Design thinking is a human-centered, iterative approach to creative problem-
  solving, focusing on deeply understanding users' needs to develop innovative 
  solutions through phases like Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, and Test.

Yes I agree, and the replies don't really make it any more clear.

The biggest differentiator of design thinking is really addressing the XY problem. In 95% of cases clients will come to you to design their solution. Ie they already think they have a solution to their problem and now they want it to look good.

Design thinking is basically more like root cause analysis, or the 5 why's.. and an emphasis on taking to end users (the people with the problem) without having a solution.

Once you understand the problem more fundamentally is only when you start cooking up with a solution.

And the result of that process might not even be a traditional design, but perhaps just a tweak to something, like moving your onboarding to later in the ca process..

In practice however.. 95% of designers who say they practice design thinking disregard this, and just want to design wherever the client asks for

I was confused when I first heard about 'Design Thinking' as a thing because as a designer it sounded just like the standard design process that I already knew inside-out and backwards.

After a while I realised a few things about it:

1. Yes it is the standard design process, but with a fancy title.

2. It's been given a fancy title as that helps sell books and launch consulting careers

3. It's actually useful as it gets clients and stakeholders involved in the design process. They start thinking about the problems they want to solve and who they want to solve them for - and more importantly have a personal stake in the outcomes. Moves the conversation from 'I want this' to 'here's the problem'.

I've run design thinking workshops with everyone from primary school children to CEOs and they've all loved it.

I think that's the point. The underpinning exhortation is to "think about design" where the outcome is something that successfully addresses users needs, is feasible to create, and commercially viable.

"Design Thinking" as a brand has codified that in several ways - not all successful. But the underlying principle is sound: there are plenty of examples of products/services that failed to address one or more of the 3 dimensions.

I found this quote from the linked article [0] more helpful:

> Design thinking can be described as a discipline that uses the designer’s sensibility and methods to match people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what a viable business strategy can convert into customer value and market opportunity.

[0]: https://www.designorate.com/design-thinking-guide-what-why-h...

it is not - just a way to position design and untie it from the visual output that is also called design. Design thinking will not make you a logo (but a logo designer could pretty much do design thinking...)

It doesn't claim to be different? It puts more emphasis on the design part.