Implementing design thinking to drive innovation in technical design

ABSTRACT

Design Thinking has been gaining attention over the past decade with more and more companies seeking to use it as a human-centered problem-solving approach that can create novel solutions and foster (radical) innovation. Following several success stories from business, management or even civic service delivery environment, where Design Thinking has produced highly impactful and popularized innovation, technically oriented companies have increasingly shown interest in using it to nurture their innovation and creative capabilities. In this article, a qualitative analysis of semi-structured interviews with experts applying and researching Design Thinking are presented in the context of technology-focused organizations. Several concrete insights are derived to reveal specific success factors, central characteristics, tools and methods, but also limitations and prerequisites for its effective application in such contexts. Finally, the study highlights potential adaptations of the approach to support its integration with the processes similar organizations apply in their routine practices.

KEYWORDS:

• Design thinking
• engineering design
• innovation
• design approach

1. Introduction

Scholars and practitioners equally acknowledge the central role of design as a driver of innovation and organizational change (Brown, 2008; Liedtka, 2015; Martin, 2009). Design Thinking, in particular, has been making headlines with an extremely rapid diffusion in interest and practice of organizations. Interest in Design Thinking, ultimately a human-centered design and problem-solving approach, has been stretching further and further beyond the realm of design, permeating into civic and urban planning, medical systems and services and diverse business settings. Of specific interest to the research presented here is its permeation into technology focused areas. These areas are less familiar with human-centered design approaches and face barriers to implement it successfully in addressing complex issues at hand. By talking to experts, we explore potential pitfalls as well as best practices that can facilitate the effective use of Design Thinking in technology focused contexts of problem solving.

As an approach, Design Thinking is usually characterized by three traits: (1) human-centredness where innovators build empathy with users; (2) creativity as a driver of novelty; and (3) intense use of prototyping as a rapid and effective means for iterative improvement based on user feedback (Brown, 2009). As such, it is acclaimed to be ‘an approach to innovation that is powerful, effective, broadly accessible, and can be integrated into all aspects of business and society’ (Brown, 2009, p. 3). Indeed, there are many examples of pioneering, visionary business venturing being enabled by Design Thinking at almost all levels of participation. Such examples re-directed entire industries and helped in creating and facilitating unprecedented innovation, through successfully launching novel products and services into the market (Garbuio et al., 2018; Liedtka & Ogilvie, 2011; Lockwood, 2009; Verganti, 2009). In turn, world-known companies such as Procter & Gamble, Kaiser Permanente and Mayo Clinic advocate the use of Design Thinking (Martin, 2009; Rae, 2008). Correspondingly, more research emerges underpinning its significant potential in leading to novel and innovative ideas, if the approach is used appropriately (Brown & Katz, 2011; Doherty et al., 2015; Price et al., 2019; Townson et al., 2016). Very recently, an extensive study by Liedtka (2020) of industrial use cases from 22 companies underscores the unique benefits that Design Thinking can have in transforming innovation through its human-centered problem-solving approach.

1.1. Desires and barriers to adopting Design Thinking

Industries are aspiring to become more creative and improve their dynamic capabilities. It follows that the various success stories of implementing Design Thinking lead organizations including those that are somewhat more traditional, technology-focused in product design, engineering and manufacture, to trial its application (Gericke & Maier, 2011; Melcior & Eisenbart, 2017; Norman, 2010). Magistretti et al. (2021a, 2021b) and Van der Bijl-brouwer and Dorst (2017) specifically argue that technology-focused organizations may benefit substantially from the adoption of the approach into their innovation practices. There are, however, fundamental questions around the efficacy of transitioning the approach into new areas of application such as technology-focused organizations. Initial research shows it is by no means trivial with teams that have technical backgrounds and have never worked with human-centered design approaches (Melcior & Eisenbart, 2017).

Introducing new approaches, tools, methods or methodologies into an established environment is known to create challenges around inexperience. These include not trusting in their efficacy of new approaches, wariness around investing efforts to learn new practices, and changing from established business and routines (Araujo et al., 1996; Birkhofer & Kloberdanz, 2005; Frost, 1999). Consequently, a ‘proper mind-set’ is a prerequisite to adequately apply Design Thinking (Daalhuizen, 2014, p. 5). This particularly refers to openness to try something new and/or intrinsic motivation and a clear perception of the added value and benefit that new ways of doing things may bring about, thus warranting investing the initially required effort. It must be noted that ‘value’ and ‘benefit’ can have very different manifestations in this context (see, Becattini et al., 2012). Yet, not only is the concrete added value difficult to quantify in advance, particularly with ‘soft’ approaches such as Design Thinking, but so is the effort that will be required to learn and adopt it properly (Tomiyama et al., 2009).¹

Moreover, research suggests that transitioning an established team to a new way of doing things in the context of innovation brings its own challenges. The more transformative a proposed change is, the more stringent are the barriers that may come with it, particularly when it comes to different ways of working, reasoning, mind-sets and culture (Assink, 2006; Baker & Sinkula, 2002; Levine, 1994; Vanhaverbeke et al., 2003). Assink (2006, see also, Christensen et al., 2003; Rice et al., 2000; Walsh & Linton, 2000; Roussel et al., 1991) summarizes the most prominent barriers at individual and team levels to be adoption barrier (simply put, the inability to look past what has worked in the past), mind-set barrier (lack of awareness, openness or need for new knowledge and ways of working), risk barrier (risk averse climate and thus unwillingness to try something new), nascent barrier (lack of creativity or market sensing and foresight) and infrastructural barrier, (lack of relevant infrastructure/separation from daily business).²

