thinking:

Explain the 3 stages of design thinking on one slide

The 3 stages of design thinking are usually inspiration discovery, idea generation, and implementation of the solution you’ve devised. This may not be the case for your process or the scenario you need to present, but this basic framework can set the stage for numerous presentations on virtually any topic.

Present relations among the 5 action phases of design thinking

The 3 stages of design thinking can further be divided into 5 action phases. They are empathy – where you understand your target user; define – where you describe what the user needs; ideate – you generate solutions and come up with ideas; prototype – you try to draft prototypes of the creative solutions you devised in the ideation stage; test – the final phase where you present and test your prototype to see what can be improved. Think about what this process would look like in your organization.

You can visualize the flow of these 5 phases with 5 circles. You can make each look distinctive by using various colors and adding icon symbols for each phase. In the example, we used two people sharing the ideas for the empathy phase and a magnifying glass for the testing phase. We added arrows to show each iteration of feedback loops among the elements.

Describe the details of each phase in separate slides

In the example, the Empathy action phase has been selected. The description of what understanding the target user looks like for you and your organization can be changed. You can add the steps which are part of this phase in the larger box. Avoid boring text-only slides and repetition while maintaining visual consistency. Achieve this by keeping the visuals cohesive and appealing. We used one main color variation for each slide with a specific phase. In the example, you see we used light and dark turquoise for Empathy.

Present non-linear looping processes of the flow

What if your design thinking process isn’t linear? That’s fine! You can use loop diagrams to present these same steps in a striking, modern way. Let your audience see how the different phases interact and lead into one another. This approach is creative and eye-catching and using this diagram along with the linear structure may grant your audience an alternate perspective and help those who struggle with the concepts to understand.

Express diverging and converging ideation process with a double diamond diagram

The Double Diamond Diagram of Design Thinking is a unique way to break down a process into the research, insight, ideation, and prototype phases.

We additionally illustrated the four key diamond elements with outline icons: Discovery with the outline of the silhouette of a man’s head with a question mark, defining with a list on a piece of paper, develop with a lightbulb outline, and deliver with the outline of a hand beneath two gear outlines. You might proceed differently when you have a general problem versus a specific problem and this diagram will help you explain that to your audience.

Using diagrams to keep your design thinking presentation fresh

Explaining design thinking yourself without images can be difficult and confusing. Creating dynamic graphics can be time-consuming, and they may not be as visually appealing when you build your own.

For more inspiration, subscribe to our YouTube channel:

Resource: Design Thinking Process Diagrams

We created the Design Thinking Process Diagrams set to help you overcome the challenges which stand between you and a compelling presentation. Avoid repetitive presentations with fresh, clean graphics. This set really POPs, which will help your audience stay interested and follow along:

Design Thinking Process PPT Diagrams

With graphics, you can often communicate a full idea, so why not put that to work for your next presentation? Give an impactful presentation without building all the graphics yourself. To make your presentations even greater, consider adding diagrams and chart graphics to your slides.

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Design Thinking Infographics

Free google slides theme and powerpoint template.

Design thinking is a way of working that sharpens creativity to come up with new ideas to solve user problems. It is inspired by the working methodology of product designers and has five main categories: empathy generation, definition, ideation, prototyping and testing. In this template you will find different types of infographics with them as the main character: diagrams, timelines, tables, etc.

Features of these infographics

• 100% editable and easy to modify
• 31 different infographics to boost your presentations
• Include icons and Flaticon’s extension for further customization
• Designed to be used in Google Slides, Microsoft PowerPoint and Keynote
• 16:9 widescreen format suitable for all types of screens
• Include information about how to edit and customize your infographics

How can I use the infographics?

Am I free to use the templates?

How to attribute the infographics?

Attribution required If you are a free user, you must attribute Slidesgo by keeping the slide where the credits appear. How to attribute?

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4 inspiring design thinking examples and the valuable lessons they teach

Design thinking is a powerful tool for product teams, but what does it look like in practice? How have successful companies applied it—and why does it work?

Last updated

Reading time.

From tech products, healthcare, travel, and even non-profit community programs, design thinking has proven to be a useful problem-solving tool for innovators and entrepreneurs alike.

We’ve rounded up four design thinking examples that show the incredible effects this methodology can have on a company’s success. In these examples, we examine how each organization used the design thinking process to improve their product—and what you can learn from their experience.

