Design Thinking Comes of Age

In large organizations, design is moving closer to the center of the enterprise. This shift isn’t about aesthetics and product development, however. It’s about imparting the principles of design—collectively known as design thinking—throughout the organization. The approach is in large part a response to the complexity of many products, services, and processes. People need help—they need their interactions with technologies and other complicated systems to be intuitive and pleasurable.

Design thinking is an essential tool for simplifying and humanizing. The principles include a focus on users’ experiences, especially their emotional ones; the creation of physical models, such as diagrams and sketches, to explore problems; the use of prototypes to experiment with solutions; a tolerance for failure; and thoughtful restraint in product features so that even a complex piece of technology can be easy to use.

Creating a design-centric culture requires understanding that the returns on an investment in design are difficult to quantify, allowing people to take chances, and appreciating what design can and cannot achieve. Design helps people and organizations cut through complexity and imagine the future, but it doesn’t solve all problems.

HBR Reprint R1509D