The Design Thinking Canvas
The Design Thinking Canvas is a template and a structured approach to plan a design-led strategy and process. It provides an overview of the different elements in a design process and is a systemic technique to collect inputs from a project. This is helpful for the internal communication within a project team as well as externally towards stakeholders. The tool contains 8 elements: People, Storytelling, Challenges, Vision, Impact, Management, Problem, and Solution. The latter two refers to the Double Diamond design process, which is based on the design-driven approach of using the diverging and converging thinking. The canvas is a process design tool to be used during a complete project. The template is downloadable as a PDF, Mural canvas, and Adobe XD whiteboard.
The Design Thinking Canvas is a single sheet tool that helps keeping track of a design project. The canvas is built on recognizable and well-known elements in design thinking, which makes it more relatable and provides an overview of the complexity. In that sense this is a grate tool to use when a project team needs to be aligned during a design process over a longer period of time. Also, it is a quick way for onboarding new team members or temporary participants. Some of the elements in the canvas, such as the Double Diamond model, requires a bit of background knowledge to get the full benefit of the tool. For beginners the canvas might be difficult to approach, with the lack of information and guidance. However, this is manageable with a bit of study. A really great thing in The Design Thinking Canvas is the elements ‘vision’ and ‘impact, which helps to keep the focus of a project. A lot of projects end up focusing on just the product, instead of the effect of the complete project that the users encounters, including the possible services, business models, and the overall strategy. This is of course extremely complex, which is why it is often left out. The canvas is ready for download and direct use, both as a PDF and for digital use in Mural and for Adobe XD Whiteboard. The Mural template contains tips to help getting started, which unfortunately is missing in the PDF version.