UNIT-2 DESIGN THINKING PROCESS
The Five Phases of Design Thinking
These five phases are not always sequential, in that they do not necessarily need to follow any
specific order and can repeat iteratively’ to hone and refine our solutions through the process.
ther, they are a journey,
Avbid the perception that phases are innately hierarchical or linear;
sometimes with side stops or shortcuts, but with direction and a destination in mind.
The short form of the design thinking process can be articulated in five steps or phases:
empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test.
Empatfiee ~ To empathize is to truly understand how an issue or reality impacts another persoi
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A core stage in the design thinking process, we gain empathy through exploratory interviews
with people affected, by shadowing them in their real lives, or by recreating conditions
experienced by those people 10 better understand their perspective (e.g, living on $2 a day to
understand poverty, or taping your joints to understand what it feels like to have arthttis),
Empathy requires active listening and rapport-building for a deep understanding that can
‘transcend innate personal bias or preconceived notions,
Define ~ The second stage of the design thinking process asks “designers” to synthesize the
information collected during the empathize phase in order to identify insights about the problem
or }ssue being considered. While designers might have an idea what the issue is before the
empathy phase, the design thinking process encourages them to “