Design thinking
Solve the right problem before you spend on the wrong one
A proven six-stage method for building what customers actually want, with people kept at the centre
In good company
The world's leading companies use design thinking to understand their customers, build innovative solutions, and stay ahead of their industries.
Used by
IBMGoogleAppleGE
Taught at
HarvardMITStanfordPace University
The process
Six phases, one human-centered loop
Design thinking is a step-by-step way to solve problems creatively
1
Empathize
- Observe and interact with users to understand their experience
- Identify pain points and unmet needs
- Gather insight through interviews, surveys, and observation
- Build empathy maps to visualize user perspectives
- Lay a real foundation for meaningful problem-solving
2
Define
- Analyze everything gathered in the empathize phase
- State the problem plainly and precisely
- Write a problem statement centered on user needs
- Check it lines up with your business goals
- Use it to set the direction for every solution that follows
3
Ideate
- Brainstorm a wide range of possible solutions
- Encourage out-of-the-box thinking without judgment
- Use techniques like mind mapping or SCAMPER
- Prioritize ideas on feasibility and impact
- Narrow to the strongest concepts worth building
4
Prototype
- Build quick, simple versions — sketches, wireframes, models
- Put them in front of users and gather feedback
- Learn what works and what doesn't in the real world
- Refine to address what users actually flagged
- Save time and money by catching costly mistakes early
5
Test
- Validate the solution with real users across scenarios
- Collect feedback to confirm it meets the need
- Adjust and improve on what testing reveals
- Measure performance against your key metrics and KPIs
- Make sure it's genuinely ready for rollout
6
Implement
- Roll the solution out to your audience or market
- Validate success through continuous monitoring
- Stay agile — pivot when the results ask you to
- Evaluate the data for trends and insights
- Refine quarterly to stay competitive and relevant
The benefits
What it changes about your business
Design thinking isn't only about solving problems
Empowers creativity
- Encourages out-of-the-box thinking that surfaces unique solutions
- Breaks teams free from tired problem-solving habits
- Inspires innovation across every part of the business
- Creates space for ideas that genuinely serve customers
- Leads to unexpected, high-impact results
Boosts customer satisfaction
- Builds solutions around what users actually need
- Removes friction from the customer experience
- Deepens the connection with your audience through empathy
- Grows loyalty by exceeding expectations
- Strengthens your reputation with a human-centered approach
Improves efficiency
- Stops resources leaking into work that doesn't matter
- Avoids costly mistakes through rapid prototyping and testing
- Streamlines processes by exposing the inefficiencies
- Improves collaboration across functions
- Delivers faster without cutting corners on quality
Drives measurable results
- Lifts conversion rates by understanding real user behavior
- Grows revenue by solving the problems that block sales
- Optimizes ROI through targeted, validated solutions
- Tracks progress with clear KPIs
- Aligns business strategy with customer expectations
Encourages agility
- Keeps you adaptable in a market that won't sit still
- Builds a mindset of continuous improvement
- Spots trends early, before competitors do
- Makes pivoting a decision, not a crisis
- Builds resilience for the long haul
The evidence
300 companies. Five years. Two million data points.
Design thinking attracts a lot of assertion and not much proof
32%higher revenue growth for top-quartile design performers
56%higher total returns to shareholders, over the same five years
3 of 3industries where the pattern held — medical technology, consumer goods, retail banking
The method: McKinsey tracked the design practices of 300 publicly listed companies over five years, across multiple countries and industries, collecting more than two million pieces of financial data and recording over 100,000 design actions.
The caveat worth stating: this is a correlation across a large sample, not a controlled experiment. Well-run companies tend to do several things well at once. What the study does establish is that design maturity travels with financial performance consistently enough, across enough sectors, to stop treating it as a soft concern.
The four practices that correlated most strongly
01Measure design like you measure cost
Top performers tracked design performance with the same rigour they applied to revenue and expenses. Most organisations have no design metric at all, which is why nobody can defend the budget.
02Break the walls between physical, digital and service
Customers experience one company. When the website team, the front desk and the product team design separately, the customer feels the seams — and blames you, not the org chart.
03Make it everyone’s job, not a department’s
User-centred design confined to a design team produces good artefacts and poor outcomes. The finding suggests the discipline matters more than the job title.