The tools you need to design a product customers love

Use Hotjar to understand how real users experience your product—so you can improve it for them and keep them coming back for more.

Why design thinking works

Design thinking has made its way into various industries in the past decade. As a creative approach to innovation and problem-solving that focuses on users , the practice of design thinking covers everything from physical consumer products like smartphones and laptops, to digital systems built by SaaS brands, and even community-oriented projects in wellness, banking, and self-improvement.

Today, probably every tech company you can think of is using design thinking in one way or another. Some of the world’s leading brands—think Apple, Google, IBM, and Samsung—have adopted the design thinking approach, and the methodology is being taught at leading universities around the world, including Stanford d.school, Harvard, and MIT. 

Why does it work for every one of them? The answer is pretty straightforward: design thinking helps product teams understand not only what will make a great product, but also how and if they should do it. It can (and has) transformed the way businesses across industries solve problems and meet customer needs.

The power of this methodology is to quickly test whether an idea, solution, or enhancement can bring real results to customers. This creative and experimental approach helps teams better understand how to create products that are not only usable, but above all, useful.

☝️ Fact: design-led companies consistently outperform their competitors

This user-first approach, coupled with early and frequent testing, helps minimize risk, drive customer engagement, and ultimately boost the bottom line. In fact, design thinking offers a proven competitive advantage .

According to a recent five-year study by McKinsey & Company, companies that consistently followed design thinking practices generated roughly 32% more revenue and 56% higher returns for shareholders than those that did not. This higher success rate was true across banking, consumer goods, and med tech industries. 

4 examples of design thinking to inspire you

Right now, you may think: “This is great, but how will it help bring my product to life faster?” To make your vision more tangible, let’s look at four exceptional examples of design thinking done right. 

Remember: at one point, these companies were standing exactly where you are. The more you know about successful design processes, the more you can take some of their best aspects and use them to enhance your own products.

Airbnb knows a thing or two about design—as they should, considering two of the company’s founders are designers. In 2008, they teamed up with an engineer to solve one essential travel problem: where to stay.

How Airbnb uses design thinking

To do that, they knew they had to get into the heads of the people who were going to use Airbnb and see what they were actually looking for. Their solution involved traveling to New York, renting a camera, and spending time with customers in their homes to take good pictures of the houses. It wasn’t scalable or very technical, and they did it with no preliminary study—they were only guided by intuition.

The team took a chance, skipped what they had learned at school about how a business should work, and followed the steps of the design thinking methodology: empathize, define, design, prototype, and test. Then, they doubled their income overnight.

Today, design thinking is still part of Airbnb’s DNA and is embedded in everything they do: it’s how they foster creative culture, iterate on their product, and make meaningful connections with a global community of travelers— all by putting the human experience at the center . Here are a few design-led projects that have happened over the years at Airbnb:

The “Snow White” project : a user journey visualization that illustrates the critical moments of truth within the host, guest, and hiring processes in three stories.

Empathy travel : a program that immerses team members into the customer experience. Every new employee has to take a trip in their first or second week at Airbnb and document it.

Design Language System : design teams often struggle to reach a cadence that balances the creative process and cycles of continuous innovation. This process led to the development of Airbnb’s new Design Language System, a collection of components defined by shared principles and patterns, as well as a suite of internal and third-party tools that allow their teams to work smarter and with more alignment.

Design is fundamentally about making decisions through the lens of what will be useful and engaging to people.

What Airbnb has achieved through design thinking 

Their unusual and more creative approach paid off. By implementing design thinking principles, Airbnb has singlehandedly defined the experience economy and set themselves apart as an industry leader. 

From a program that listens and responds to hosts' feedback, to encouraging gestures that create customer delight at moments where the product experience might break, Airbnb has used design thinking to solve incredibly complex and interesting challenges , including:

Dealing with a unique global inventory of homes and experiences

Understanding how people get inspired and plan travel

Creating tremendous freedom for bold, creative thinking and making for employees

As for revenue, the company has gone from $200 a week to revolutionizing tourism and achieving a valuation of $110 billion . Guests have booked over 1 billion stays, and there are 5.6 million global listings in 100,000 cities and over 200,000 regions.

