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UX/UI Design vocabulary · UX/UI Basics and Process

Design thinking

Meaning in UX/UI design, with examples

nounCommon term

In UX/UI design, design thinking means: A problem-solving approach that starts with understanding people's needs and moves through defining the problem, generating ideas, prototyping and testing.

In Turkish: tasarım odaklı düşünme, tasarım düşüncesi

How it is used

Made popular by the design firm IDEO and Stanford's d.school, whose model has five stages: empathise, define, ideate, prototype and test. It is used in business and education as well as design, often in workshops.

Example sentences

  1. The bank ran a design thinking workshop to rethink how customers open accounts.

  2. Design thinking isn't a straight line; teams often go back to research after testing.

Common collocations

  • design thinking workshop
  • design thinking process
  • apply design thinking
  • ideation session
  • user-centered designAn approach that puts users' needs, goals and limits at the centre of every stage of design, using research and testing with real people to guide decisions.
  • double diamondA design process model with four phases, discover, define, develop and deliver, drawn as two diamonds to show thinking that first opens up and then narrows down.
  • prototypeAn early, interactive version of a product or screen that people can click or tap through, used to test ideas before anything is built.
  • empathy mapA simple diagram, usually split into four parts, that records what a user says, thinks, does and feels, helping a team understand them better.

More terms: UX/UI Basics and Process

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