Design thinking templates

In the Resources on Strategic Design page of this website, you can find Strategic and Design Thinking templates guiding your strategic and design thinking effort.

I have added a free (locked) version of the value chain and industry analysis templates in .pdf format, helping you and your team to visualise the strategy process. You can purchase a .ppt version, which you can re-brand and customise.

I’m also creating video tutorials on how to use these templates, which will be available shortly.

Beside these strategic thinking templates, I’m creating design thinking templates aiming at getting you started in adopting design thinking within your organisation.

The first of these templates is the Assessing the Design Opportunity template, helping you to test the contribution of design thinking to your different projects.

I have developed this template because I’m receiving an increasing number of questions on how a team within an organisation can get started using design thinking.

1. The Assessing the design Opportunity template asks you six questions:

2. Is your project human-centred? Is a deep understanding of the people (users) required to the success of the project?

3. What’s the level of the understanding of the problem? Do you understand your customer's problem? Do you need to explore it further?

4. What’s the level of the uncertainty of the project? Are there many unknowns? Is past data able to help us?

5. What’s the degree of complexity? Are there many interconnected facets of the problem? Is it hard to understand where to start?

6. Is there available data? Is the current set of available information consistent and reliable for our project? Do you need to create new data?

7. What’s the current offer? What is the current solution to the problem you are trying to frame, and solve?

Many organisations struggle when getting started using design thinking; it requires a different mindset from the more conventional strategic thinking tools mentioned above, which have been around for a good while now.

''Learn design by practising it, discover the designer (of ideas) within yourself.''

While my templates assist you and your organisation in familiarising with design, it’s up to you to start. As they say, 'procrastination is the thief of time'.

Download the first design thinking template ''Assessing the Design Opportunity template'' here.

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After having assessed the opportunity of using design thinking for your new growth initiative, the second step is scoping the opportunity with the Project Scope Template.

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The third template assisting you in your Design Thinking process is drafting a Design Brief.

The Design Brief Template assists you, and your team, to outline your current thinking/understanding of your project. This template, an eight-page-long editable .pdf file, enables you and your team to visualise and collaborate on your project, defining the intent, the scope and the stakeholders involved in your project.

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Working on a design thinking project by using different .pdf templates can be frustrating. Besides their limited editing ability, the main issue is not being able to collaborate on them as a team.

So, let's place the two .pdf templates (assessing and scoping the design opportunity) on a shared poster, where team members can collaborate live.

Visualise the poster below in a view only mode.

I'm creating an Online programme introducing you to the Design Thinking Process & Tools. Would you like to contribute to it by sharing your experience in getting started with the design process? Drop me an email, and I'll provide you with early access.

If you would like to make the work of your strategic, creative and design thinking teams more effective schedule a complimentary session with me and I'll show you how to start.