Secondly, there is an ongoing debate in research and practice as to how to define Design Thinking as an approach. For instance, some scholars suggest that Design Thinking should be more of a mind-set and inbuilt to company culture, rather than a step-wise approach and oppose the idea of a prescriptive model for teams to follow rigorously in problem-solving (Guenther et al., 2021; Kolko, 2015). By extension, this then creates challenges for teaching such a mind set to new applicants. At this point we must acknowledge the history of research into what is nowadays subsumed under ‘design thinking’ dating back to the 1960s. Back then, scholars started trying to establish the nature of how designers work in tackling problems and creating solutions, with a clear focus on the inherent cognitive processes, perceptions and actions (Cross, 1982; Lawson, 1980; McKim, 1973; Simon, 1969). A full account of this research is beyond the scope of this paper; relevant concepts are designerly ways of thinking, knowing and working (Badke-Schaub et al., 2010; Jones, 1970) focusing on searching for and interpreting information, mental conjecture, assessment, reasoning, sense-making/organizing and learning (Goldschmidt & Badke-Schaub, 2009). This paper focuses on the ‘modern’ form of Design Thinking, popularized by Brown (2009). This proposes a process of distinct steps and activities along the five central phases of empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test (Plattner, 2010) and is characterized by frequent iterations across (Liedtka, 2015; Liu, 2016). Underlying the steps is the main paradigm of being human-centered, collaborative, and creating novel solutions. In accordance with this, for each step, there is a range of methods and tools offered from designers’ toolkits (Kumar, 2012; Plattner, 2010; Seidel & Fixson, 2013). This follows the premise of applying Design Thinking as a means to tackle challenges, problems or tasks by applying reasoning and solution finding principles ‘as a designer would’ (Luchs, 2016, p. 2). This means, while the proposed steps are somewhat straightforward, applicants are left with a large variety of tools, methods and approaches within each step to choose from as appropriate to the problem at hand. As such, the process might look quite different depending on the concrete problem at hand (Schmiedgen et al., 2015) and substantial adaptation can be required to accommodate the needs and demands of specific areas of application (Magistretti et al., 2021a; Price et al., 2019). Many different descriptions of Design Thinking have emerged proposing their own unique adaptation of the approach with relevance to specific problem areas that are targeted (Dorst, 2011; Kimbell, 2011). The specifics of what Design Thinking might look like for a technology-oriented context are particularly unknown and directly motivates the research presented in this article.

1.2. The current research

Design Thinking is often given the notion of almost limitless applicability to generate innovative solutions (Garbuio et al., 2018; Gericke & Maier, 2011) making it interesting for application in areas that are not used to such human-centered, design-driven problem-solving approaches. However, what the above shows is uncertainty around how to exactly define what Design Thinking is and what the core elements (tools, methods, etc.) are that will facilitate applying it in technology-focused organizations. This creates a tension between the strong desire to apply it but not being sure on how to do it for a concrete technical problem. We further observe that the rather unique, iterative and human-centered nature of the approach can make implementing it difficult as it means breaking with routines and established and structured practices Perhaps most challenging is changing cultures and mind-sets, of companies, particularly those that are more technically focused and have never worked with such approaches (Melcior & Eisenbart, 2017). This goes on top of known barriers around trying to create more novel ideas when the existing culture favors incremental innovation. While these are acknowledged, our focus will be on how to implement the Design Thinking as such in technology-focused organizations rather than on transitioning organizational venturing toward more radical innovation. In this specific context, looking at the practical side of applying Design Thinking, Gericke and Maier (2011) outline an important barrier, which is related to clear differences in levels of maturity of solutions produced through Design Thinking and equivalent stages in typical engineering design processes. The latter tend to be more detailed already and concrete.

Considering the ever-stretching applications of Design Thinking, related lack of clarity around central tools/elements and success factors and different maturity in solutions produced, we posit the need for the research reported in this paper. Our overarching aim is to understand best practices with the end goal to integrate Design Thinking into engineering/technology driven development processes more seamlessly. As such the following specific research questions are posed:

• What is the definition of Design Thinking and what are the central characteristics that need to be conveyed to prospective users to enable effective application in technology-oriented industries/context?

• What are success factors, relevant attitudes or other pre-requisites that are needed to facilitate the application of Design Thinking in technology-oriented industries/contexts?

• What are pitfalls to avoid?

• What might be specific adaptations to the approach that might improve application and/or efficacy of the approach in Design Thinking in technology-oriented industries/contexts?³

The next section presents the research approach that was chosen to find answers to these questions. We then present the insights gained from the study. We analyze the findings to distil concrete characteristics, practices, attitudes, etc. that need to be present within, and/or need to be taught at technology-focused organizations, respectively, to effectively implement Design Thinking. As such, we further advance insights into what makes Design Thinking an effective approach which we also expect to contribute to research into Design Thinking more broadly. Finally, we discuss the implications of our findings in Section 4 before concluding and suggesting directions for future research.

2. Method

We chose semi-structured interviews following a prepared questionnaire focusing on targeted research questions as research approach. This way, it was ensured that all relevant topics are covered, while also permitting slight deviation and reformulation of individual questions, whenever considered useful to explore interesting aspects in more detail (see, Patton, 2002; Blessing & Chakrabarti, 2009). As the conducted study is explorative by nature, the possibility to do so was considered highly valuable.

2.1. Participants selection

We recruited eleven participants who are all associated with globally leading design institutions (in the top 1% according to QS Ranking 2020 by subject) and have a long-standing track record of applying Design Thinking working in/with practice. Ten of them are staff in their respective institutions, one is an alumnus that had moved to industry from their institution where they had researched strategic design and Design Thinking for two years prior to the interviews. While this person had less industry experience compared to the other participants, they had been leading substantial efforts to implement Design Thinking in large technology focused organizations. All other participants have 5 to 25 years of experience in design and specifically with Design Thinking and its various interpretations. These participants were chosen as they understand both the academic discourse highlighting Design Thinking and hands-on considerations around its uptake in industry. Since there is the pertinent methodological debate in research around Design Thinking and its components (see Chapter 1), we wanted participants to have a grounding in academia, rather than choosing only practitioners. Specifically in relation to the final research question listed above, tackling potential conceptual adaptations or expansions of the approach this was deemed most appropriate. The results show that participants indeed were able to make some clear suggestions in this direction and how Design Thinking could potentially be merged or better linked with traditional engineering design or new product development approaches. Experts were living in The Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland, Singapore, Japan and Australia. Their educational backgrounds also vary, including engineering design, product design, design methodology, mechanical engineering, and business administration. Although their contextual expertise, cultural backgrounds and years of experiences are different, these comparisons are not in the scope of this paper.

2.2. Data collection and analysis

Semi-structured interviews were conducted both in person (n = 6) and through video-conferencing tools (n = 5). Interviews lasted 52 minutes on average, with a minimum of 40 and maximum of 65 minutes. As mentioned, interviews followed a detailed questionnaire based on the overarching research questions formulated above. Initially, questions focused on the interviewee’s perception of Design Thinking, and their understanding on its central elements and procedures. The second part focused on best practices, challenges, and potentials for improving it when working with technology focused problems and organizations that tend to follow more traditional engineering design processes. At any point, participants would be encouraged to narrate concrete examples of a situation where a particular practice or challenge mentioned. In the final part of the interview, participants would be asked to comment on how they would adapt Design Thinking if they were given the chance to improve its efficacy as well as to facilitate further integration into relevant contexts.

