Lesson 0.2Lesson 0.2
Three words people mix up
Design thinking vs the design process vs design methods
The hookA student says 'I used design thinking on my project.' The tutor asks 'Which part?' The student blinks — they thought design thinking was the whole thing: the mindset, the steps, and the sketching, all in one word. It isn't.
The three nested levels
Design thinking, the design process, and design methods get used as synonyms. They aren't. They sit at three nested levels — like being healthy, a fitness plan, and doing twenty push-ups. Related, nested, not interchangeable.
Level 1 — Design thinking is a mindset
The outermost ring: a set of attitudes about how to approach problems. Roughly five convictions: start with people, not your clever idea; fall in love with the problem, not your first solution; make things to think; stay comfortable not-knowing; treat every design as a draft until the world has tested it.
It doesn't tell you what to do on Tuesday. It tells you how to hold yourself toward the work.
Level 2 — The design process is the sequence
The middle ring: the ordered stages that turn the mindset into movement through time. It answers 'what do I do, and in what order?' In this course that's the five-mode loop — Empathise, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test. The number of boxes is a stylistic choice; what matters is that a process gives you a place to stand.
Level 3 — Methods are the tools
The innermost ring: specific techniques you pick up inside a stage. Interview a client. Draw an empathy map. Sketch a bubble diagram. Build a foam model. Each method belongs to a stage, and is swappable — if one interview technique doesn't suit your client, swap it; the stage and the mindset stay put.
Worked example: all three, on one balcony
A family has an unused balcony and half-says 'do something nice with it.' The mindset (Level 1) keeps you curious about the people instead of picturing a swing chair. The process (Level 2) tells you you're at the start — Empathise, not Ideate. The methods (Level 3) are what you physically do: a contextual interview on the balcony, a day-in-the-life map. You learn the mother dries clothes there, the afternoon sun is brutal, the teenager wants to study. Now you move to Ideate with a real problem. The swing chair would have been beautiful and wrong.
Why getting this wrong costs you
Three common failures: mistaking a method for the whole thing (one interview ≠ design thinking); doing the right method in the wrong stage (detailed 3D models while you should still be defining); and having the steps without the mindset (marching through the stages as a checklist with nobody actually listened to).
A useful test of which level you're at: can the thing be swapped out without changing the others? Methods are swappable. The process is semi-swappable (adopt a double-diamond, re-slot your methods). The mindset is not swappable — abandon 'start with people' and you're no longer doing design thinking at all. The mindset is the slow layer; methods are the fast layer. Good designers keep the slow layer stable and stay promiscuous about the fast one.
1. Sort eight statements into T (mindset), P (stage), or M (tool): 1) 'sit with the problem longer' 2) drawing a bubble diagram 3) 'we're in Define now' 4) interviewing the grandmother 5) 'the user comes before my clever idea' 6) building a foam staircase 7) following Empathise→…→Test 8) 'treat this as a draft until tested.' Key: 1T 2M 3P 4M 5T 6M 7P 8T.
Check yourself
2 quick questions — pick an answer to see why.
Q1How do design thinking, the design process and design methods relate?
Q2A 'How Might We' statement is an example of which of the three?
Key terms
- Design thinking
- The human-centred, iterative mindset that asks why — empathy, reframing and experimentation applied to problems.
- Design process
- The staged journey (empathise → define → ideate → prototype → test) that organises the thinking over time — the when.
- Design method
- A specific tool used inside a stage — five whys, How Might We, bubble diagram, foam massing — the what.
Can you name your mindset, your current stage, and your next method on a project you care about? If one is blank, that's where to look.