From Ideas to Action: What Design Thinking Taught Us

Written by: Saroj Shrestha Mengyun Xu

Our first two days of Design Thinking were intensive, practical, and sometimes surprising. Before the sessions, we mainly understood innovation as creating something new. By the end of the second day, we realized that our understanding had already started to change. Innovation is also about understanding people, finding the right problem, exploring possibilities, testing ideas, and learning along the way.

Learning from Teamwork

The bridge-building challenge was one of the moments when Design Thinking started to make sense to us. We had to communicate, make decisions, test our ideas, and change them when something did not work. It was a simple exercise, but it brought an “aha” moment: our first idea did not need to be the best one. Trying, learning, and improving were already part of the process.

The activity also made us think about teamwork differently. Working together does not always mean that everyone has the same chance to be heard. Sometimes, people who speak faster or more confidently can easily shape the discussion. Tschimmel (2025) connects Design Thinking with democratic collaboration, which made us think about what this could mean in a small team. How can we make space for different voices? Writing down ideas individually before discussing them together may give everyone more room to think and contribute.

Seeing Through Someone Else’s Eyes

Several activities helped us practise looking at people more carefully. In one exercise, we used simple drawings to describe a person’s life and let others guess who that person might be. It was playful, but it also made us notice how much we try to understand people through small details and how easily we make assumptions about them.

The persona activity took this one step further. Instead of thinking about what we would do, we had to consider another person’s needs, challenges, and feelings. This made empathy feel much more practical. Tschimmel (2012) describes Design Thinking as a practical toolkit for innovation, and during the workshop we experienced how visualisation and other simple tools could help us move away from our own perspective and see a situation through someone else’s eyes.

Learning by Exploring

The Business Model Canvas and rapid prototyping showed us that Design Thinking does not always follow a straight line. The Evolution 6² approach (Tschimmel, 2018) helped us understand that the design process is iterative, with moments of exploration and evaluation rather than a simple straight line. A prototype does not need to be perfect; it helps us see what works and what we can change.

Boden’s The Creative Mind (2004) also gave us a useful way to understand creativity. She describes three ways creative ideas can develop: combining familiar ideas in new ways, exploring possibilities within an existing space, and transforming the space by changing its rules or boundaries. This helped us better understand the different ways creativity can happen.

From Tools to a Way of Thinking

Looking back, perhaps our biggest learning was that Design Thinking is more than a collection of tools. Models and methods give us a structure, but we do not need to follow them mechanically. With practice, understanding people, questioning our first assumptions, exploring alternatives, testing ideas, and learning from mistakes can gradually become part of the way we approach problems.

This way of thinking can be useful beyond the classroom, including in hospitality, service development, and management.

Figures

All images are original photos taken during the course and edited using ChatGPT.

References

Boden, M. A. (2004). The Creative Mind: Myths and Mechanisms (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Tschimmel, K. (2012). Design Thinking as an effective toolkit for innovation. In Proceedings of the XXIII ISPIM Conference: Action for Innovation: Innovating from Experience. Barcelona.

Tschimmel, K. (2018). Toolkit Evolution 6²: An E-handbook for practical Design Thinking for Innovation. Mindshake.

Tschimmel, K. (2025). Design Thinking – A catalyst for democratic collaboration and transdisciplinarity. In E. Duarte & J. B. Ferreira (Eds.), Design and Democracy: Essays Towards Democratic Imagination (pp. 215–221). IADE Press.

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3 responses to “From Ideas to Action: What Design Thinking Taught Us”

  1. Iryna Ilyuchyk Avatar
    Iryna Ilyuchyk

    Your post is very thoughtful! I especially liked your point about making space for every voice in a team. During the workshop, we tried different ways to share ideas, and I saw how much it helps when everyone has room to contribute. It made me think about how to bring this approach into real projects and what I need to learn to help make it happen.

    The part about seeing things from someone else’s perspective resonated with me too. In my work as a product designer, I have seen teams make decisions based on what we would want as users. That can seem like a reasonable starting point, but it may cause us to miss needs that are different from our own. Our experience cannot replace talking to real people. What they tell us may even change how we understand the problem. Design Thinking teaches us to pause and ask whose perspective is missing, whether it is someone on our team or the people we are designing for. That is a valuable habit to take from the workshop into future projects.

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  2. syedasadhussain7c5daea1cb Avatar
    syedasadhussain7c5daea1cb

    Hi Saroj and Mengyun,

    Like Iryna, I stopped at your question about making space for different voices. I’ve seen this many times at work. The colleague who says nothing in the meeting sends the sharpest comment in writing an hour later, especially when a senior person was in the room. So for me, writing ideas down first is more than a fairness trick. It’s how you get the good ideas at all.

    Your Boden part made me look back at our own table. When we collided our challenge with a fintech app, we were combining two familiar things. I’m not sure we changed any rules in two days. Maybe that needs more time.

    Reply
  3. annamarisandlund Avatar
    annamarisandlund

    Thank you Saroj and Xu for your blog post, and also for the good cooperation during our intensive Design Thinking days!

    I especially liked your perspective on teamwork and your question of how we can make space for different voices. Shila and I also discussed teamwork in our reflection, but you brought up an interesting additional perspective: the importance of listening to each other.

    As you pointed out, human-centred thinking should also start within the team. We need to listen to each other, give everyone space to contribute and, through different perspectives, build a shared understanding together. This may sound simple, but in practice it is not always easy. Sometimes good facilitation can help create that space and bring out ideas and perspectives that might otherwise remain unheard.

    I also found your thoughts on creativity interesting. Creativity does not always mean inventing something completely new, but can also come from combining and challenging what already exists.

    It was interesting how we within the same team noticed and emphasised different things. Together, these different perspectives make the learning experience richer. If you are interested, have a look at our team’s blog post as well: https://wp.me/p2rmsO-5Yo

    Reply

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