Interviews were audio recorded and transcribed. We used inductive, thematic analysis (see Miles & Huberman, 1984) in Atlas.ti. Initially, two researchers coded all transcripts independently and generated a first set of codes and themes. These were then compared and discussed and the transcripts were re-coded to align any differences. A third researcher would then verify the final set of codes; deviations were discussed among all coders until alignment was reached. Table 1 illustrates the abstraction from interview sections to themes (referred to as ‘sub-codes’) and finally the allocated code for a number of examples for the main topic areas of ‘Defining Design Thinking’ (see, Section 3.1) and ‘Characteristics of Design Thinking’ (see, Section 3.2 and Table 2). Such qualitative insights were critical for this study since the main goal of the study is to explore and identify insights from the interviewees’ experience on Design Thinking’s adoption in technology-focused organizations. These are presented in the following sections.

Table 1. Examples of coding and establishment of themes from interview transcripts.

Main topic area	Code	Sub-code/ theme	Example
Defining design thinking	Method	Process leading to an outcome	‘‘It is a process for creative problem solving. Mainly it is quite design heavy, but it tries to integrate multiple disciplines or approaches’ (P11)
	Mind-Set approach	Creating novel outcomes using a designerly way of working	‘‘It is not only so much about the tools that have been used, what is achieved at the end of the process of design thinking. But trying to translate what is going on in the mind of a designer. And translate it into something that is visualized and able to be communicated to others’ (P1)
	Mind-Set approach	A way of thinking and acting in creating design solutions for users	‘‘[It is] the way of thinking and acting […] which mainly concerns matters such as creativity, visual thinking, making things transparent, holistic thinking, putting users first’ (P3)
	…
Characteristics of design thinking	Human-centeredness	Understanding the user	‘‘If I characterize what Design Thinking is, it is different than new product development etc. It has much more emphasis in understanding the user, in a much deeper way. Of course there were always marketing methods and a lot of methods do overlap, but I think Design Thinking has particularly methods such as profiles, journey maps, co-design. It is much more really trying to understand the user and to reframe the problem. Understanding what is the real problem and the underlying reason that people like something/don’t like something and behave in a certain way. […] To create a variety of solutions and do rapid prototyping, fail early to succeed sooner’ (P9)
	Reflection on problem/Problem (re-)framing	Problem reframing
	Prototyping/ Experimentation	Rapid prototyping/ Testing
	Multi-disciplinary work	Multi-disciplinary team	‘‘The three main elements for me is of course the multi-disciplinary team, so really many different backgrounds of participants. I try to offer a quite flexible working space, which is the second element. […] Working standing and having the proper tools for being agile. And the third one is, the process. For that we are using usually the d-school approach’ (P11)`
	Flexible/ iterative work	Flexibility/ agility
	Having adefined process and methods to use in it	Use of a process to follow
	…

Table 2. Design Thinking characteristics mentioned in the interviews. Numbers represent ranking by importance to the approach by each participant

Characteristic	Rank given to characteristic in terms of its importance by each participant
	P1	P2	P3	P4	P5	P6	P7	P8	P9	P10	P11
Human-centredness	1	5	3	1	1	5		1		1	1
Ideation, Abduction, Creativity		2		2		2		4		2	2
Visual work/ Use of visual language	6	3			5	3	4	2
Reflection on problem/ Problem (re-)framing	4	1	2		3		1
Prototyping/ Experimentation		4		3	2		3
Flexible/ iterative work	5						2	3
Multi-disciplinary work	2								1
Future-oriented exploration	3
Having a defined process and methods to use in it			1								3
Coping with uncertainty				4		4
Collaboration					4
Holistic approach to problem exploration and solution finding						1
Flexible work environment									2
Clearly defined process									3
Reflection from an outside perspective										3

3. Results

3.1. Defining Design Thinking

In the first part of the interviews, participants were asked to define Design Thinking in their own words. We found that often, the answers very much reflected the persons’ personal backgrounds, education and what their research in the area of Design Thinking focused on. This is somewhat unsurprising, yet it unveiled one decisive difference. Descriptions and definitions would be distinctly different in character depending on whether the interviewee had more of an organizational focus or a product/service design focus in applying, researching or teaching Design Thinking. Organization-focused participants primarily talked about the tools and methods used in applying Design Thinking to create strategies or higher-level solutions, rather than concrete design concepts.

Participant #1 (P1): “I make a difference between [Design Thinking and] strategic design, because for me, […] Design Thinking is a set of tools that you can use, for [developing and] executing your innovation strategies. I think the difference that I make, is that it is really about [it being] a set of tools and methods”.

Conversely, product/service design-focused participants framed Design Thinking as a mind-set underlying the work carried out by designers. Interestingly, tools and methods were mentioned and considered part of Design Thinking multiple times, but they were characterized as something that designers would have acquired during their design education, without being unique to Design Thinking.

P6: “In one sentence it would be: The way how designers have learned to think and act during their education. You can use that in several ways, especially to be able to improve innovation. It is mainly about elements such as creativity, visual thinking, providing insights, holistic thinking and centralise users.”

Some in this group would go as far as saying that the concrete methods and tools applied are secondary to the overall mind-set of human-centredness. Methods and tools are needed though as means to establish relevant insight from the target user as a basis for creative solution finding.

P10: “I believe Design Thinking is a mindset. A mindset of more than one mindset, including several ideas, to think about the users, empathy, to be creative. What we are emphasising in our course, is to get out of the class, the campus. Go to the place where you can see the real people, and talk with the real people, and to try to understand the real people’s problems. And try to offer something better. […] That is why I call it a mindset. And of course, I teach some methods [to do this], but I do not care much about what kind of methods we are using.”

Yet another participant described it as an entity across methods and mind-set alike.

P6: “I know that some people describe it as a set of methods, some as an overall approach and some as an overall mindset. For me it is actually a combination of them all. It is an integration between overall mindsets, focused on human-centeredness and prototyping combined with a set of methodologies that you can use in a process […] with different phases.”

