design-thinkinglisted

# Design Thinking ## Coverage Design thinking is the meta-skill that orchestrates a full human-centered design arc and routes specific work to the appropriate stage-specific sibling skill. Multiple canonical framings exist and largely agree on the shape. The **Stanford d.school** describes five stages: **Empathize → Define → Ideate → Prototype → Test**. The **MIT Sloan** framing renders it as **Understand → Involve → Ideate → Prototype-test → Implement**. The **UK Design Council's Double Diamond** maps the same arc onto two diamonds: **Discover → Define** (the problem-space diamond, diverge then converge on the right problem) and **Develop → Deliver** (the solution-space diamond, diverge then converge on the right solution). Tim Brown's HBR essay (2008) and the IDEO Field Guide describe the same arc under different stage labels. Across framings the meta-skill covers (a) **stage recognition** — knowing which stage a team is currently in based on what artifacts exist and what question is open; (b) **stage routing** — handing the work to the right sibling skill (problem-framing for definition work, user-research for empathy/discovery, research-synthesis for sense-making, journey-mapping for cross-touchpoint experience, ideation for divergent/convergent concept generation, prototyping for learning artifacts, usability-testing for evaluation); (c) **transition criteria** — knowing what evidence justifies moving from one stage to the next; and (d) **loop-back conditions** — knowi