Utilize this reading to stay updated on design thinking methodology.

There is a wealth of books on design thinking accessible to you that may assist you advance the innovation and design thinking initiatives at your business.

Finding success' best techniques and methods can be facilitated by reading. The best design thinking books to read this year are listed below.

If you're just learning what design thinking is, creating your own design thinking training, or fostering an innovative culture, these books might be helpful.

Do you wish to get more practical knowledge about design thinking? As a more in-depth option to studying exclusively from books, look about enrolling in design thinking online training or a design thinking certification program.

Understanding the core principles of design thinking can significantly enhance your UX design skills. Learn more about these principles in our dedicated post.

1. Creative Confidence

The Stanford d.school and IDEO founder Tom Kelley's book offers the essential guidelines and tactics for unleashing our creative potential. This book is an interesting and motivating handbook that will undoubtedly increase your productivity and success in both your professional and personal life.

Book Description (from Amazon):

Too often, companies and individuals assume that creativity and innovation are the domain of the “creative types.” But two of the leading experts in innovation, design, and creativity on the planet show us that each and every one of us is creative. In an incredibly entertaining and inspiring narrative that draws on countless stories from their work at IDEO, the Stanford d.school, and with many of the world’s top companies, David and Tom Kelley identify the principles and strategies that will allow us to tap into our creative potential in our work lives, and in our personal lives, and allow us to innovate in terms of how we approach and solve problems. It is a book that will help each of us be more productive and successful in our lives and in our careers.

2. Designing Experiences

J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden are the authors of Designing Experiences. This Design Thinking book discusses how our society is becoming more and more centered around the user experience. Businesses that are providing excellent customer experiences will prosper. This book must be mentioned when discussing design thinking books since it addresses many important issues on the reasons why companies may struggle to carry out a vision.

The Design Thinking book is ideal for both professionals and students since it includes several real-world examples and offers helpful insights.

Book Description (from Amazon):

In an increasingly experience-driven economy, companies that deliver great experiences thrive, and those that do not die. Yet many organizations face difficulties implementing a vision of delivering experiences beyond the provision of goods and services. Because experience design concepts and approaches are spread across multiple, often disconnected disciplines, there is no book that succinctly explains to students and aspiring professionals how to design them.

J. Robert Rossman and Mathew D. Duerden present a comprehensive and accessible introduction to experience design. They synthesize the fundamental theories and methods from multiple disciplines and lay out a process for designing experiences from start to finish.

Rossman and Duerden challenge us to reflect on what makes a great experience from the user’s perspective. They provide a framework of experience types, explaining people’s engagement with products and services and what makes experiences personal and fulfilling. The book presents interdisciplinary research underlying key concepts such as memory, intentionality, and dramatic structure in a down-to-earth style, drawing attention to both the macro and micro levels.

Designing Experiences features detailed instructions and numerous real-world examples that clarify theoretical principles, making it useful for students and professionals. An invaluable overview of a growing field, the book provides readers with the tools they need to design innovative and indelible experiences and to move their organizations into the experience economy. Designing Experiences features a foreword by B. Joseph Pine II.

3. Change by Design

Tim Brown's Change By Design, a time-honored classic, provides a fantastic introduction to design thinking and the cooperative process of meeting your customers' demands. Change by Design is guaranteed to get your mind going. It is marketed as a book for "creative leaders aiming to inject design thinking into every level of an organization, product, or service."

Book Description (from Amazon):

The subject of “design thinking” is the rage at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press—due in large part to the work of IDEO, a leading design firm, and its celebrated CEO, Tim Brown, who uses this book to show how the techniques and strategies of design belong at every level of business.The myth of innovation is that brilliant ideas leap fully formed from the minds of geniuses. The reality is that most innovations come from a process of rigorous examination through which great ideas are identified and developed before being realized as new offerings and capabilities.

Change by Design explains design thinking, the collaborative process by which the designer’s sensibilities and methods are employed to match people’s needs, not only with what is technically feasible, but what is viable to the bottom line. Design thinking converts need into demand. It’s a human-centered approach to problem solving that helps people and organizations become more innovative and more creative.

Introduced a decade ago, the concept of design thinking remains popular at business schools, throughout corporations, and increasingly in the popular press—due in large part to work of IDEO, the undisputed world leading strategy, innovation, and design firm headed by Tim Brown. As he makes clear in this visionary guide—now updated with addition material, including new case studies, and a new introduction—design thinking is not just applicable to so-called creative industries or people who work in the design field. It’s a methodology that has been used by organizations such as Kaiser Permanente, to increase the quality of patient care by re-examining the ways that their nurses manage shift change, or Kraft, to rethink supply chain management.

4. Design Thinking: The Handbook

Authored by Falk Uebernickel, Li Jiang, and Walter Brenner, Design Thinking: The Handbook. People may easily comprehend design thinking with the aid of this book on the subject. It guides you through a step-by-step procedure on how to use design thinking in practice. You may find out more about the procedure and enter the realm of innovation right now.

