# Introduction to Design Thinking

**Track:** Design Thinking & Process — Design & Human-Centered Design — proposed (25)
**Framework / surface:** design
**Level:** Intermediate
**Prerequisites:** What Design Is

**In one line:** A human-centered, iterative, bias-to-action mindset for ill-defined problems.

## Theory, aesthetics & inspiration

Design thinking reframes design as a general method for ill-defined problems — a human-centered, iterative, bias-to-action mindset rather than a styling craft. Its lineage runs from Herbert Simon's "The Sciences of the Artificial" (1969) through IDEO, which David Kelley founded in 1991 and where Tim Brown's "Change by Design" (2009) codified the practice around desirability, feasibility, and viability. Kelley also founded Stanford's Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (the d.school, 2005), whose five-mode loop — empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test — is still taught today through the school's own process guides. Critics like Natasha Iskander (2018) counter that its empathy can be shallow and politically conservative.

## References

- [Design thinking — Wikipedia](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_thinking)
- [Design Kit — IDEO.org human-centered design](https://www.designkit.org/)
- [Stanford d.school (Hasso Plattner Institute of Design)](https://dschool.stanford.edu/)