25 Design Thinking Quotes: Turning Ideas Into Success

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Design thinking is more than just a buzzword; it’s a proven methodology for transforming creative ideas into tangible value. It bridges the gap between what customers need, what technology allows, and what a business can viably deliver. To truly master it, one must move beyond theory and embrace a mindset focused on empathy, prototyping, and action. Below is a list of essential design thinking quotes – curated to give you the inspiration and wisdom necessary to start visualizing your best ideas!

(by Jonathan M. Pham)

Short Design Thinking Quotes

  1. Design is thinking made visual. – Saul Bass
  1. Design is all about learning from doing. – Tim Brown
  1. Design is not for philosophy; it’s for life. – Issey Miyake

design is not for philosophy

Small quotes on design

Inspiring Design Thinking Quotes

  1. The main tenet of design thinking is empathy for the people you’re trying to design for. – David M. Kelley
  1. Rather than thinking to build, build to think. – Tim Brown
  1. Creativity is just connecting things. – Steve Jobs
  1. That combination of thought and action defines creative confidence: the ability to come up with new ideas and the courage to try them out. – Tom Kelley

Read more: 40 Empathy Quotes – Cultivating Connection for Success

inspiring design thinking quotes

Inspirational design quotes

Design Thinking Quotes for Business

  1. Design thinking is a creative problem solving methodology that starts from understanding and addressing human needs. – Nicola Ulibarri
  1. Good design successfully manages the tensions between user needs, technology feasibility, and business viability. – Tim Brown
  1. Design thinking is about cognitive flexibility, the ability to adapt the process to the challenges. – Idris Mootee
  1. A brand is not what you say it is; it’s what they say it is. – Marty Neumeier

Read more: 60 Business Strategy Quotes – From Planning to Profit

a brand is not what you say it is

Best quotes about design thinking

Design Thinking Process Quotes

  1. Prototyping at work is giving form to an idea, allowing us to learn from it, evaluate it against others, and improve upon it. – Tim Brown
  1. If a picture is worth 1000 words, a prototype is worth 1000 meetings. – Tom & David Kelley
  1. Principles of design: Use both knowledge in the world and knowledge in the head => Simplify the structure of tasks => Make things visible: bridge gulfs between Execution and Evaluation => Get the mappings right => Exploit the power of constraints => Design for error => When all else fails, standardize. – Donald A. Norman
  1. The surprising, compelling mathematics of innovation: if you want more success, you have to be prepared to shrug off more failure. – Tom Kelley

mathematics of innovation

Famous design thinking quotes

Product Design Quotes

  1. Simple can be harder than complex: You have to work hard to get your thinking clean to make it simple. But it’s worth it in the end. – Steve Jobs
  1. Great design will not sell an inferior product, but it will enable a great product to achieve its maximum potential. – Thomas Watson
  1. Design thinking is the search for a magical balance between business and art, structure and chaos, intuition and logic, concept and execution, playfulness and formality, and control and empowerment. – Idris Mootee

quotes related to design thinking

Quotes related to design thinking

Creative Design Thinking Quotes

  1. Part of maintaining a thriving creative culture is giving people time and permission to play. – Tim Brown
  1. A lot of people in our industry haven’t had very diverse experiences. So they don’t have enough dots to connect, and they end up with very linear solutions without a broad perspective on the problem. The broader one’s understanding of the human experience, the better design we will have. – Steve Jobs
  1. The problem with the designs of most engineers is that they are too logical. We have to accept human behavior the way it is, not the way we would wish it to be. – Donald A. Norman
  1. Cognition attempts to make sense of the world: emotion assigns value. – Donald A. Norman

Read more: 75 Creativity Quotes – From Vision to Innovation

emotion assigns value

Quotes about design thinking and innovation

Funny Design Thinking Quotes

  1. Design is a funny word. Some people think design means how it looks. But of course, if you dig deeper, it’s really how it works. – Steve Jobs
  1. Thinking about design is hard, but not thinking about it can be disastrous. – Ralph Caplan
  1. Good design is actually a lot harder to notice than poor design, in part because good designs fit our needs so well that the design is invisible. – Donald A. Norman

good design is harder to notice than poor design

Design thoughts quotes

For those who are interested, please check out ITD World’s design thinking course here!

design thinking course

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