How to use design thinking to solve business challenges

Tools & Resources

Key learnings

Design thinking helps you solve the right problem by focusing on real customer needs before jumping to solutions.
It’s a flexible framework anyone can use successfully by exploring different perspectives with curiosity, embracing the unknown and the potential for failure of some ideas.
It boosts innovation and adaptability, helping you respond to change, reduce risk, and create more successful outcomes.

Whether you’re just starting your business or are a few years in and looking to grow, design thinking offers a flexible, human-centred way to approach challenges. Dr Stuart English, Associate Professor in Design at Northumbria University, uses design thinking with clients of all sizes, for all kinds of challenges. He explains how this powerful and practical problem-solving method can help you tackle uncertainty, unlock innovation, and build better solutions for your customers.

What is design thinking?

At its core, design thinking is a structured but flexible process for solving problems and generating ideas. It encourages you to deeply understand your customers' needs, explore problems from multiple angles, and test potential solutions in a creative but practical way.

Dr Stuart English, Associate Professor in Design at Northumbria University, explains that the term gained prominence thanks to pioneers like Tim Brown, CEO of design consultancy IDEO, who described it as “a human-centred approach to innovation that draws from the designer's toolkit to integrate the needs of people, the possibilities of technology, and the requirements for business success.”

Rather than starting with what you can make, design thinking begins with what people need.

It balances three key elements:

Human desirability – what people want and need
Technical feasibility – what can be built
Business viability – what can be profitable and sustainable

Human-centred design focuses in on the human desirability aspect, and for Stuart, context is key. He says: “Desirability doesn’t just come from the technical function of something, it comes from the context in which that thing is being used. In the right situation a tiny development can make such a difference to the user.”

Why does design thinking matter for small businesses?

Most businesses are founded to solve a problem. But the context around that problem can shift – quickly and dramatically, or steadily over years.

Design thinking equips you with a mindset and method to continually revisit, reframe and rethink problems. This means that instead of waiting for change to happen and disrupt your way of doing things, you’re actively shaping what comes next. Or, as the well-known management consultant Peter Drucker puts it: “The best way to predict the future is to create it.”

Key benefits include:

Solving the right problem – by spending more time in the ‘problem space’, you reduce the risk of building something nobody wants.
Reducing wasted time and money – testing and iterating early prevents costly mistakes later.
More innovative ideas – diverse perspectives and open exploration lead to creative, unexpected solutions.
Better collaboration – engaging customers, employees and stakeholders builds understanding and buy-in.
Increased adaptability – design thinking gives you tools to pivot when your context changes.

You don’t need to always work on radical overhauls. Design thinking can be applied to everyday challenges, such as improving customer journeys, refining a service, or planning your next product launch.

The Double Diamond: A simple framework for design thinking

The UK Design Council’s Double Diamond is a widely used model that breaks design thinking into four clear stages:

Discover – Understand the problem space. Research customer needs, market conditions, and stakeholder views.
Define – Synthesise your findings to clearly frame the challenge.
Develop – Generate ideas and potential solutions. Don’t jump to conclusions – explore many options.
Deliver – Prototype, test, and refine your solution before launching more widely.

“This process isn’t strictly linear – you can loop back at any point,” Stuart explains. “The key is knowing which stage you’re in, and staying open to new information, even if it means rethinking your assumptions.”

Getting started with design thinking

You don’t need to be a designer to use design thinking – anyone can learn and apply it.

Here’s how to begin:

Talk to your customers – Understand their pain points, motivations, and context. Go beyond surveys and listen deeply.
Bring in other perspectives – Step outside your bubble. Chat with people from different backgrounds, industries or cultures.
Resist jumping to solutions – Stay longer in the ‘problem space’ fully exploring the challenge you want to solve.
Create psychological safety – Encourage your team to share ideas, admit they don’t know, and learn from failure.
Use tools and templates – Try empathy maps, user journeys, ‘how might we’ questions, or the Double Diamond to guide your thinking.

“A lot of difficulty comes when people and organisations jump to conclusions and solutions,” Stuart says. “What we try and do is separate out the understanding of the problem from the solution that we come up with.”

Stuart developed the ‘Multiple Perspective Problem Framing (MPPF)’ approach to help organisations tackle this need to go deep and broad in the enquiry part of the process, exploring a problem or situation from several different perspectives. He shares an example of how this helped a company he was working with in this interview.

There are also practical ways to embed design thinking in your organisation:

Run a short innovation sprint focused on a real business challenge.
Invite external feedback early – from customers, suppliers or partners.
Attend or host a co-creation workshop with your team or community.

When should you use design thinking?

Design thinking is useful anytime you’re facing complexity, uncertainty, or the need to innovate – for example:

Launching a new product or service
Entering a new market
Improving a customer experience
Exploring a new business model
Navigating change or disruption

You can also use it to make smaller, incremental improvements – such as redesigning an onboarding process or reducing customer drop-off.

Design thinking helps you focus not just on what you’re doing, but why, and ensures that your solutions are grounded in real-world needs.

To be successful, stay curious, open-minded, and committed to properly defining and solving the right problems.

Stuart reminds us: “Every word, concept or factor you include as a framing factor either opens out the scope or closes it down. The shape of what you can come up with is dependent on how you define the problem.”

Next steps…

Watch the full interview with Dr Stuart English on design thinking.
Pick one area of your business to explore using design thinking. Start with your customer’s perspective.
Map out the Double Diamond and identify which stage you’re currently in and what you need to do next.
Explore more strategic frameworks to help you understand and solve challenges in your business.