Design thinking simultaneously considers what is desirable from a human point of view, what is technologically feasible, and what is economically viable. It also allows people who aren’t trained as designers to use creative tools to address a vast range of challenges. Below you’ll find a mix of resources and tools to familiarize yourself with design thinking:
Learn how IDEO approaches brainstorming in this short 2-minute session facilitated by IDEO Play Lab founder Brendan Boyle
Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, shows how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business
A book by IDEO founder David Kelley and partner Tom Kelley on developing the creative potential within us all
A national network committed to design, design thinking, innovation, entrepreneurship, and more
From June 2009's Harvard Business Review, Tim Brown takes a deep dive into the process of design thinking, its history, and how the human-centered process comes to life inside the walls of IDEO
At the 2018 Aspen Ideas Festival, IDEO.org CEO Jocelyn Wyatt describes how design thinking offers a package of tools to promote human-centered, financially viable solutions, opening the door to creative solutions that address systemic problems
A free toolkit and workbook to help you design meaningful solutions in the classroom, in your school, and in your community
Tim Brown and IDEO.org CEO Jocelyn Wyatt highlight the way design thinking can serve clients and companies in the nonprofit sector
Through ten stories of struggles and successes in fields such as health care, education, agriculture, transportation, social services, and security, the authors of this paper show how design thinking and collaborative creativity can shake up even the most entrenched bureaucracies—and provide a practical roadmap for readers to implement these tools
A toolkit that introduces an approach to improving libraries through creative problem-solving
Encouraging evidence on teaching design thinking strategies in the classroom via the Journal of the Learning Sciences
A family of experiential design thinking workshops by award-winning learning company, ExperiencePoint, that inspire and equip teams with the tools they need to innovate and creatively problem solve.
In IDEO.org’s Design Toolkit—a resource created to help increase the capacity to design for the global poor—you'll find a set of methods and approaches for learning from extremes
IDEO's Jane Fulton Suri and IDEO U Dean Suzanne Gibbs Howard explore how corporate ethnography can surface meaningful opportunities for design
The potential for improving the quality of healthcare has never been greater—and design thinking can help
IDEO CoLab connects organizations to shape technology’s impact on the world
An online school where people can develop the skills of design thinking and mindsets of creative leadership
A social impact platform powered by design thinking
An exploration of the relationship between prototyping and behavioral change in the workplace in the Journal of Applied Behavioral Science
A book on how the technology of design can transform teachers, learnings, and classrooms
There are two main ways that organizations prototype new products and services: rapid prototyping and piloting. A third might be emerging.
Tom Kelley, partner at IDEO, takes readers behind the scenes of the design firm's creative processes
Looking for a way to introduce design thinking to students in the classroom or colleagues at work? The Stanford d.school's online Starter Kit is free and available over Zoom.
A selection of exercises from IDEO.org's Design Kit Travel Pack, a tool to help social impact organizations and busy professionals unlock their own creative genius
Effective design thinking entails more than applying design methods. To produce the best outcomes, organizations need to develop — and trust — peoples’ design sensibilities.
Roger Martin dives into the success stories of over 50 business leaders to uncover the problem-solving power of “integrative thinking.”
A professional community that activates teachers' creativity to solve the biggest challenges in education today using design thinking
How does design thinking fit into the modern education system? This academic report shows how the design thinking mindset can expand our notions of schools and school systems beyond entrenched models
IDEO CEO Tim Brown's 2009 TED Talk urges designers to think big, shifting their practice from the act of creating an object to the act of fusing design, business, and social studies to solve big, real-world problems
Design thinking is not an exclusive property of designers—all great innovators in literature, art, music, science, engineering, and business have practiced it
In Harvard Business Review, IDEO CEO Tim Brown talks about the value of businesses and other organizations becoming masters in design thinking
Design thinking can help teams develop creation solutions to deep problems in part by mitigating the human biases that thwart innovation