 What you can learn from Airbnb  

Put the human experience at the center: product teams at Airbnb know that their work is about building a software-enabled trust system, so people can safely share their homes, their passions, and their time with travelers. Trust is what brings together what is desirable from a human point of view, with what is technologically feasible and economically viable . Alex Schleifer, Chief Design Officer at Airbnb, shared that their teams always ground themselves in real human behaviors and needs through research, whether they’re dealing with machine learning or a new emerging interface.

Never stop experimenting and iterating : while Airbnb is data-driven, they don’t let data push them around. Instead of developing reactively to metrics, the team works proactively, often starting with a creative hypothesis, implementing a change, reviewing how it impacts the business, and then repeating that process.

Take measured, productive risks : individual team members at Airbnb make small bets on new features, and then measure if there’s a meaningful return on the bet. If there’s a payoff, they send more resources in that direction. If not, there’s a lot to learn from failure .

💡Pro tip: combine quantitative metrics with qualitative feedback to inform designs and keep users at the center of your work. 

Airbnb doesn’t rely on (big) data analytics and A/B testing alone. Instead, they combine quantitative insights with people’s ability to synthesize and make sense of data from all sources .

Sasha Lubomirsky, former Head of User Research at Airbnb, said that “a lot of design thinking is about being creative [but it is also] about looking at what we know, triangulating information that we have, and having that inspire creativity.”

You don’t have to collect, analyze, and distribute UX research data manually. Use Hotjar ’s product experience insights tools to collect and analyze different kinds of information, then use what you learn to enhance the user experience.

Hotjar’s tools combine behavioral and attitudinal research methods through a blend of quantitative and qualitative data. Use Hotjar Surveys and Feedback widgets to collect voice-of-customer (VoC) feedback, and Heatmaps and Session Recordings to round out the picture with behavioral insights.

 2. UberEats

UberEats’ use of design thinking is nothing short of inspiring. Their evolution shows that creating the future of an industry takes empathy, innovation, and an appetite for complex logistical challenges —elements that make design thinking a successful problem-solving approach.

How UberEats uses design thinking

The design team at UberEats constantly uses design thinking principles to fuse modern, state-of-the-art technology with the fundamental act of enjoying a meal. And it’s safe to say they've had a successful implementation.

Immersion, iteration, and innovation power the UberEats design team on their mission to make eating effortless. Their approach allows them to solve complex logistical challenges with new technology that complements people’s deep connection to food. Let’s take a closer look at some actionable design thinking projects:

→ Immersion 

The Walkabout Program : UberEats designers are routinely sent to a city to learn about its transportation infrastructure, delivery and restaurant industry, and overall food culture.

Fireside Chats : they invite delivery partners, restaurant workers, and customers to gain feedback on the app.

Order Shadowing : they test their prototypes by watching their customers’ real world experiences while using it.

To understand all our different markets and how our products fit into the physical conditions of each city, we constantly immerse ourselves in the places where our customers live, work, and eat.

→ Iteration 

Swift iteration : UberEats product teams know they need to rapidly build products so their customer base can grow quickly. Swift iteration allows them to move fast and ensure they get the design just right.

Rapid field testing : researchers and designers take mock-ups and prototypes into restaurants, inside delivery vehicles, and into people’s homes to test products in the places they’ll be used.

Multivariate testing : the team simultaneously tests multiple versions of a feature to quickly determine which performs the best. Shipping multiple options at once, rather than sequentially iterating on one version, helps them find the best-performing design faster.

Operations team experiments : they test concepts and designs in a single city to quickly gauge opportunity. For example, the first version of the “Most Popular Items” category in UberEats menus started as an operations team experiment in Toronto before later iterations were released to all users in all cities.

→ Innovation

Innovating on experiences: the UberEats product team always takes the opportunity to innovate on user experience and evolve from the traditional model of food delivery. This includes providing drivers with the option to do both rides and deliveries so they can stay busier and earn more money while online with Uber, designing a restaurant sales dashboard to let chefs monitor the demand of individual dishes and tweak recipes to improve their menus, and creating the “Under 30 Minutes” menu for people who want to leverage the speed of Uber to get food fast.

Workshops, conferences, meetups, and talks: they routinely gather representatives and use the design thinking methodology to look at challenges in new ways. They share experiences from similar services to generate insights and inspiration, then run creative exercises to generate a wide range of ideas. These same designers also attend numerous out-of-office conferences, meetups, and talks related to the restaurant industry, cuisine trends, and food technology.

