Design thinking - A paradigm

Design thinking has received an increasing amount of attention in both practice and academia. Previous research has successfully pointed out design thinking is vaguely and diversely defined, presenting eight different discourses. Although design thinking has been viewed from different perspectives with diverse results, much current research use the terms of design thinking without clarification of the relation to one another; this creates confusion. With this paper we clarify design thinking. Through a review of key literature and a conceptual synthesis, we show design thinking is not merely a process or either of eight suggested discourses-but all of them. Thinking like a designer is a paradigm, which may materialize in various forms. It is a way of seeing and interacting with the world. It is a world-view. By categorising central themes from key literature, we add to the current discussion with a coherent conceptual framework of design thinking. A taxonomy of the design thinking paradigm, which provide clarity of levels, since there in current literature are no clear distinction between the fundamental paradigm, methods and practical tools and techniques of design thinking.