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The Drawbackwards design thinking process adds a dedicated research stage before the classic five-step framework of Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Drawing backwards first, before diverging into ideas and solutions, produces better outcomes because it arms your team with the context needed to brainstorm smarter, prototype faster, and avoid costly rework.
What Is Design Thinking?
Design thinking is a human-centered, systematic process for solving problems and driving innovation. Tim Brown, CEO of IDEO, defines it as:
"A human-centered 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."
Think of it as the design industry's answer to Kaizen, the Japanese manufacturing philosophy Toyota pioneered after World War II. Factory workers at Toyota implemented quality circles, a system of continuous, small improvements that added up to major benefits: faster delivery, less waste, cost savings, and higher customer satisfaction. Kaizen became the cornerstone of the Toyota Production System and helped catapult the company to a market capitalization greater than General Motors, Ford, and Honda combined.
What Kaizen did for manufacturing, design thinking does for design and innovation: it provides a methodical framework for continuous improvement, not just a process for making things look good.
The idea first surfaced in the 1960s and 70s, gained traction in the 80s and 90s through Peter Rowe's 1987 book Design Thinking, the Stanford d.school, and Tim Brown's work at IDEO, and it has been reshaping how businesses approach problems ever since.
How Is Design Thinking Different from Classical Design?
Classical design focuses on aesthetics and personal taste. Design thinking focuses on understanding and solving a specific problem to produce measurable results.
Phil Gilbert, General Manager of Design at IBM, puts it plainly in the film The Loop:
"The business doesn't care about design thinking. The business doesn't care about any concept. The business only cares about market outcomes. And in order to accelerate the outcomes, we use these practices."
Design thinking isn't a magical formula. It's a practical path to outcomes. It guides teams through empathizing with users and the problem first, diverging to brainstorm many possible solutions, then converging to identify the best one. Like Kaizen, it also embraces iteration, acknowledging that the process is never truly "done" and there is always room for improvement.
What Is the Drawbackwards Design Thinking Process?
The standard design thinking process has five stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test. Following those five steps alone can produce meaningful results. But our team at Drawbackwards has found that adding an initial, separate research stage first, one that draws backwards before moving forward, leads to faster progress and greater ROI.
Here is what our process looks like and how each stage drives better outcomes.
Stage 1: Research -- Why We Draw Backwards First
Empathy is usually listed as the first step in design thinking, but for enterprise companies especially, it can be too big a leap to take without groundwork. Before you can truly empathize with your users, you need to know who those users are and what constraints will shape any solution.
Research addresses questions like:
- "What is the real problem we are trying to solve?"
- "What are our business or organizational objectives, and how will solving this problem help achieve them?"
- "Who is our current target audience and ideal audience? Are there multiple audience segments?"
- "What are the strengths and weaknesses of our current solution?"
- "How does our leadership think about this problem, and how do they make decisions?"
- "What are our other constraints, such as timeline and budget?"
- "How will success be measured?"
Only with this context can you truly understand the landscape, how your current solution is performing, and where it could be improved.
Stage 2: Empathize -- Do Your Perceptions Match Reality?
Empathizing is one of the most commonly skipped steps in a design process, yet it often makes the biggest difference in producing positive results. Most of us think we know our users. But do our perceptions match reality?
Empathizing tests the waters by answering questions like:
- "What are all the different types of people who use our product or service?"
- "What makes them tick?"
- "What are their attitudes about our product or service category in general? What are they looking for?"
- "What are they thinking, feeling, saying, seeing, and doing on a daily basis?"
- "How do those experiences affect the decisions they make about our product or service?"
Stage 3: Define -- Why Constraints Actually Help Creativity
Most of us have been taught that real innovation starts from zero and that "thinking outside the box" fuels creative brainstorming. But people actually need constraints to be creative.
That is why Define is such an important step. It combines the research and empathy gathered in stages 1 and 2 to define a design philosophy and user stories that address:
- "What is the problem or pain point the user is experiencing?"
- "What products and solutions do they currently use to solve that problem?"
- "What are the shortcomings of their current products and solutions?"
- "How will ours be better?"
- "What features should be prioritized for our MVP, and which ones might be added later?"
Rather than thinking outside the box, these questions help you understand what the box actually is, so you can identify innovative solutions that will work within it.
Stage 4: Ideate -- Brainstorming Smarter, Not Just Faster
When companies seek help improving their product, they often ask a designer or consultant to start here, with divergent brainstorming of as many creative solutions as possible. The questions driving this stage are:
- "We know what the problem is, but how might we solve it in an innovative way?"
- "What are some radical ways we could relieve our users' pains and meet their needs?"