Insights from other food innovators: the team stays inspired by observing how other companies are shaping the future of food. Seeing how others innovate in similar problem spaces helps their product teams think differently and generate new ideas about their products and services.

What UberEats has achieved through design thinking

Today, UberEats is the fastest growing delivery service, with a $2.8 trillion addressable market, making up 22% of the company’s total bookings in 2019. They’ve already:

Expanded to over 80 cities worldwide 

Provided restaurants with new ways to reach customers and build their businesses

Created another, often easier option for delivery partners to earn money with Uber

Invented new ways for hungry people to find and enjoy the food they love

Now focused on growth into new markets and growing from 3% to nearly 25% of Uber's revenue, the UberEats design team hasn't had time to slow down. 

What you can learn from UberEats 

The UberEats design thinking experience is a valuable lesson for a brand’s ability to move quickly, build empathy with customers, and make complex services run smoothly . Here’s how you can apply these lessons to your own product:

Empathize with the user experience: UberEats designers are constantly interviewing and prototyping with the people who will be using the product the most: restaurant workers, delivery drivers, and meal recipients. Once you find your target, you can observe, create design thinking problem statement examples, and iterate as soon as you identify opportunities to reduce assumptions and improve your design. 

Observe the design in use: UberEats takes every opportunity to hear from users directly. They follow partners on deliveries, visit restaurants during the rush, and sit in people’s homes while they order dinner. Watching how your product is used in the wild helps you better understand the needs of your customers, how well your designs address those needs, and what challenges exist in the real world that you can’t replicate in the office.

Iterate quickly and innovate constantly: the UberEats team uses design thinking to stimulate novel solutions to the problems and opportunities their product addresses. If you’re in your own ideation phase, take note of the UberEats innovation workshops, where team members from many disciplines gather to brainstorm possible improvements. These structured brainstorms shake up the mindset of the team, push their creativity, and spawn innovative ideas.

💡Pro tip: you don’t need to travel to your customers’ homes to get their feedback. Use Hotjar to talk directly to them or watch them interact with your product. 

Heatmaps help you identify click and scroll patterns, and Session Recordings let you track the entire user journey within your product. Deploy Feedback widgets to learn what users think while browsing, and understand blocks in navigation. 

These tools help your design team see what your customers see, which is crucial at the testing stage, when you’re often too close to the design to understand the experience from the outside.

An example of a Hotjar Session Recording

Design thinking can do (and has done) wonders for tech products and their users. But that’s not all it can do. For Citrix, a cloud company that enables mobile work styles, the change was felt more on an internal level, by building a culture of design thinking.

How Citrix uses design thinking 

Reweaving the Citrix corporate DNA meant harnessing the creative capability of their employees by developing design thinking leaders . 

It began when several senior executives attended the design thinking boot camp at Stanford’s d.school . They returned from the boot camp with a new vision for product development processes. One complete overhaul of internal processes later—and rethinking how the company innovated and built products—and Citrix had become a leader of design-driven excellence and innovation.

Since then, Citrix has developed an internal team that works to empower all divisions of the company—from executives to individual contributors—to make innovation and customer focus central to their thinking. Often referred to as a ‘center of excellence’ for design-driven innovation, this new organization brings design thinking and doing to the highest levels of executive leadership.

Through several programs, the customer became the center of our focus, from how we set the product roadmap to how we tuned the existing product set. We challenged ourselves to push beyond the status quo. 

The new Business Design team started to infuse design thinking into the organization from multiple directions: 

Top-down : by continuing to enlist VPs and key employees in the Stanford programs, which helps key stakeholders understand the language and tools of design thinking, gain an external perspective on their work, and be motivated to support design thinking initiatives.

Sideways : by holding design thinking workshops for mid-level managers and individual contributors, empowering them with a means of tackling key challenges.

Bottom-up : by leveraging various employee touch-points—such as global meetings, the company intranet, and new-hire training—to disseminate key messages about what it means to have a design thinking approach.

What Citrix has achieved through design thinking

Citrix teams have already run more than 50 projects using the design thinking methodology, focusing both on the employee experience and the customer experience. The customer has become the center of their focus, from how they set the product roadmap to how they tune the existing product set. 

At a company level, this has meant almost 4000 employees who have participated in a form of hands-on design training, an improved learning experience for customers, better use of product data to improve customers' support experience, and a successful legal compliance training workshop redesign.

