Design thinking exercises

What is Design Thinking?

Definition and stages

Design thinking is a human-centered approach to solving complex problems. It blends creativity with practicality, emphasizing understanding users, reframing problems, and testing ideas through iterative cycles. The core stages—empathize, define, ideate, prototype, and test—guide teams from exploring a situation to delivering viable solutions. While the sequence is often described linearly, teams typically loop backward and forward between stages as new insights emerge.

Key principles

Several principles ground design thinking: users come first, ambiguity is part of the process, and learning happens through experimentation. Collaboration across disciplines yields richer perspectives, and rapid prototyping turns guesses into tangible feedback. By embracing iterative cycles, teams reduce risk and adapt solutions to real needs rather than to assumptions.

Human-centered design

Human-centered design places people at the heart of every decision. It relies on deep empathy, co-creation with stakeholders, and an ongoing preference for simple, usable outcomes. Solutions emerge not from a single expert’s vision but from ongoing dialogue with users, allowing priorities to shift as understanding deepens.

Design Thinking Exercises Overview

Checklist of exercises

A practical suite of exercises helps teams move through the design thinking workflow. Common elements include empathy interviews, mapping activities, framing prompts, rapid ideation, and low-fidelity prototyping. Keeping a checklist ensures consistency across sessions and helps new participants ramp up quickly:

• Empathy mapping and stakeholder interviews
• Framing the problem with How Might We prompts
• Idea generation techniques (brainstorming, Crazy 8s, brainwriting)
• Low-fidelity prototyping and testing
• Reflection and iteration cycles

Session structure

Most design thinking sessions follow a repeatable flow: set a clear objective, build empathy, frame the problem, ideate, prototype, and test. Sessions often begin with a short warm-up to set psychological safety, followed by focused activities that build on prior insights. End with a debrief to capture learning and plan the next steps.

Typical durations

Durations vary by scope. A starter workshop might run 90 minutes, while a full design sprint can span 2–5 days. For ongoing programs, consider a series of 60–90 minute sessions with weekly cadence to maintain momentum and allow for iterative refinement.

Starter Exercises for Beginners

Empathy mapping

Empathy maps help teams organize what users say, think, do, and feel. Start with a user persona and capture real quotes or observations. This visual tool clarifies user needs, surfaces assumptions, and aligns the team around a shared perspective before defining the problem.

Framing the problem with How Might We prompts

How Might We (HMW) prompts reframe challenges as opportunities. They invite multiple potential solutions and reduce pressure for immediate right answers. Examples include “How might we make the product easier to learn for first-time users?” or “How might we reduce the time to complete this task without sacrificing quality?”

Simple warm-up activities

Warm-ups loosen collaboration and spark creativity. Quick activities like “Two Truths and a Wish” or a fast paper prototyping round help participants get comfortable with rapid iteration and sharing ideas without judgment.

Empathy-Building Activities

Stakeholder interviews

Interviews with active users, customers, and frontline staff reveal lived experiences. Prepare open questions, record responses, and summarize patterns. The goal is to surface needs, pain points, and moments of delight that data alone cannot capture.

Empathy maps

Building on interviews, empathy maps consolidate user insights into tangible categories: says, thinks, does, and feels. This helps the team avoid assumptions and maintain a user-centered focus as ideas emerge.

Customer journey mapping

A journey map traces the user’s experience across touchpoints and time. It highlights pain points, opportunities, and moments of truth. By aligning the map with business or educational goals, teams can prioritize interventions with the greatest impact.

Ideation and Brainstorming Activities

Crazy 8s and rapid ideation

Crazy 8s is a rapid sketch exercise that pushes teams to generate eight divergent ideas in eight minutes. The goal is quantity and novelty, not perfection. The speed lowers self-censorship and invites surprising, unconventional solutions.

How Might We prompts

Revisit HMW statements during ideation to keep ideas anchored in user value. Each prompt can spawn multiple design avenues, helping teams explore a broad solution space while staying aligned with user needs.

Brainwriting and dot voting

Brainwriting replaces public shouting with written ideas, increasing participation and reducing dominance by outspoken members. Dot voting surfaces collective preferences by letting participants allocate marks to the ideas they find most promising.

