Project Overview 

Over the last decade, we have seen design thinking gain popularity across industries. Nielsen Norman Group conducted a long-term research project to understand design thinking in practice. The research project included 3 studies involving more than 1000 participants and took place from 2018 to 2020: 

1. Intercepts and interviews with 87 participants
2. Digital survey with 1067 respondents
3. In-depth case study at an institution practicing design thinking 

The primary goals of the project were to investigate the following:

• How do practitioners learn and use design thinking?
• How does design thinking provide value to individuals and organizations?
• What makes design thinking successful or unsuccessful? 

This description of what we did may be useful in helping you interpret our results and apply them to your own design-thinking practice. 

Project Findings

The findings from this research are shared in the following articles and videos:

• What Is Design Thinking, Really? (What Practitioners Say) (Article) 
• How UX Professionals Define Design Thinking in Practice (Video) 
• Design Thinking: The Learner’s Journey (Article)

Study 1: Intercepts and Interviews 

In the first study we investigated how UX and design professionals define design thinking. 

This study consisted of 71 in-person intercepts in Washington DC, San Francisco, Boston, and North Carolina and 16 remote interviews over the phone and via video conferencing. These 87 participants were UX professionals from a diverse range of countries with varying roles and experience.

Intercepts consisted of two questions:

1. What do think of when you hear the phrase “design thinking”?
2. How would you define design thinking?

Interviews consisted of 10 questions, excluding demographic-related questions:

1. What are the first words that come to mind when I say “design thinking”?
2. Can you tell me more about [word they supplied in response to question 1]?
3. How would you define design thinking? Why?
4. What does it mean to practice design thinking?
5. What are the positive or negative effects of design thinking?
6. How does design thinking impact the following?
   1. Products and services
   2. Process
   3. Employees
   4. Clients/customers
7. Using this scale, what is your experience using design thinking?
8. Using this same scale, how successful has design thinking been in your experience?
9. What could have been better?
10. What is good about design thinking? What is bad about design thinking?

Study 2:  Digital Survey

Our second study consisted of a qualitative digital survey that ran for two months and had 1067 professional respondents primarily from UX-related fields. The survey had 14 questions, excluding demographic-related questions. An alternative set of 4 questions was shown to those with little to no experience using design thinking.  

1. Which of the following best describes your experience with design thinking?
2. Where did you learn design thinking? 
3. Using the scale below, at what level is your whole organization currently at in each of the following areas? 
   1. UX maturity 
   2. Frequency of crossteam collaboration 
   3. User-centered approach 
   4. Research-driven decision making
4. How often do you, yourself, practice design thinking?
5. In your own words, what does it mean to practice design thinking? 
6. Please describe in detail the activities you use to practice design thinking. 
   1. When do you use design thinking?
   2. What methods or exercises are used?
   3. In what situations is each one used and why?
   4. Which ones are done individually versus as a group?
   5. How is each exercise executed?
7. Based on your experience, how much does design thinking drive success in each of the following aspects?
   1. Gives your organization a competitive advantage
   2. Drives innovation
   3. Fosters collaboration
   4. Provides structure to the organization
   5. Increases likelihood of success
8. Please describe a situation where design thinking positively influenced your organization and why it was successful. 
9. Please describe a situation where design thinking may have negatively influenced your organization and why it was negative. 
10. Below are a number of statements regarding attitudes towards design thinking. Please read each one carefully and indicate to what extent you agree or disagree with each statement.
    1. Design thinking negatively affects efficiency.
    2. Design thinking requires a collaborative environment to work well.
    3. Anyone can learn and practice design thinking.
    4. Design thinking is rigid.
    5. Design thinking requires all involved to be human-centered.
    6. Design thinking takes a lot of time.
    7. Design thinking has low return on investment.
    8. Design thinking empowers personal growth.
    9. Design thinking grows interpersonal relationships.
    10. Design thinking improves organizational progress.

The 1067 survey participants had diverse backgrounds: they held varying roles across industries and were located across the globe. 94 responses were invalid, so we excluded them from our analysis.  

The majority of participants (33%) were UX designers, followed by UX researchers (13%) and UX consultants (12%). 

Of participants who responded “Other”, the most common response provided was an executive role (n=20). This included roles such as CEO, VP, director, founder, and “head of.” Other mentioned roles included service designer (n=17), manager (n=14), business designer or business analyst (n=11), and educator (including teacher, instructor, and curriculum designer) (n=11).

Geographically, we had respondents from 67 different countries. The majority of survey participants work in the United States (34%), followed by India (8%), United Kingdom (7%), and Canada (5%). 

Our survey participants also represented diverse industries, with the majority in software (22%) and finance or insurance (14%). 

Of participants who responded Other, the most common response provided was agency or consulting (n=26), followed by telecommunications (n=17), marketing (n=8), and tourism (n=7).

Study 3: Case Study 

Our third and final study consisted of an in-person case study at a large, public ecommerce company. The case study involved 9 interviews with company employees, 6 observation sessions of design-thinking (or related) workshops, and an internal resource and literature audit. 

The interviews were 1-hour long and semistructured. Of the 8 participants, 3 were on the same team but had different roles: 1 UX designer, 1 product manager, and 1 engineer. The other 5 interviewees (3 design leaders and 2 UX designers) worked in different groups across the organization. Each participant completed the same digital survey from the second study prior to interviewing.    

In addition to interviews, we conducted 6 observation sessions: 3 design-thinking workshops, 2 meetings, and 1 lunch-and-learn. After the workshops, all participants were invited to fill out a survey about the workshop. The survey had 5 questions: 

1. How much do you agree or disagree with each of the following statements based on your experience in the workshop?
   1. We achieved our goal of [x]. 
   2. The time and resources spent to conduct the workshop were worth it.
2. What aspects were of greatest value to you, and why? 
3. Where there any aspects you felt were not useful, and why?
4. Will the workshop or its output impact any of your future work? If so, how?
5. What is your role?

Lastly, we conducted a resource and literature audit of the company’s internal resources related to design thinking available to employees.