What is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a human-centered problem-solving cycle: empathize with users, define the real problem, ideate broadly, prototype cheaply, test with real people — then loop. Its radical move is spending serious time in the problem space before touching the solution space.
In projects it front-ends discovery: run it before the backlog exists, so the backlog is built on observed needs instead of stakeholder folklore.
Worked example
A bank assumes elderly customers need a simplified app. Two weeks of empathy interviews reveal the actual problem: they don't distrust apps, they distrust irreversibility — fear of fat-fingering a transfer with no undo. The prototype that wins isn't simpler; it adds a 30-second cancel window. Design thinking's value was discovering the right problem before funding the wrong solution.