Prototyping and Testing Exercises

Low-fidelity prototyping

Low-fidelity prototypes—sketches, paper interfaces, cardboard models—quickly turn ideas into tangible forms. They invite early feedback and enable fast iteration without heavy investment. The emphasis is on learning, not perfection.

Prototype critique sessions

Structured critique sessions gather stakeholders to review prototypes with a focus on usefulness, desirability, feasibility, and viability. A clear rubric and time-boxed discussion help teams extract actionable insights.

User testing scripts

Testing scripts guide interactions with real users, ensuring consistency across sessions. Include tasks, success criteria, and questions to elicit honest reactions. Observing behavior is often as important as collecting verbal feedback.

Facilitation Tips for Design Thinking Sessions

Creating safe spaces

Psychological safety is essential. Establish ground rules, welcome all contributions, and normalize iterative failure as a path to better ideas. A facilitator’s tone should be inclusive, curious, and supportive.

Timeboxing and agenda design

Clearly allocated time helps maintain momentum and reduces drift. Use short, focused blocks with built-in breaks for reflection. An agenda that starts with a user-centered objective keeps activities aligned with outcomes.

Roles and responsibilities of a facilitator

A facilitator guides the process, protects the group dynamics, and ensures equal participation. Roles may include an observer for bias, a timekeeper, a note-taker, and a facilitator who steers activities toward learning goals and outcomes.

Design Thinking in Education and Teams

Curriculum integration

Embed design thinking in curricula by aligning activities with learning objectives, assessment rubrics, and real-world projects. Cross-disciplinary collaboration enhances relevance and encourages students to apply methods across contexts.

Assessing design thinking outcomes

Assessment focuses on process and learning as much as product. Use portfolios, reflection journals, peer reviews, and demonstrations of iterative refinement to capture growth in empathy, collaboration, and problem-solving.

Cross-disciplinary collaboration

Teams that combine diverse backgrounds—engineering, humanities, arts, business—bring richer perspectives. Structured collaboration reduces silos, fosters shared language, and accelerates idea validation.

Tools, Templates, and Resources

Templates for exercises

Prebuilt templates streamline sessions: empathy map canvases, HMW cards, journey map frames, and critique rubrics. Ready-to-use templates help new facilitators run effective sessions quickly.

Digital tools and platforms

Digital whiteboards and collaboration platforms support remote or hybrid sessions. Choose tools that enable real-time editing, easy sharing, and accessible templates while prioritizing simplicity and reliability.

Printable worksheets

Printable worksheets provide tangible references during in-person workshops. They support hands-on activities like mapping, sketching, and note-taking, and are useful for documentation after sessions.

Measuring Impact and Reflection

Feedback methods

Collect qualitative and quantitative feedback after sessions. Short surveys, quick pulse checks, and structured debriefs help teams gauge learning, relevance, and engagement, guiding future iterations.

Iteration cycles

Design thinking thrives on small, repeated cycles. Track changes across rounds, measure whether user needs are better addressed, and adjust goals based on new insights rather than sticking to initial assumptions.

Showcasing outcomes

Showcases demonstrate demonstrated learning, prototypes, and potential impact. Exhibitions or presentations invite stakeholders to view iterated work, celebrate progress, and secure support for scaling successful ideas.

Implementation Considerations

Scalability and adaptation

Design thinking programs should scale across teams and contexts. Start with a core framework and adapt activities to available time, resources, and audience capabilities while preserving the user-centered core.

Accessibility and inclusion

Ensure sessions are accessible to diverse participants. Provide accommodations, offer multiple ways to contribute, and design materials that are usable by people with varying abilities and backgrounds.

Ethical considerations

Respect privacy during user research, obtain consent for interviews and recordings, and avoid exploiting participants. Align activities with ethical standards and institutional policies to maintain trust and integrity.

Trusted Source Insight

Trusted Source Insight highlights the value of learner-centered education and iterative, inquiry-based approaches. This alignment with design thinking practices fosters creativity, collaboration, and critical thinking in classrooms and lifelong learning contexts. For reference, the source is available here: https://unesco.org.