The answers received reflect the diversity of interpretations of Design Thinking found in the literature. Centrally, participants either see it as a process using tools and methods to create outcomes or as a general attitude to finding solutions that address underlying needs and desires of target users, to which end tools and methods from the area of design are applied. Importantly, these might not be the same every time, i.e. there is no agreed upon set of tools or sequence of application. Human-centeredness, methods, mind-set, and other terms were also frequently used to describe the core characteristics of Design Thinking. This is further explored in the next section.

3.2. Core characteristics for implementing Design Thinking in technology-oriented industries/contexts

3.2.1. Diversity of characteristics and their context-dependency

A broad spectrum of characteristics was mentioned by the participants as essential to Design Thinking. We specifically asked participants to rank these according to their importance. Table 2 summarizes the mentioned characteristics including their rank by importance to the Design Thinking approach as they were verbalized by each interviewee; i.e. Participant 1 suggested that ‘human-centredness’ was the most important characteristics, followed by being ‘multi-disciplinary’. Following the thematic coding, human-centredness, visualization, problem (re-)framing or experimentation/prototyping emerged as the central characteristics. These are also aligned with those core elements discussed by Liedtka (2020), looking across a large amount of industrial application cases, and highlighted by Magistretti et al. (2021a, 2021b), and Carlgren et al. (2016).

In most cases when mentioned, human-centredness features as the most important characteristic. Likewise it is also the single most often mentioned characteristic overall (see, Table 2). Second is the mentioning of generative thinking, comprising words such as ‘abduction’, ‘ideation’, ‘creativity’. There are also less common, yet equally interesting mentions, such as ‘flexibility’ and ‘iterative work’ (see, Table 2). These further underline that Design Thinking is a more organic, reflective, generative process, rather than a rigorous step-wise approach. The latter is traditionally more common in technology-focused organizations as mentioned above.

The levels of abstractions between characteristics are not always consistent. For instance, human-centredness mentioned by many as an overarching mind-set, was often coupled with prototyping, visualization or other specific activities that constitute the process of problem-solving itself.

P4: “I have done some research on Design Thinking definitions and there are some people who claim that human-centeredness is the core aspect of Design Thinking, some claim that it is a combination between human-centeredness, prototyping and something else, but there are also people who explain elements of Design Thinking on micro-level. […] Other disciplines have no idea what human-centeredness is, using the user’s perspective as the key of Design Thinking might be the most unique.”

The idea of uniqueness through human-centredness was widely echoed. This is not just across disciplines, but also with reference to other established design methodologies, which were described as not focusing on users and their underlying needs to any comparable extent.

P3: “What I think that the uniqueness of Design Thinking is compared to other innovation methodologies is the combination of human-centredness and problem framing”.

P11: “The most distinctive thing [about Design Thinking] and what people typically don’t do enough of is the first part: trying to really understand the context, the user and figuring out what the real problem or issue is.”

One participant, however, also highlighted a potential barrier from this very uniqueness, namely acceptance of it being valuable from the wider organization.

P6: “Focussing on the user is evident and you should definitely do that, but it is not always enough to implement Design Thinking in the whole company. You should place the user in the centre, but you should also be able to communicate this to all the stakeholders and cope with ambiguity, which is often done with visualisations.”

Most participants (n = 9) stressed that several characteristics might be vital for Design Thinking but are in fact not unique to it. An example of this is the ‘framing-reframing’ practice.

P2: “When I was doing research in social sciences, I was already aware of the framing-reframing theory. I thought that there was not a big difference between what had been written in design and social sciences about it. It is part of what designers do, but it is not that different from others. That is why I think that it is not a uniqueness of Design Thinking. Also framing-reframing comes close to rhetoric and for example, people who are working with the police can do the same.”

P8: “I always feel like [companies] do not fully understand the benefits and importance of reframing and redefining the original problem. We do a lot of projects with the industry and then they come with the brief and we try to make them understand that that might not be what to solve, that there is an underlying issue that needs to be solved. This goes for the whole process.”

None of the mentioned characteristics was mentioned by every participant alike (see, Table 2). One of the participants mentioned that the relevance of characteristics that are core to Design Thinking might not even be relevant in each case but are dependent on the context of the users and the kind of project they are working on. In such cases, they are re-interpreted in a different manner but may address the same/closely related entities/actions.

P6: “Many factors of Design Thinking are dependent on the context which the applicants of Design Thinking work in, the company they work for, their job title, their organisation structure and the innovation they are working on. […] An example can be a [marketing person], he is never talking about a user. He talks about the market and doing market research. That is a different way of looking at [the same] element and using specific tools.”

The participants further elaborated that, ultimately, the market is constituted by users, and their needs and desires drive their purchase behavior. This then, by extension, drives product/service design and inherent user-focus. Design Thinking makes this process and focus explicit. P11 described a distinct deviation from the established double-diamond approach when talking to technology-focused companies in engineering/manufacturing.

P11 “ … always add some formal selection or evaluation method, because rapid prototyping is only one way to reduce all the ideas that you came up with. More traditional evaluation methods can be used to narrow it down. […] The main priority for me would have to be the first two stages and then the evaluation of all the ideas that come up rather than just prototyping.”

3.2.2. Attitude

Participants see attitudes toward the task at hand at the center of Design Thinking. These are individual predispositions and tendencies that orient action. This aligns with literature which often emphasizes an empathetic mind-set that values user engagement throughout the design process and emphasizes development of empathetic, contextualized understanding of users as key (Carlgren et al., 2016). Schweitzer et al. (2016) describe this mind-set as desire and determination to make a difference, positivity, hope, and creating change, often marked by resilience, determination, and optimism. The interviews tried to establish if successful application of Design Thinking required unique attitudes in the context of technology-focused organizations. All participants reiterated the central role of human-centredness for this. They frequently mentioned things like being open-minded (n = 5), motivated (n = 5), empathic (n = 4) but also to be curious to find out new things (n = 3) or playful or trying to make the activity fun (n = 3, see, Table 3). Many of these align with similar accounts from literature though scholars also discusses attitudes, such as deferring judgment, embracing ambiguity or encouraging wild ideas (see, e.g. Magistretti et al., 2021a). In the interviews, one less mentioned, yet interesting item was pragmatism in terms of what can be realistically achieved.