- "What might the ideal solution look, sound, and feel like?"
- "How might it work?"
These are the questions every Product Manager and business professional is hungry to answer, so it is tempting to dive straight into ideation. The challenge is that brainstorming smart solutions is the most difficult task and rarest skill set in UX design. You often see a beautiful product or seamless experience that works perfectly and changes your life, but that is just the tip of the iceberg. What you do not see is the amount of research, thinking, and strategy that went into it.
That is precisely why we draw backwards to research, empathize, and define first: because it leads to more and better ideas during this stage and every stage that follows.
Stage 5: Prototype -- Test Your Hypothesis Before You Build
Once you have diverged to brainstorm as many ideas as possible during the Ideate phase, it is time to converge, evaluate which solutions best align with your definition of success, and design a preliminary model.
Prototyping lets you test your hypothesis without spending the time, money, and other resources required to build the full product. It helps answer:
- "Are we sure we are solving the right problem?"
- "How will our idea meet our users' needs and relieve their pains?"
- "Is our solution technically feasible?"
Some teams skip this step to launch faster. But when you dive straight into development, it is easy to become so committed to a product or approach that you keep pushing forward even when you start to sense it is wrong. Skipping prototype design may appear to save time and money upfront. It often ends up costing more in rework later.
Any prototype is better than none, and different kinds serve different purposes with different tradeoffs. Whatever type you choose, treat prototyping as the test run before you make the real thing. It may turn out perfectly and give you greater confidence going into development, or it might reveal that adjustments or a completely different approach are needed. Either way, it is an invaluable exercise.
Stage 6: Test -- There Is No Substitute for Real User Feedback
Usability testing is about sharing your prototype with real users, gathering their feedback, then ideating, prototyping, and testing again. It helps assess:
- "Does our solution work as intended?"
- "Does it solve our users' primary problems and pain points?"
- "How could it be improved?"
No matter how certain you are about your product's viability, there is no substitute for real user feedback. And it does not have to take a lot of time or money. There are plenty of lean usability tools and best practices that make it straightforward to moderate a test, record sessions, and analyze results. Some of our favorites include:
Testing existing sites, apps, and experiences: UX Rings, FullStory, and Hotjar
Remote testing: GoTo Meeting
In-person testing: Techsmith Morae
Testing prototypes: InVision for designing clickable prototypes, Lookback for recording sessions during testing
Many designers and product managers run usability testing after building their product. Any testing is better than none, but the most successful UX professionals test before development to set a benchmark, during development to test ideas with real people and course-correct before wasting resources, and after to measure ROI and identify opportunities for improvement. With this approach, you can validate your hypothesis and have real confidence that you are on the right track.
Drawing Backwards to Move Forward
Ever since Toyota incorporated Kaizen into their process, manufacturing facilities around the world have traded traditional, linear approaches for innovation, iteration, and continuous improvement. Design thinking is having the same effect on businesses everywhere, providing a framework for solving problems and generating ROI, not just "throwing some UX on it" to make things pretty.
You can start at any step of the process and pick up some quick wins. But achieving long-term success requires starting at the beginning. By drawing backwards first, starting with research, empathy, and definition, you arm yourself with the information needed to brainstorm and prototype ideas that will help both your users and your business succeed.
For more on how to leverage design thinking within your organization to unlock innovation and results, get in touch with our team at Drawbackwards.
FAQ
What is the Drawbackwards design thinking process? It is the classic five-stage design thinking framework of Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test, with a dedicated research stage added at the front. The research stage ensures teams understand the real problem, the business context, and the constraints before moving into empathy and ideation.
What is the difference between design thinking and classical design? Classical design, sometimes called aesthetic design, focuses on how something looks and appeals to personal taste. Design thinking, also called UX design, focuses on understanding and solving a specific user problem to produce measurable business outcomes.
Why is research a separate step from empathy in design thinking? Empathy asks you to deeply understand your users, but you cannot do that effectively without first knowing who those users are, what the business objectives are, and what constraints will shape the solution. Research answers those foundational questions so empathy can go deeper and produce more useful insights.
Why do teams skip steps like empathy, prototyping, and testing? Usually to move faster. But skipping empathy means you risk solving the wrong problem. Skipping prototyping means you can get locked into an approach before discovering it is flawed. Skipping testing means you have no real validation before you ship. Each shortcut tends to cost more in rework than it saves in speed.
How does design thinking drive business ROI? By ensuring that solutions are grounded in real user needs and measurable business objectives from the start. The research, define, and prototype stages help teams avoid building the wrong thing, while usability testing provides validation before full development investment is committed.
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