Across the industry, results include:

Return on investment: on the compliance training project alone, Citrix calculated a conservative estimate of $3 million savings over the first four years. By streamlining the course rollout process, reminders, and curricula, they estimated savings of 3,600 hours of employee time in 2013, and over 9,000 hours in 2014.

Respect and recognition: Citrix products have won more than 20 awards since they adopted a design-focused approach. The organization has been recognized as one of Forbes’ Most Innovative Companies. Stanford’s Hasso Plattner Institute has also selected Citrix as a partner in cutting edge research on evaluation tools for innovation.

What you can learn from Citrix 

Design thinking beyond buzzwords : while Citrix teams practice design thinking every day, those outside of this methodology might see it as some form of magical thinking. To make others care about the practice behind the buzzword, relate it back to the business and highlight relevant examples of design thinking’s business impact. Then, make the connection between examples from other companies and the challenges facing your organization.

Highlighting the value of design thinking to your team: often, as companies scale, many employees have limited or no contact with the user, especially for people in non-design or leadership roles. Luckily, through structured activities, you can teach people to focus on the problems that matter to customers and improve the bottom line. As employees evaluate and explore ideas earlier, you’ll waste less money on the wrong issues.

Pitching to (and getting buy-in from) leadership : leaders need to know two things—what design thinking is and how it meets business goals. At Citrix, the strategy for obtaining executive buy-in was to get a few senior leaders on board, first. Once they bought in, other leaders started showing up, wanting to learn more and engage their teams. Following this example, draw up a list of the key leaders and influencers in your organization. Ask yourself: where do you see seeds of innovation popping up? Who is looking to engage more with your customers?

No list of exceptional design thinking examples would be complete without mentioning Apple's approach to innovation, management, and design. 

Today, the company may be most known for its physical products—like the iconic iPhone, iPad, and MacBook—but it was their iOS platform strategy that started their journey as an industry innovator .

They designed the initial product as a platform, with an architecture that could accommodate the development and production of the derivative products. Decades later, this decision allowed for innovations that put the user’s needs at the center —like facial recognition software, an intuitive user experience, a transformed music-listening experience, and more.

How Apple uses design thinking

From its product designs to Apple stores, everything is founded on design thinking principles. 

After Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, he started to apply the design thinking characteristics that reflected his vision for Apple products:

Focusing on real people’s needs and desires, rather than only the needs of the business

Building empathy by helping people learn to love Apple products

Prioritizing the design, rather than the engineering work, by having designers consider both the form and function of the product

Building simple yet user-friendly products, rather than complex hard-to-use ones

Apple makes no secret of what drives everything that happens inside its massive compound in Cupertino, California: its users. From the smallest detail of Apple packaging to what the company calls its ''largest product'' (Apple stores), the user experience is never far from Apple employees' minds .

Their operating system was built by focusing on what consumers wanted, and then figuring out how to achieve it on the technical side. Apple’s products start with design, based on what people need and want, and are not limited by technology. The engineers are then pushed to use the same kind of creativity and innovation to make it happen.

The company puts a premium on design thinking in all its products, from digital to physical. That starts with figuring out what customers really want , developing products based on identified needs , and then creating prototypes and testing them to see how successful they are.

Our products are all about the people who use them. What drives us is making products that give people the ability to do things they couldn't do before.

What Apple has achieved through design thinking

Apple’s entire product development process may be one of the most successful design thinking examples ever implemented. With a valuation exceeding $2 trillion , there’s a lot that designers can learn from Apple and introduce into their own design environments.

Their dedication to continuous discovery and innovation has produced a series of user-centered technological hardware, operating systems, software, and services that set an industry standard. Examples include tools you (probably) use everyday—like the Apple TV, iMac, iPad, iPhone, MacBook, Apple Watch, AirPods, Bridge OS, iOS, App Store, FaceTime, iTunes, and iCloud.

What you can learn from Apple 

Apple’s history with innovation provides a clear lesson about how design and innovation can turn company failure into market success and a leading position in a competitive market. Here are a few actions you can apply to your own design thinking strategy:

Integrating customer experience into the product: customer experience has always been integrated into Apple’s product design and development. A lot of it empirically drives with iterative customer involvement into the design and development stages, through a constant testing and feedback process. Usability testing and improvement through user feedback should become an important step in your product development process.