P2: “You need a balance between a form of pragmatism on one hand and on the other hand some kind of optimism to the world. The idea that everything is doable. Being completely pragmatic is going nowhere unless you believe that it makes the world a bit better. So you need a compromise between pragmatism and optimism.”

Table 3. Attitudes that facilitate successful application of Design Thinking.

Attitudes mentioned	# of participants mentioning it
Openness to new ideas or willingness to do things differently	5
Motivation	5
Empathy	4
Curiosity	3
Playfulness/humor	3
Innovative-ness	1
Pragmatism	1
Optimism	1
Passion	1
Persistence	1
Allowing for mistakes	1
Humble attitude (not assuming you know everything already)	1
Being critical of own ideas	1

This did not feature in literature, yet it makes sense that the participant – having applied Design Thinking with multiple companies in practice – would advocate pragmatism as this allows companies to see how concepts generated by Design Thinking can be viable within their means. A Design Thinking application where all ideas generated are too far out of the companies’ reach would be a rather unsatisfying experience. Table 3 summarizes the spread of attitudes and mind-sets that participants mentioned. Top ranked items clearly mirror themes established by literature (see, Section 1) on what helps the introduction of Design Thinking to create innovative solutions in relevant contexts. Other, less mentioned items, such as staying humble or being critical of one’s own ideas surely will help in successful Design Thinking application.

3.2.3. Other requirements and prerequisites

Beyond attitudes, there were some additional requirements highlighted as effective for the application of Design Thinking, which are of a more general nature. For instance, five participants stressed a need for the right environment to work in. This can include having flexible furniture arrangements for being active or resting or working with high focus, having whiteboards, posters, post-its, etc. in the room to be constantly drawing, sketching or taking notes.

P8: “I really still like the analogue things, really basic things. Every time you work you have a whiteboard for your documentation all the time. It is almost like constant mind-drawing or sketching. The use of post-its in a correct way: multiple post-its, reorganisation, putting them into frameworks and then you move them so it is a visual element. Also, these visual prints, when you work individually you still have all the things around you. Even a crappy sketch is always better than verbally explaining something.”

P1: “I think that it also depends on the physical environment. Design Thinking is a lot about collaboration. Sharing ideas, being creative. You feel it when you enter specific companies and I think it is because of the way it is organised.”

Flexible working arrangements have broadly been highlighted as good practice in extant literature. Coming back to technology-focused organizations, additional requirements were mentioned by three participants highlighting the importance of a seamless collaboration between people in applying Design Thinking and sharing the relevant technical expertise. Domain expertise is needed, specifically in a technically focuses contexts, because as one person framed it:

P3: “Knowledge about specific disciplines is needed. For example, when I have to design a printing machine, I have to have knowledge about the movement of the different elements in mechanics. And I have to know how the electric components influence the mechanical components. […] Without [such domain-specific] knowledge good design is not possible.”

Most of these required abilities have been similarly highlighted by scholars as prerequisite of innovation in general (Carlgren et al., 2016). Two participants highlighted another fundamental prerequisite to permit any of the above to take place. This is the commitment and endorsement from the involved team or managers to invest energy in trying Design Thinking to start with. It can take the form of reinforcement from the company management for participants to try things out, giving participants the necessary time and space to fully engage, or for the facilitator to establish the benefit of the approach from early on in the process.

P8: “What we discovered in doing different Design Thinking workshops, knowing the process is completely irrelevant if you don’t understand the value of the processes and the right applications to use them. So, let’s say applying Design Thinking in a company where the mindset or culture is not right, the process is completely irrelevant […] it all comes down to the willingness, the individual mindset of the people and the company culture. So, does the company support that type of thinking?”

This reiterates the need for managerial support and suitable training or guidance in applying Design Thinking (see Melcior & Eisenbart, 2017, who found that organizations with predominantly technical staff can be weary of Design Thinking as a non-technical, human-centered approach).

3.3. Best practices in applying Design Thinking in technology-oriented industries/contexts

3.3.1. Suitable practices, methods and tools

A large part of the interviews focused on concrete practices as well as concrete methods and tools that facilitate the successful application of Design Thinking in technology-focused organizations. Answers from the participants are summarized in Table 4. These were described specifically as beneficial to achieve (a) good understanding of user needs, (b) empathy, (c) good communication, and (d) thinking beyond the premises of incremental innovation toward more radical change. This is reflected in six of the practices/methods described in the interviews, each of them being mentioned by a multitude of participants (see, Table 4): user research (including interviews and/or focus groups), user/customer journey mapping, personas, co-creation with users, user stories and building a point of view. Most of these tools and methods are established practices frequently highlighted in the literature. It is clear to see how the critical value of human-centredness as a core characteristic of Design Thinking (see, Section 3.2 and Table 2) flows down into what participants propose as effective tools and methods to use while applying it with technology-focused organizations. The high frequency and quantity in which such methods/tools are mentioned in the interviews may stem from the very fact that such companies do not have them in their common practice. Hence, introducing them is vital in creating the relevant understanding among participants in such contexts.

Table 4. Good practices and tools that make Design Thinking application successful.

Item mentioned	# of participants mentioning it
User research (including interviews and/or focus groups)	9
Prototyping and experimentation	8
User/customer journey mapping	6
Making things visual (post-its, whiteboards, gallery method, sketching, etc.)	6
Personas	4
Co-creation with users	3
Roadmapping/context mapping	3
Involving domain experts whenever possible, multidisciplinary teams	2
User stories	2
Mock-ups	2
Brainstorming/brainwriting	2
Vision framing	1
Problem framing	1
Co-evolution	1
Flexible selection of methods and tools relevant/appropriate to the problem at hand	1
Playing	1
Business model canvas	1
Storyboards	1
Building a point of view	1
Visual ideation	1
Infinity diagrams	1
KJ-method	1
‘Kill-your-darling’ method	1
Ishikawa diagram	1
Fishbone diagram	1
Weighted objectives	1
Requirements lists	1

Interestingly, one participant did not name practices or tools to be specific for the success of Design Thinking. In their justification for this, they expressed doubts if there are any tools that are truly unique to Design Thinking. This accords to similar comments discussed prior, defining Design Thinking as more of a framework that ties together different tools and methods used by designers.

