Empathize, define, ideate, prototype and test. Sounds familiar, right?

Perhaps the stages of design thinking have become habitual, routine or simply reflex actions for you as an instructional designer. Or maybe you’ve accepted this process as an industry standard and never questioned it.

How about breaking the mold? But first, let’s take a closer look at the principles of design thinking.

What Is Design Thinking?

Design thinking is a well-established methodology widely being used in product design, business strategy and marketing to address complex challenges and create solutions that meet user needs.

It is problem-solving approach that emphasizes empathy with users, creative problem-solving, teamwork and collaboration, ideating and iterative prototyping and testing to generate innovative solutions.

Design thinking involves a five-step non-linear, prototype-driven, structured process to arrive at a solution.

Step 1: Empathize with your end users.

Know your users and understand their needs to create meaningful innovations.

Step 2: Define the problem.

Frame the right problem. This is the only way to create the right solution.

Step 3: Ideate potential solutions.

Generate the broadest range of possibilities. You don’t necessarily have to focus on coming up with the right idea at this point.

Step 4: Prototype the solution.

Build the solution to think. Test to learn.

Step 5: Test the solution.

This is an opportunity to learn about your solution and your user by analyzing feedback.

Design Thinking for Instructional Designers

You are someone who embraces the creative process of design and uses flexible approaches to reach the end goal. Your process involves employing empathy, creativity, questioning, collaboration, exploration, experimentation and continuous improvement to develop learning solutions.

Design thinking is an essential mindset for instructional designers. Now, let’s uncover how to update this approach to help them design more impactful learning experiences.

Reinventing the 5-Step Design Thinking Process for Instructional Designers

Step 1: Empathize with your learners.

Use empathy as part of your learning needs analysis and design. Create 4-5 personas of your learners to be more human centered. Identify the unique needs, preferences and challenges of your personas to gather insights and create meaningful learning solutions.

Step 2: Define the problem.

Clearly articulate the challenges you are solving for. Focus on the specific needs of your learners, the learning objectives and the desired outcomes.

Step 3: Ideate potential solutions.

This is an opportunity to collaborate with your team to generate ideas. Brainstorm ideas for learning modalities — instructional methods, medium of delivery and potential solutions. Be open-minded in your approach.

Step 4: Prototype the solution.

Use low-fidelity tools such as PowerPoint or sketches to rapidly develop a prototype of your learning solution, for example, eLearning or learning activities to test and gather feedback from your stakeholders.

Step 5: Test the solution.

Implement small-scale pilot tests of your solution and gather feedback from learners and stakeholders. Use the feedback to refine and finalize your learning solution.

Overall, this approach gives you the opportunity to think outside the box.

Use these design thinking principles to foster collaboration with your team, learners, subject matter experts and stakeholders by involving them in the design process. Focus on continuously improving the learning experiences that you deliver through regular evaluation and feedback. Apply these principles to create learning experiences that meet the unique needs of learners and help break your own mold.