Constant iteration of the product: the defining trait of an Apple product is that it continually evolves. Apple understands and promotes the importance of design as a motivation for continued innovation, rather than a static approach that assumes a single conclusion.

💡Pro tip: stay on the continuous discovery track by integrating Hotjar into your routine.

Continuous discovery allows your product team to question assumptions, learn how users really think, and constantly improve the products you deliver.  

Using tools like Hotjar gives you a constant stream of information on what your customers are feeling, how they're experiencing your product, and what their specific needs are.

Integrating Hotjar product experience tools into your routine can help you:

Discover opportunities to optimize by watching recordings of users during the sign up flow or after a feature launch

Spot unforeseen problems by creating a routine where you check feedback regularly

Gather new product ideas on an ongoing basis by using surveys

3 key takeaways to implement design thinking into your workflow

There’s a lot more that can be said about design thinking, but it’s actually a very straightforward concept. Implementing this methodology into your workflow becomes easier when you follow these core tenets:

1. Focus on customer problems first

It can be tempting to focus on creating a flashy, high-tech product. Instead, focus on what your users are asking for . Run user interviews and use Hotjar Surveys and Feedback widgets to send out a mix of full-scale surveys and quick questions on the fly. Watch Recordings to see what your users see and identify their pain points.

Whether it’s a new app, a community service, or a physical product, the best thing you can do to innovate successfully is keep your user in mind at every step in the design process. 

2. Generate and iterate on ideas 

When you understand the problem, the ideas will follow, and the way to a solution is more straightforward. It’s your job to refine these ideas through rapid prototypes and iterations that can lead to breakthrough outcomes.

As you interact closely with your customers and start to have great ideas for products, don’t be afraid to put together a round of product experimentation to prove the value. Run usability , A/B , and split testing with dedicated focus groups of target users. Use surveys and carefully-placed widgets to gather opinions on design elements and the overall product experience (PX).

Remember that design thinking is not a formal step-by-step process, but a framework and mindset. It’s focused on a bias towards action, a human-centered viewpoint, and continual experimentation. The core idea is that by deeply understanding customer needs, opportunities for innovation will emerge.  

3. Use feedback to focus and refine ideas

Listening to and working with customers can help you move quickly from ideas to useful solutions.

As a designer, it’s easy to disconnect from your users. Don’t be afraid to take risks and immerse yourself in the experience of those who will actually interact with your product . Then, implement their feedback and test your results. Eventually, you’ll land on that final iteration with the potential to change the world around you.

For a full picture of the product experience, collect voice-of-customer (VoC) insights to learn what users think in their own words. Complement this qualitative data with neutral observations of user behavior.

Start by using tools like Hotjar’s Heatmaps to observe users' scroll and click patterns. Then, watch Session Recordings to follow the entire user journey across your site or product, and use Feedback tools to ask users what’s behind their decisions.

FAQs about design thinking examples

What can you learn from design thinking examples.

The value of examples lies in the ways they show how design thinking can transform products and services. Analyzing stories of success will help you understand:

How design thinking impacts businesses in various industries, and

How to craft your change strategy from idea to results.

As a product designer, highlighting relatable examples of design thinking’s business impact can also help you get peer and executive buy-in. Then, make the connection between examples from other companies and the challenges facing your organization, and demonstrate how similar companies or industries used design thinking to solve that problem (include numbers to prove results).

How can you start with design thinking?

To successfully implement design thinking across your own organization, start by aligning with or creating a design thinking process for execution and collection of results. Then, quantify those results. These key questions help guide the discussion towards actionable insights:

Why do you think this challenge is worth tackling? Why now?

Who are your target users? Who might benefit inside the company?

What constraints (technology, timing, budget) will the team face? 

How will you measure success?

How does design thinking work for product teams?

By focusing on user insights, product teams gain invaluable feedback to proactively improve their products—feedback that can be cultivated during every stage of the design thinking process.

The core tenets of design thinking are simple: focus on customer problems, iterate on ideas, ask for feedback to refine those ideas, and re-start the process all over again, from the beginning.

By leveraging the design thinking framework, product teams can more quickly and efficiently:

Discover the truly unmet needs of customers

Reduce risk associated with launching new products

Generate solutions that are disruptive, rather than incremental

Align teams across the organization

Design thinking methodology

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Design thinking problem statements

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