04De-risk by testing continuously with real users
Listen, prototype, iterate — before committing budget. This is the part teams skip, and it is the part that pays.
Source: McKinsey & Company, “The business value of design”. Further reading: Tim Brown, “Design Thinking”, Harvard Business Review, June 2008 — the article that brought the term into mainstream business use. We’ve dropped the design-thinking statistics that circulate on agency blogs; most trace back to a survey nobody can produce.
The workshop is the easy part. The testing is the point.
Sticky notes cost nothing
RC
Ray Correa
Managing Director
Former board member, Pace University Lubin School of Business
Former board member, Bellevue College Tombolo Institute Design Thinking Programs
Trusted advisor to businesses seeking customer-centered solutions
Our expertise
Decades of experience you can trust
We've spent years applying design thinking in the real world, helping businesses across industries reshape their strategy, lift customer satisfaction, and turn insight into growth you can measure.
Proven in practice
- Streamlined processes — finding the drag and designing it out
- Customer loyalty — experiences that keep people coming back
- Innovation — teams that think creatively by default
- Results — insight turned into bottom-line outcomes
Why our approach works
- We understand your business and audience before proposing anything
- The process is collaborative, so your team stays aligned and empowered
- We refine and iterate until every strategy earns its keep
The ROI
How it hits your bottom line
Design thinking is an investment, not an exercise
Increases revenue
- Solutions built to customer needs sell better
- Better experiences mean higher retention and loyalty
Reduces costs
- Rapid prototyping catches issues before they get expensive
- Streamlined processes cut waste out of operations
Enhances innovation
- Creative problem-solving uncovers new revenue streams
- Keeps you ahead of market trends and competitors
Lifts productivity
- Teams collaborate around clear, user-focused goals
- Less wasted effort when everyone shares the same priorities
Drives long-term growth
- Builds a culture of continuous improvement
- Makes adapting to a shifting market routine
Up to 300% higher ROICompanies using design thinking outperform those that don't
Better retentionBusinesses report a real reduction in churn
Faster time-to-marketSolutions ship quicker, capturing the opportunity sooner
Good questions
Design thinking, answered
Got a problem that keeps coming back? That's usually a sign it was never properly defined.
What is design thinking, in plain terms
A structured way of solving problems that starts with the people affected rather than the solution someone already has in mind. You observe, define the real problem, generate options, build something rough, and test it with actual users before committing budget.
Is there evidence it works, or is it just a workshop
There's evidence. McKinsey tracked 300 publicly listed companies over five years across multiple countries and industries, collecting more than two million pieces of financial data. Top-quartile scorers on its Design Index recorded 32% higher revenue growth and 56% higher total returns to shareholders than their peers.
Does it only apply to product companies
No. McKinsey's finding held across medical technology, consumer goods and retail banking — which suggests it isn't a manufacturing or software phenomenon. Any business with customers who make decisions has a design problem, whether or not it has a product in the traditional sense.
How is this different from just asking customers what they want
Asking gets you stated preferences, which are often wrong. Design thinking watches what people actually do, which frequently contradicts what they say. The gap between the two is usually where the opportunity is.
How long does a design thinking process take
A focused sprint on a defined problem can run in one to two weeks. Embedding it as a way of working takes considerably longer — the hard part isn't the method, it's the habit of testing assumptions before building.
What's the most common way it fails
Running the workshop and skipping the testing. Sticky notes and a persona deck feel productive and cost nothing, so teams stop there. The value is in the prototype that goes in front of a real user and comes back wrong — that's the part that saves the budget.
Do we need a designer to do this
You need someone who will insist on evidence. McKinsey found one of the strongest correlates of financial performance was making user-centred design everyone's responsibility rather than one department's — which suggests the discipline matters more than the job title.
How do you measure whether it worked
The same way you measure anything else: baseline first, then the metric the change was supposed to move. McKinsey's top performers measured design performance with the same rigour they applied to revenue and cost — which is precisely what most organisations don't do.
Where should a small business start
With one problem that's costing you money and five conversations with the people experiencing it. Not a framework, not an offsite. The method scales down better than most people expect, and the first insight usually arrives in the first hour.
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