Design Thinking Resources For Practitioners
We get questions on books, papers, and other ‘how-to-get-started-with-design-thinking (DT)’ resources over and over. Thus we decided to compile this little page with the most influential and helpful practitioner material we currently know. For that we asked our circle of colleagues within the HPI-Stanford Design Thinking Research Program, long-term DT practitioners from the DTX, as well as some colleagues from other universities. There can be no claim of completeness and we left out many works of authors and colleagues, which we love and often recommend on other occasions. You have feedback? There is a great resource we have overlooked? Feel free, to drop us a line.
Essential Readings — A Collection
| ResourceThe title of the paper, study or book | AuthorsJust click on the author to jump to the reference and source of the reference | Reading TimeHow long will it approx. take you to read this text? | Type of Publication | BFor Design Thinking Beginners | AFor Advanced Design Thinkers | EFor Design Thinking Experts |
| Design Thinking | < 1 day | Business Press Article | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Innovation as a Learning Process: Embedding Design Thinking | < 1 day | Journal Paper | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Design Thinking: What It Is, Why It Is Different, Where It Has New Value. | < 1 day | Paper | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Design Thinking: Notes on its Nature and Use. | < 1 day | Journal Paper | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Framing Design Thinking: The Concept in Idea and Enactment. | < 1 day | Journal Paper | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| The Innovation Catalysts | < 1 day | Business Press Article | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Design Thinking: Past, Present and Possible Futures | < 1 day | Journal Paper | ☆Not For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Design Thinking and How It Will Change Management Education: An Interview and Discussion | < 1 day | Journal Paper | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Change by Design: How Design Thinking Transforms Organizations and Inspires Innovation | > 1 day | Book | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| The Design of Business – Roger Martin | > 1 day | Book | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Exposing the Magic of Design: A Practitioner’s Guide to the Methods and Theory of Synthesis. | > 1 day | Book | ☆Not For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Creative Confidence | > 1 day | Book | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| Parts Without a Whole? – The Current State of Design Thinking Practice in Organizations | > 1 day | Study Report | ☆Not For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| The Achievement Habit: Stop Wishing, Start Doing, and Take Command of Your Life | > 1 day | Book | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts | |
| The Nature of Design Thinking | < 1 day | Conference Article | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Wicked Problems in Design Thinking | < 1 day | Journal Article | ☆Less For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Design-Thinking-Diskurse: Bestimmung, Themen, Entwicklungen. | > 1 day | Doctoral Thesis (German Only) | ☆Not For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Manifesto: Design Thinking Becomes Foundational. | < 1 day | Book Chapter | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | ★For Advanced Design Thinkers | |
| Design Thinking Live | > 1 day | Book | ★For Design Thinking Beginners | ☆Less For Advanced Design Thinkers | ☆Less For Design Thinking Experts |
Legend: B = Beginner / A = Advanced / E = Expert
Advanced Readings
The Springer Series: “Understanding Innovation”
Within the Design Thinking Research Program (DTRP), researchers from Stanford University and HPI strive to apply rigorous academic methods to understand how and why design thinking innovation works and fails. The research results from the different DTRP projects are annually published in the Springer volume “Understanding Innovation”. The reader gains insights into the latest scientific findings about factors of success, tools and methods of design thinking. If you want to dig deeper, this series is for you.
The Rotman Magazine
The Rotman Magazine is the official publication of the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. They publish three themed issues per year. Content includes input from Rotman faculty; leading academics at top-tier schools, and thought leaders across a range of fields, including Design Thinking, Psychology, Consulting, Behavioural Economics, and Neuroscience. The magazine is hard to categorize as it appeals to novices and advanced innovation practitioners and learners of Design Thinking alike.
Electronic Colloquium on Design Thinking Research
The Electronic Colloquium on Design Thinking Research (ECDTR) is a forum for the rapid and widespread interchange of ideas, methods, and results in Design Thinking Research. The purpose of the forum is to use electronic media for scientific communication and discussions in the Design Thinking Research community. It encompasses papers, short notes and surveys with relevance to Design Thinking Research and innovative solutions to Design Thinking research challenges with an interdisciplinary focus.
What Other DT-Experts Recommend
Here are some additional and handy lists with literature and tool kit recommendations from other design thinking experts. Enjoy!
Discussion Forums & Communities
You have urgent questions? You’re looking for like-minded peers? Or you just want to follow the latest buzz on the topic? Then you might like these forums ans discussion groups:
Collections of Tool and Method Kits
A Compendium of Design Process Models
Dubberly Office: “How do you design – A compendium of models” gives a great overview on the most common models of design, innovation and creativity.
Stanford Bootcamp Bootleg
A handy collection of basic tools and methods that are taught at the d.schools in Stanford and Potsdam.
Creative Confidence Tool Collection
A handy collection of basic tools and methods as recommended by the founder of IDEO, David Kelley.
Google Ventures Design Resources
A collection of best practices on team work,design research, the organization of design sprints and many topics more. All with a focus on start-ups.
Intuit Labs
Intuit is a company, which has undergone a massive cultural change guided by design thinking and lean start-up principles. Here they share some of their stories and methods.
SAP Design Thinking Playbook
The design thinking and Ux community at SAP also regularly publishes resources on their user experience community site.
IDEO Design (Method) Kit
The IDEO HCD Method Kit is a classic and invaluable resource for any ‘design thinker’. It encompasses a basic set of design tools, rules and methods one can use in everyday (business) life.
FROG Collective Action Method Kit
The FROG Collective Action Tool Kit is geared towards local change agents who want to transform communities. Nevertheless the methods can be used in many other contexts, too.