Another participant emphasized that it is crucial to know when to use a specific tool/method, as there is no generally applicable action plan for executing Design Thinking. One needs to find out for each particular project how to structure the approach. This also pertains to what expertise is required at a given point in time. Accordingly, it is the task of the facilitator to direct if and when to add more/remove people to the process depending on the expertise needed at a given point in time. This was described to be particularly important in technology-heavy development processes where higher-level ideas need translation into concrete solutions and technical specifications that can be developed. Similarly, two more participants also stressed an element of experience in knowing when to apply which method or tool, rather than following a fixed step-by-step process. Here we see the already mentioned discourse in literature to reappear. Some advocate a fairly linear sequence of steps to follow, with specific tools to support each of them (see, Brown, 2009). Conversely other literature concords to what the relevant three participants stress here, i.e. the ability to adapt and flexibly change things as it is needed in a specific situation (Carlgren et al., 2016; Magistretti et al., 2021a; Schweitzer et al., 2016).

P4: “I think you need a feeling for context and the situation you are in. I created the learning history tool myself, that replaces context mapping. It is not that I do not like the tool, but it is not useful in every situation.”

Tables 2, 3 and 4 show the differences in perspective between definition, characteristic and practice. A number of the core characteristics described in Section 3.2 are effectively considered ‘tools’ instead by other participants. Visualization was mentioned four separate times as a characteristic (see, Table 2) but can also be seen as concrete task to execute or as tool to communicate ideas to others (see, Table 4). Others, yet again, name a selection of concrete tools that they typically use to facilitate empathy building, ideation, visualization, etc. (see, Table 4).

3.3.2. Benefits offered

Each participant agreed that Design Thinking can offer many benefits specifically for technology-focused organizations, as the focus on human-centeredness can aid in creating a much deeper understanding of the companies’ customers. The benefits of having such a deeper understanding are well documented in literature and that technically oriented individuals and teams can draw new insights for more concerted and user-oriented product ideas from adding this perspective (Garbuio et al., 2018). Three participants also highlighted the inherent flexibility of the approach as central benefit. This pertains both to the processes and methods being used and to not pre-determine what the final outcome is expected to be.

P2: “I have always related the power of [Design Thinking] to flexibility, being flexible with your goals and resources.”

Following this, participants enjoying larger freedom in what they do and pour their efforts into. This was linked to creating room for creativity and innovation. One of the three interviewees further suggested that this freedom, inadvertently, makes people reflect on their progress more consciously. The participant considered this as positive, although progress toward a solution may not always be achieved as quickly as with more traditional, less flexible approaches. This is because extensive user research, analysis of insights and problem framing/re-framing take time and are steps that are usually not performed to the same extent in what relevant companies typically do. Yet, at the same time, this is indeed what establishes human-centredness in the process. According to literature (e.g. Melcior & Eisenbart, 2017; Eisenbart & Kleinsmann, 2017), here is where a potential barrier with the adoption of Design Thinking in technology-focused organizations may arise, i.e. taking more time or not progressing as quickly in the early stages of the process. This can reiterate doubts around the added benefit from the approach (see, Section 1), as initially more effort is required and no (or not as many) concrete outcomes are produced. This will be discussed further below.

Another benefit mentioned by one participant is the learning effects from following a different process and simply by diverging from the routine. This can increase employee satisfaction and employee innovativeness, though such an increase was hard to quantify according to the participant. Interestingly, literature, conversely, often focuses on the potential barriers of changing the way people work (Assink, 2006).

Besides these more intangible benefits, two interviewees stated that, ultimately, market success will determine if Design Thinking has led to better outcomes or added benefits for the company and this is what most companies – particularly those that are critical toward Design Thinking to begin with – will try to measure. However, this is also what these participants describe as being challenging about Design Thinking, proving a direct correlation between its application and increased market success. This matches the discourse in the literature, where there is little evidence for immediate monetary benefit of the Design Thinking approach. Yet there is evidence showing how it can propel innovation in general, see, Brown (2008), Martin (2009), Liedtka (2015), Rae (2016), Kleinsmann et al. (2017), and Liedtka (2020). In the interviews, all participants argued that Design Thinking, given its focus on the prospective users and their needs and desires, offers a higher likelihood of creating solutions that are appealing to the target user group. And therefore, these would more likely turn into commercial successes (see also, Dong et al., 2015).

3.4. Pitfalls and potentials to improve/adjust Design Thinking in technology-oriented industries/contexts

Participants also shared what they believed can impede the successful application of Design Thinking with more technology-focused organizations and made suggestions for improvement of the applicability. These fall into two categories: (1) how Design Thinking might be adjusted, and (2) situations in which Design Thinking is not recommended as the most suitable approach.

3.4.1. Pitfalls

Five participants agreed that the popularity of Design Thinking itself creates problems. They criticized a widespread ‘naivety’ in believing it ‘can do anything’, due to pertinent advocacy/marketing.

P9: “[A problem is] that practitioners or self-made ambassadors of Design Thinking claim they can do anything. […] You can use it for some challenges, but you shouldn’t overstate what you can do with it. It is a small set of methods and steps that you can perform during a project, but in the end when you have a prototype it becomes a quite conventional design activity.”

While they commended the ease with which it can be applied to a large variety of problems, they criticique the way it is applied as often being superficial. One of the respondents even described it as ‘corporate entertainment’ (P4), saying that significantly more time would be needed for new users to thoroughly understand the process, doing thorough user research and also create a change in mind-set and openness.

P5: “Many non-designers think they can learn it in one or two days and start using all these methods, but the methods themselves require a lot of practice.”

Participants unanimously agreed Design Thinking to be a good fit for more progressive companies, yet there would be barriers for more established organizations. This was suggested due to difficulty in changing people’s ways of working and mind-set in established organizational structures and cultures. Still, interviewees stressed that even such companies can benefit from Design Thinking, but not in all situations. One participant particularly explained that it is seen as not suitable when a company is under significant time pressure, when there is not much flexibility as to what the outcome should be or when the company is mainly interested in incremental, rather than radical innovations in the very project they seek to apply Design Thinking in.

P1: “It depends on the type of portfolio they have. You have to have a coherent portfolio. And your portfolio [should be] balanced between radical and incremental innovation. You cannot be radical all the time.”

As such, for some companies it is easier to adopt Design Thinking than for others. Progressiveness, resources and openness or an inherent design-focus were described to be imperative by two participants. One of them further elaborated that the number of designers in a company is also an influencing factor. This is because having designers in the team adds to the skillset the team can draw upon in applying Design Thinking. Having had exposure to designers’ ways of working can further increase confidence in the benefit this can bring.

