The Design Thinking Canvas
Using the Design Thinking Canvas to plan for, and share the plan for, a new project
Over 20 years in the making, the Design Thinking Canvas is the result of our experience working across design disciplines and with a wide range of business.
Our experience extends to clients working across all sectors including:
businesses, from SMEs to global corporates
the public sector, from local authorities to national governments
university spin outs and academics commercialising science
social enterprises
In addition to our diverse design practice – product and service design, brand and communications – we’ve been privileged to have contributed to the content development and delivery of a number of design and business support programmes, including those at Design Council, and are members of a number of associate and instructor networks.
If one thing stands out from everything we’ve been involved with, it’s that designers make a difference. But we’ve been frustrated that, for all that is published about design and now design thinking, we should be able to more easily share the ‘how to’. The Design Thinking Canvas has been born from our ongoing conversations on how our work has come to make an impact, alongside a search for a way of codifying a complete approach to design thinking – from strategy though to delivery – that can be taught, learned and applied.
“But we’ve been frustrated that, for all that is published about design and now design thinking, we should be able to more easily share the ‘how to’.”
Now all of our work is based on an approach that has the canvas as a core component. There’s a lot more about the What Could Be approach to come, but we are publishing the canvas now, in the true spirit of design thinking, as we’d like to think others will be interested in using it and collaborating on its ongoing development. It’s free to use; all we ask is that you respect the Creative Commons copyright and let us know how your experiments and hacks work out.
What Could Be is more than the sum of its parts. We’ve worked as members of many, many teams, with tens if not hundreds of colleagues and, over and above our design practice, we have to call out our experiences at Business Link, the Centre for Design Innovation, BBC, Design Council and LUMA Institute as being particularly influential in what we’re doing today.