HPI Prototyping Cards
The Prototyping Card Set from the HPI Potsdam guides design thinking novices in building the ‘right prototype’ in every situation. The cards can be downloaded or ordered at Amazon.
IDEO Design Thinking For Educators Kit
The IDEO Design Thinking For Educators Kit is geared towards the needs of those K12 schools and teachers, who believe that a design thinking mindset should be developed from very early days on.
The IIT.ID Methods Collection: 101 Design Methods
This book is one of those rare gems, where you might say: It’s the only one I’ll ever need. Decades of IIT’s experience with design and strategy (modeling) methods crammed into 336 pages. Presented by Vijay Kumar, professor in Strategic Design Planning and the Design Methods programs of IIT.ID.
The Circular (Economy) Design Guide
How can we as leaders, designers, and strategists factor in the limits of growth into our work? This guide and tool-set helps you incorporate a Circular Economy perspective when developing your ‘next’ truly sustainable product-service system or business model. Brought to you by Ellen McArthur Foundation and IDEO.
GOV.UK Service Toolkit
Not only useful to people in the UK government. The toolkit from the GDS brings together all the things that are available to help teams building government services. So, administrations of the world: Take note!
Universal Methods of Design
Another great collection of design methods. Especially recommended to beginners, to gain a quick overview.
Brains, Behaviour, and Design Toolkit
A toolkit, derived from research into behavioural economics. It helps you to make use of peoples typical thinking and behaviour pattern biases and nudge them into certain desired behaviours accordingly.
IBM Design Thinking Field Guide
The public version of the IBM Design Thinking Field Guide introduces its readers to IBM’s take on design thinking and how they adapted and merged the approach with agile practices.
LUMA Method Cards
The category system of the LUMA method cards is simple yet clever. Great for planning and organizing project work with first time clients or teams, who are not savvy yet in using HCD methods.
SAP Scenes
Scenes is a storyboard creation set. You can build products and service scenarios fast, collaboratively and iteratively — without the need of refined drawing skills.
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Intro Videos:
What is Design Thinking?
Expert Videos:
Embedding Design Thinking In The Organization
If you are new to design thinking, you might enjoy these introduction videos.
If you already deal with design thinking adaption and scaling, you might be interested in these videos.
Design Thinking MOOCs
The list below is not complete. It represents a ‘best-of collection’ of all the design thinking MOOCs a team of HDTRP researchers screened in 2015.
| Course Name | What the MOOC is about | Duration | Provider | Platform | Free? |
| Inspirations for Design: A Course on Human-Centered Research | This course will introduce you to crucial methods in design research, which will help you to discover inspirations for innovative solutions. We take a task-based approach to build your competencies and skills: You will learn to spot workarounds, observe potential users in their context and explore the basic skills of conducting insightful interviews. | 5 Weeks | Hasso Plattner Institute, Potsdam University | openHPI | Yes |
| Design Thinking for Innovation | This course focuses on the application of design thinking in business contexts. It draws on examples from how DT is being applied in different organizations. | 5 Weeks | University of Virginia | Coursera | Yes |
| Design Kit: The Course for Human-Centered Design | A great introductory course into human-centered design and its application in social innovation. It requires the participants to form teams and work on local challenges. Useful for instable internet connection since PDF files are the main content delivery medium. | 7 Weeks | +Acumen in collaboration with IDEO.org | NovoEd | Yes |
| Basics of Design Research | This course focuses on human-centered design research. It provides an overview of frequently used basic methods for conducting field research and identifying users. | 5 Weeks | OpenSAP | OpenSAP | Yes |
| Design Kit: Prototyping | Following the learnings from the human-centered design course, this course focuses on prototyping skills and collecting feedback. | 4 Weeks | +Acumen in collaboration with IDEO.org | NovoEd | Yes |
| Design Thinking Part I: Insights to Inspiration | The focus of this course is on conducting design research for need finding. | 5 Weeks | Darden School of Business | University of Virginia | No |
| Design Thinking Part II: Ideas to Action | This course follows up on the learnings from its predecessor and focuses on creating innovative solutions based on the user research insights from the first part. | 4 Weeks | Darden School of Business | University of Virginia | No |
| IDEO U | Different courses covering aspects of design thinking, the ‘IDEO way’. | 4 Weeks | IDEO | IDEO U | No |
| Getting Started: Agile Meets Design Thinking | The course combines methods and tools from agile and design thinking to teach an effective approach to product development. | 5 Weeks | University of Virginia | Coursera | Yes |
| Designing the Future | An introductory course into different design approaches, including design thinking, and their application for today’s challenges. | 5 Weeks | RMIT University | Future Learn | No |
| Product Design: Delft Design Approach | An introductory online course, which teaches how to design meaningful products and services. | 7 Weeks | Delft University | EdX | No |
| Design Thinking for Leading and Learning | This course focuses on the application of design thinking in classrooms and in K-12 education. | 6 Weeks | MIT | EdX | Yes |
| Innovation of Products and Services: MIT’s Approach to Design Thinking | This course teaches, how to blend the perspectives of marketing, design and engineering into a systematic approach to delivering innovation. | 8 Weeks | EMERITUS Institute of Management in collaboration with MITsloan Executive Education | Emeritus | No |
| Human-Centered Design: An Introduction | As part of a specialization track, this module focuses on different strategies from design thinking and how to create human-centered innovation in different domains. | 4 Weeks | UC San Diego | Coursera | Yes |
Feedback? Click here, to drop us a line.
This resource collection is compiled by Jan Schmiedgen with the support of our research colleagues in the HPDTRP. Special thanks go to Karen von Schmieden , Julia von Thienen, and Mana Taheri.