P5: “In the end, for any company that doesn’t have designers and doesn’t deal that much with uncertainty, those are the most challenging for Design Thinking.”

Another participant explained that Design Thinking is not suitable for a highly competitive culture (as this can impede teamwork), companies that are struggling for survival or start-ups in middle of their growth.

Having confidence in the process and skillset, a balanced innovation portfolio and difficulties with changing one’s way of working have been alluded to as barriers for the adoption Design Thinking in the past (see, Carlgren et al., 2016). Competitive culture or financial pressure does not explicitly feature highly in literature as barriers, but conversely the literature does advocate for a collaborative team that is given the appropriate freedom and managerial support to explore Design Thinking as a new way of doing things.

3.4.2. Potentials for improvement or adjustment of the approach

Only five participants suggested concrete ways to improve the applicability of Design Thinking in technology-focused organizations. Two main themes emerged. Firstly, three participants suggested a more thorough consideration of feasibility/viability of the solutions generated by Design Thinking. Regarding feasibility, specifically, these participants stressed that to truly solve technology-based issues, there is no way around having domain experts in the room to help shape appropriate solutions.

P8: “There are no technology reviews applied in it. Or no estimated market sciences or potential value that the solution could bring in it. That does not mean that it should be monetary or financial, but any kind of estimated value. If you follow the double diamond phases […] there is a considered part of work done in gaining empathy […] and a lot of emphasis on ideating and concept development. And suddenly from a [simple] prototype, you move into the delivering mode and there is nothing to support that.”

Following on from this, sustainability of the solution in context and a feasible business model were reported to be often neglected.

P10: “Very few are incorporating the feasibility, sustainability, and the business feasibility for example. That’s why I am running two courses. One is Design Thinking, and the other one is business. [In] Design thinking classes, teams are trying to develop concepts based on the design research, brainstorming and methods like that. And [afterwards] we start another class emphasising on business feasibility. So, we import the ideas of Design Thinking to the business class, and the business class teams, assess the feasibility as a business.”

The second main suggestion pertains to two interviewees suggesting more support is needed for the selection and transitioning of solutions generated through Design Thinking into a more ‘standard’ engineering design processes. This means the transition from conceptual stage into the embodiment and detail design phases (compare Pahl et al., 2007). The two participants clearly stressed that much more work will be required to turn the ideas generated from Design Thinking into fully developed solutions.

P9: “What I dislike is […] the difference between what have actually achieved with Design Thinking, having a good idea or multiple ideas or prototypes, and the claim that you get the challenge and you can solve anything. But you don’t solve it, you just ideate something. Then really making it ready for implementation, that is a long period that you have to perform. A lot of hard work has to follow. That is never told, that part of the story.”

To address this shortcoming, one participant made the suggestion to incorporate elements from standard engineering design methodologies to strengthen the applicability and transitioning ideas from one process to the other.

P11: “I think that [Design Thinking] is too focused on the user only, while there are a lot more stakeholders that needs to be taken into account, also the non-users, the people that the product might have an effect on. It is very important to get to the core problem but setting up a [classical] requirement list is not the standard part of it and there are always constraints. A requirement list is still necessary when you are talking about the context. And one thing that people do wrong is that they now say ‘oh, we will just do rapid prototyping’. But rapid prototyping doesn’t replace thinking. Quickly doing something is a waste of time if I could know beforehand that it’s not going to work anyway. So rapid but not too rapid, not trial and error.” The participant went on to explain that people should be conscious in thinking first “what do [they] want to learn from the prototype? Not every prototype will give me the exact insight I am after”. And often enough “a quick napkin calculation will tell you that this mechanism is not going to work”, thus a lot of efficiency is lost all too often unwaveringly following the cycle of ideation and prototyping.

These two main suggestions have not been expressed in this clarity in the literature and warrant further discussion.

4. Discussion and conclusion

The participants provided a wide range of insights about best practices and recommendations for the application and implementation of Design Thinking in technology-focused organizations. Before exploring these in more detail, it is worthwhile noticing the persisting ambiguity around defining what Design Thinking truly is. Some of the participants described it as a toolbox of methods that – if used correctly – will lead to human-centered and novel solutions. Others focused on the notion of a mind-set approach of ‘how a designer would do it’, implying that it mimics the acts typically carried out by designers as part of their typical work/approach in addressing a design task or to solve a problem. What both these interpretations convey is the inherent concept of approaching a given problem from a designerly viewpoint with the aim of creating novel outcomes that suit a target user. It is with this aim in mind that the following insights are discussed.

4.1. Succeed by making it a toolkit with variable content

While having the right mind-set is critical, focusing on applying Design Thinking practically in a technology-focused organizations, the participants paint the picture of a sequence of steps to follow with a toolbox of methods for carrying out each such step. The content of the toolbox, however, can vary significantly (see, Table 3 and Table 4), and based on five participants, it should indeed vary. The right choice of method to use in relation to the problem and organizational context is described as a success factor for the approach. The findings highlight the importance of experience in using and selecting the right methods/tools. This aligns with the aforementioned pitfalls, suggesting that Design Thinking requires a significant level of experience with how and when to apply the encompassed methods and tools. Participants suggested that sometimes it is necessary to make adaptations to the process flexibly as things eventuate. Novices would not have the experience to do this effectively and here is where an experienced designer as facilitator was suggested to be imperative to either lead the process and/or offer professional tutoring and training of involved teams.⁴ The interviews further suggest that technology-focused project teams tend to look for practicality of the solutions resulting from the process, with technology and domain expertise providing relevant inputs to mitigate between novelty and feasibility. This underlines the mentioned need for task-specific adaptation of the process as well as of the selection and application of relevant methods and tools to achieve this.