Book Description (from Amazon):

Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple’s iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.

Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.

To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another—from mystery (something we can’t explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it can be fully automated). As knowledge advances across the stages, productivity grows and costs drop-creating massive value for companies.

Martin shows how leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, RIM, and others use design thinking to push knowledge through the stages in ways that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantage.

Filled with deep insights and fresh perspectives, The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation.

5.The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking in the Next Competitive Advantage

The Design of Business: Why Design Thinking is the Next Competitive Advantage by Roger Martin makes a strong argument for the need of innovation and design thinking in your company. The author discusses how well-known, top businesses have employed design thinking at every level of their operations to create ground-breaking breakthroughs and gain an edge over rivals in their industry.

Book Description (from Amazon):

Most companies today have innovation envy. They yearn to come up with a game—changing innovation like Apple's iPod, or create an entirely new category like Facebook. Many make genuine efforts to be innovative—they spend on R&D, bring in creative designers, hire innovation consultants. But they get disappointing results.

Why? In The Design of Business, Roger Martin offers a compelling and provocative answer: we rely far too exclusively on analytical thinking, which merely refines current knowledge, producing small improvements to the status quo.

To innovate and win, companies need design thinking. This form of thinking is rooted in how knowledge advances from one stage to another—from mystery (something we can't explain) to heuristic (a rule of thumb that guides us toward solution) to algorithm (a predictable formula for producing an answer) to code (when the formula becomes so predictable it can be fully automated). As knowledge advances across the stages, productivity grows and costs drop-creating massive value for companies.

Martin shows how leading companies such as Procter & Gamble, Cirque du Soleil, RIM, and others use design thinking to push knowledge through the stages in ways that produce breakthrough innovations and competitive advantage.

Filled with deep insights and fresh perspectives,The Design of Business reveals the true foundation of successful, profitable innovation.

6.Inclusive Design for a Digital World: Designing With Accessibility in Mind

The Regine Gilbert-authored book was released on December 19, 2019. The design thinking book is ideal for those who work in the fields of product design, content creation, and product development. It will aid you in understanding the many tools and best procedures for doing user research.

The book assists you in becoming familiar with usability best practices and learning how to explore for new chances.

Designing a product with accessibility for a variety of people in mind is known as inclusive design. Product designers need to ask themselves a series of questions and remember that their product will be utilized by many people.

Does my user possess a limited range of motion? Do they have vision problems? Do they have hearing loss? It covers a number of concerns that handicapped persons may have.

Book Description (from Amazon):

What is inclusive design? It is simple. It means that your product has been created with the intention of being accessible to as many different users as possible.

For a long time, the concept of accessibility has been limited in terms of only defining physical spaces. However, change is afoot: personal technology now plays a part in the everyday lives of most of us, and thus it is a responsibility for designers of apps, web pages, and more public-facing tech products to make them accessible to all. Our digital era brings progressive ideas and paradigm shifts – but they are only truly progressive if everybody can participate.

InInclusive Design for a Digital World, multiple crucial aspects of technological accessibility are confronted, followed by step-by-step solutions from User Experience Design professor and author Regine Gilbert. Think about every potential user who could be using your product. Could they be visually impaired?

Have limited motor skills? Be deaf or hard of hearing? This book addresses a plethora of web accessibility issues that people with disabilities face. Your app might be blocking out an entire sector of the population without you ever intending or realizing it. For example, is your instructional text full of animated words and Emoji icons? This makes it difficult for a user with vision impairment to use an assistive reading device, such as a speech synthesizer, along with your app correctly. In

Inclusive Design for a Digital World, Gilbert covers the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.1 requirements, emerging technologies such as VR and AR, best practices for web development, and more.

As a creator in the modern digital era, your aim should be to make products that are inclusive of all people. Technology has, overall, increased connection and information equality around the world. To continue its impact, access and usability of such technology must be made a priority, and there is no better place to get started than Inclusive Design for a Digital World.

What You’ll Learn

• The moral, ethical, and high level legal reasons for accessible design
• Tools and best practices for user research and web developers
• The different types of designs for disabilities on various platforms
• Familiarize yourself with web compliance guidelines
• Test products and usability best practices
• Understand past innovations and future opportunities for continued improvement

Who This Book Is For

Practitioners of product design, product development, content, and design can benefit from this book.

7.Experiencing Design: The Innovator’s Journey

Experience design firsthand to "get deep" with design thinking. This manual gives helpful guidance for modifying your thinking and developing the skills necessary for each stage of your adventure.

Book Description (from Amazon):

In daylong hackathons, design thinking seems deceptively easy. On the surface, it involves a set of seemingly simple activities such as gathering data, identifying insights, generating ideas, prototyping, and experimentation.

