Design Thinking Overview

photo credit: http://www.uvm.edu/~ekorsuns/design-thinking/images/design_thinking_process_diagram.png

 Yesterday I attended a workshop by Linda Braun about Design Thinking for libraries.

Here's what I learned 

Design thinking consists of five steps as show above:
Empathize: listen to your patrons, learn from them, and trust them
Define: Identify a problem
Ideate: let those creative juices fly
Prototype: Create a sample
Test: Will this idea work?

The most important part of the process is Empathizing. 

We all think we might know what our patrons what, but without talking to them, how will you really know? How will you know what's best for the community if you only see people inside the library?

Rethinking our questions to How might we...?

Design thinking can be done with:
Staff members
teens
community members
families
schools
town organizations
nonprofit organizations

To learn more, check out the website

I'm looking forward to starting this process. 

Have you done this in your library?
How did it go?