4.2. Changing the team’s mind-set and follow best practice

De Lille et al. (2012) prominently describes the value of a ‘designerly’ approach, from empathizing, visualizing, prototyping to other creative activities, as the core essence of design as a field of study. A set of similar characteristic mind-sets/attitudes was ascribed to the successful application of Design Thinking by the majority of participants (see, Table 2). The ‘right’ mind-set lets designers see problems as opportunities to create new solutions, which is a different mind-set from non-designers, specifically technology or engineering focused individuals, who tend to favor analysis and selection of ‘the best option’ out of a set (Boland & Collopy, 2004). Thus, creating this particular shift in the mind-set of such individuals and teams becomes a prerequisite for successfully applying Design Thinking. This is not to say, non-designers cannot generate novel solutions, yet it stands to reason that they may not be able to leverage the full potential of the Design Thinking approach in exploring and reframing user needs and preferences to guide the creation of novel solutions.⁵

The notion of shifting mind-set goes hand in hand with adopting and embracing the central characteristics and attitudes participants portrayed Design Thinking to require (see, Tables 2 and 3). Centrally, this entails, being open to doing things in a new way and to elevate user needs, rather than technological advancement, into the center of design enquiry. This includes thorough exploration and building empathy toward the user’s situation and needs, reframing of the problem, generating non-incremental solution variants, and being flexible to iterate on proposed ideas, test and revise if necessary. Table 4 highlights the strategies for achieving this as suggested by the participants. This includes making information visual whenever possible to stimulate discussion and communication; stirring actual interest in the user and motivation to create good outcomes; fostering persistence in working with uncertainty and an iterative solution development process, where technology-oriented organizations tend to prefer a more structured and predictable development process.

To elaborate on this last point, another important insight was that participants consider Design Thinking not suitable for small-scale problems or aiming for incremental changes to an already existing solution. This has clear implications for the implementation into relevant technical contexts where very detailed expertise and contextual knowledge is required. In these contexts, participants warned that Design Thinking may not generate the concrete outcomes that companies may seek. Design Thinking was suggested to have the biggest impact when working with problems that are vague and need considerable reformulation and exploration before they can be matched with a potential solution. In technology-focused organizations this mainly pertains to projects where novel use cases and applications are targeted over incremental changes to existing solutions. In other words, such organizations will gain most value from implementing Design Thinking when they specifically target the development of novel ideas and strategies that can be transferred into distinct products/services, in the future. It will likely not immediately produce product/service ideas to a level of detail that such companies might be used to. This is part of changing the mind-set of teams and it thus stands to reason that adequate expectation management is quite critical when initiating the use of Design Thinking in relevant contexts.

4.3. Pitfalls to avoid

There is definite agreement among the participants as to success factors but also pitfalls in applying Design Thinking in technology-oriented contexts. Participants stress the need for adequate expectation management. Advocates of Design Thinking (see, Brown, 2009; Martin, 2009; Rae, 2008) often claim it produces almost ready-to-build solutions. Yet, interviewees have clearly highlighted the significant work still needed to turn ideas generated from Design Thinking into a reality. This may lead to disappointment, particularly with technology-focused organizations, who are typically very aware of the costs and time associated with detail design work.

Participants agree that its main benefit is for people who are non-designers to start thinking explicitly about the user in solving adequate problems and to generate creative solutions. This can generate very quick ‘wins’ as novel insights spark entirely new ideas for non-designers. Ultimately, it is a push into a creativity mind-set and perspective. Methods/tools like personas and user stories, or skills like visualization and prototyping, or methods like co-creation (Table 3 and Table 4) are seen as practical ways to instill ‘designerly’ ways of working and thinking. On the verge of deep technical, scientific, marketing or other knowledge directed toward a novel perception and facilitated by ‘designerly’ cues and approaches, novel ideas and combinations of disciplinary knowledge can manifest (Bason, 2010).

4.4. Suggestions for a more seamless implementation and need for further study

Participants highlighted specific ideas for adapting the Design Thinking approach so that it may more seamlessly integrate into estbalished engineering development projects. The constraints as to the level of maturity of created solutions mentioned above featured centrally here. Given the notion of a toolbox with variable content (see, Section 4.1), adding tools and methods from established engineering design methodology, such as requirements lists and calculation over experimentation/prototyping at all cost(see, Section 3.4) seems possible. In future research, linking what is currently covered in Design Thinking with engineering design methodologies for embodiment and detail design more seamlessly might thus be a very valuable field of study. Since there is indeed often still a significant amount of work required to actually turn these into a feasible reality (as also highlighted by Gericke & Maier, 2011), allowing for an efficient transition of ideas into more classical engineering design or new product development approaches, could have significant advantages for technical companies. It would allow a faster transition of concepts developed through Design Thinking and help them realize these using their established processes.

4.5. Limitations

Limitations around this research arise from its focus on a selected number of experts. We aimed to explore how to apply Design Thinking in technology-focused organizations that are not used to such human-centered approaches. In that, the data was very rich and helps build deeper understanding of ways to support the implementation of Design Thinking in such contexts. A number of novel facets to the scientific discourse emerged from the interviews, while they also confirm several insights already estbalished from literature giving us confidence in the sample profile. Finally, despite some diversity – specifically in relation to how to define Design Thinking and what its central elements are – the interviews also reveal a strong consensus across participants on what its strengths are and on the limitations for its applicability. A final limitation revolves around our decision to target participants with academic background and experience in application of Design Thinking in relevant industry contexts over only practitioners. The insights we derived are rich and allow a discussion of Design Thinking as an approach, its central elements and application in relevant contexts. Talking to pure practitioners will likely contribute to this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. Humans have been found to prefer working with those means and procedures they are familiar with and that have proven beneficial to them over time. Incorporating change thus presupposes substantial needs, external pressures and/or expected benefits that are greater than the design teams’ inhibition threshold and warrant the necessary learning efforts and costs.

2. These are often exacerbated by a number of personal biases and missing team cohesion (Liedtka, 2015; Sandberg & Aarikka-Stenroos, 2014)

3. This specifically targets questions around whether there is a way to integrate Design Thinking into more engineering/technology driven development processes more seamlessly.

4. There is a notion that adequate use of Design Thinking is ascribed to significant tacit knowledge (compare Reber, 1989) that is hard to transfer to another person by means of making it explicit through writing or verbalizing it. Rather, it is something that must be learned over time. While a given set of methods/tools applied in a somewhat sequential order might still deliver results, the full potential of the approach was said to be only leveraged, if experienced people lead the process and adjust it as needed. Naturally, through applying it repeatedly, staff in technical contexts can develop the relevant experience themselves, but it is likely to require thorough guidance and engagement with experienced facilitators through a number of projects, not just one, before this is established.

5. This refers to how designers deal with solving wicked problems (Buchanan, 1992).