But practiced at a superficial level, even great design tools don't go deep enough to create the shifts in mindset and skillset that are required to achieve transformational impact.

Going deep with design requires more than changing the activities of innovators; it involves creating the conditions that shape who they become. Individuals become design thinkers by experiencing design.

Drawing on decades of researching and teaching design thinking to people not trained in design, Jeanne Liedtka, Karen Hold, and Jessica Eldridge offer a guide for how to create these deep experiences at each stage of the design thinking journey, whether for an individual, a team, or an organization.

For each experience phase, they specify the mindset shifts and competencies that need to be achieved, describe how different personality types experience different kinds of journeys, and show how to fully leverage the diversity of teams.

Experiencing Design explores both the science and practicalities of design and includes two assessment instruments for individual and organizational development.

Ultimately, innovators need to be someone new to create something new. This book shows you how to use design thinking to make this happen.

8.Rethinking Design Thinking: Making Sense of the Future That Has Already Arrived

One of the finest design thinking books is Rethinking Design Thinking: Making Sense of the Future That Has Already Arrived (NextD Futures), which questions the design thinking process' conventional methods. The readers of GK VanPatter's book are given a variety of original and distinctive methods to design thinking. You learn a quick overview of the concept's history as well.

Book Description (from Amazon):

Part expose, part history lesson and part provocation, ReThinking Design Thinking extends Humantific’s significant body of sensemaking work addressing innovation, design and changemaking. Connecting the dots between theory and practice, philosophy and methodology, this book shares our perspective on how Humantific makes sense of the already-arriving future of design / design thinking.

With vast confusion around the subject of design thinking in the marketplace, this book jumps in with a combination of thought-provoking conversational text and explanation diagrams.

Stepping outside the pervasive industry marketing narrative, ReThinking Design Thinking points out the need for a new form of readiness to better take on the scale and complexity of organizational and societal challenges now emerging.

This book clearly makes the case for more robust and adaptive methods beyond the assumptions of product, service and experience creation.

The good news is that this book also points out that a next generation, emerging practice community is already hard at work reinventing design thinking / doing for complex situations. If you are ready for acknowledging significant change challenges facing design / design thinking as methodology and interested in more clearly defined paths forward, ReThinking Design Thinking is for you.

9.Design Thinking for Training and Development

Design Thinking for Training and Development, which will has been published in June 2020, aids readers in concentrating on the fundamental ideas of design thinking and how they may be applied to improve user experience. You may develop testing through prototype procedures and obtain new views by using the design thinking book by Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher.

Book Description (from Amazon):

Better Learning Solutions Through Better Learning Experiences

When training and development initiatives treat learning as something that occurs as a one-time event, the learner and the business suffer. Using design thinking can help talent development professionals ensure learning sticks to drive improved performance.

Design Thinking for Training and Development offers a primer on design thinking, a human-centered process and problem-solving methodology that focuses on involving users of a solution in its design. For effective design thinking, talent development professionals need to go beyond the UX, the user experience, and incorporate the LX, the learner experience.

In this how-to guide for applying design thinking tools and techniques, Sharon Boller and Laura Fletcher share how they adapted the traditional design thinking process for training and development projects. Their process involves steps to:

• Get perspective.
• Refine the problem.
• Ideate and prototype.
• Iterate (develop, test, pilot, and refine).
• Implement.

Design thinking is about balancing the three forces on training and development programs: learner wants and needs, business needs, and constraints. Learn how to get buy-in from skeptical stakeholders. Discover why taking requests for training, gathering the perspective of stakeholders and learners, and crafting problem statements will uncover the true issue at hand.

Two in-depth case studies show how the authors made design thinking work. Job aids and tools featured in this book include:

• a strategy blueprint to uncover what a stakeholder is trying to solve
• an empathy map to capture the learner’s thoughts, actions, motivators, and challenges
• an experience map to better understand how the learner performs.

With its hands-on, use-it-today approach, this book will get you started on your own journey to applying design thinking.

10.Design Thinking For Dummies

Design Thinking for Dummies, written by Christian Muller-Roterberg, is a great design thinking book for those who are joining a design-oriented team inside their firm. A wonderful design thinking resource for startups and small enterprises seeking for ways to expand and flourish is this book. The following are a few design thinking topics that are explored in the book:

• How to develop a unique atmosphere
• Using a design thinking approach
• The application of design solutions
• Cycle of design thinking and more.

Book Description (from Amazon):

• Develop your unique design thinking mindset
• Build a creative toolbox that inspires new ideas
• Examine how design thinking applies across industries
• Challenge your creativity methods

Design thinking is not just the property of graphic designers. This approach to creating solutions by thinking from the customer perspective can lead to new and innovative ideas that old methods could not approach.

Design Thinking for Dummies provides a jump-start to get you and your organization on the path to new creativity. Written by a design thinking thought leader, this book helps you through the design thinking cycle and shows how it can help any industry.

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