Design Thinking - What is it and What are the steps?

What is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is an iterative approach to understand problems and develop solutions for defined problem with human-centric approach. 

In my opinion, it has its strength due to two main characteristics of the method : 

1- It is iterative. Assumptions are constantly revisited and they are checked with customer's and team's feedback as progress go on. 

2- It starts with the customer. It clearly states that problem or opportunity lies in the customer and it devotes specific phases to address this problem discovery phase. 

What are the Design Thinking steps?

According to Design Thinking Playbook by Michael Lewrick, Patrick Link and Larry Leifer, Design thinking can have different steps based on the organizational need. However basic step based approach is defined as below : 

In the Understanding Phase, User Personas are developed and the target audience's detailed information is represented and shared among the team. 

In the Observe Phase, we try to define the problem our personas have with questioning our assumptions and understanding their pains and frustrations with the current state. 

In the Point of View Phase, we synthesize the information we gathered during interaction points with personas ( or the customers that forms personas ).

In Ideate Phase, we hold brainstorming sessions to create solutions that address our customer's needs.

We discuss, evaluate our ideas and develop prototypes of agreed-upon solutions in the Prototype phase.

Lastly, we challenge our assumptions with Test phase where we show our prototype to our users and the team to get their valuable feedback. Design thinking's strength lies there. Based on Test's results we go over previous phases and revise what can be improved on our previous iteration's outputs or start over with valid information from the start.