45 Design Thinking Exercises You Can Use Today

Downloadable PDF

Below are 43 activities that can be done in 5-minutes or less, as well as 2 design processes to facilitate workshops . They are simple but powerful for identifying values, imagining outcomes, and executing on successful products, services, policy designs and more.

While many design thinking processes show linear progression, this model emphasizes a circular, continuous cycle that puts “choice” at the center, allowing the process to engage in multiple cycles and decision points before arriving at one answer.

Applying This Tool to Your Workplace:

After delving into many Design Thinking Processes in different industries, I’ve found it easiest to frame DT as “a tool for making more informed, effective, and imaginative choices by fully engaging the left and right sides of the brain, while simultaneously inviting all affected voices into the decision-making process.”

As medical anthropologist Paul Farmer often points out, it is a failure of imagination (not resources or even analytics) which so often holds our society back from true progress.

Inspired by my work applying design thinking to education and social projects in Michigan State University’s Hub for Innovation and the US Agency for International Development’s Global Development Lab.

You can purchase a downloadable PDF here or access a free copy by emailing me at EleganceInnovationLab@gmail.com. Book a 1–1 workshop planning session here.

I’ve gotten a lot of requests over the years to turn this into a formal training. This being said, I am in my own design process with design thinking, so for now I made this informal video around that here and as I take more 1–1 clients will hopefully be able to offer more specific trainings by group :) Thanks for your patience with emergent process!