Apply Design Thinking

Use the design-thinking workflow to create solutions deeply rooted in user needs through empathy, ideation, and rapid prototyping.

When to Use This

• Designing products or features for people
• Solving problems where user experience matters
• Starting from user research or empathy work
• Need to move from insights to testable prototypes
• Reimagining an existing experience

When to Skip This

• Pure technical problems without user interaction
• Infrastructure or backend-only concerns
• Timeframes don’t allow for user validation

Prerequisites

• BMad Method with CIS installed — Maya is part of the Creative Intelligence Suite
• A design challenge — A problem or opportunity to explore
• User context — Existing research or stakeholder info (optional but helpful)

Steps

1. Load Maya

Start a fresh chat and load the Design Thinking Coach:

/cis-design-thinking

2. Define Your Challenge

Maya will ask for your design challenge. Frame it around user needs:

Good challenges:

• “How might we help users feel more confident starting a new project?”
• “Redesign the checkout experience for mobile shoppers”
• “Help small business owners understand their cash flow”

Less effective:

• “Build a new dashboard” (solution-first)
• “Fix the slow API” (technical, not user-centered)

3. Journey Through the Five Phases

Maya guides you through the complete design thinking process:

Phase	Goal	What You Do
Empathize	Understand users	Share insights, create personas, map empathy
Define	Frame the problem	Craft POV statements, ask “How Might We”
Ideate	Generate solutions	Diverge wildly, then converge on promising concepts
Prototype	Make it tangible	Create rough artifacts that convey the idea
Test	Validate with users	Plan how to get real feedback

Diverge Before Converging

Maya emphasizes expanding options before narrowing. Don’t jump to solutions—let the process unfold.

4. Apply Design Methods

At each phase, Maya selects appropriate methods from her design-methods library:

• Empathize: User interviews, empathy mapping, journey maps
• Define: POV madlibs, “How Might We” framing, problem statements
• Ideate: Brainstorming, sketching, storyboarding
• Prototype: Paper prototypes, role-play, Wizard of Oz
• Test: Usability testing plans, feedback capture templates

What You Get

Output saved to _bmad-output/design-thinking-{date}.md:

Section	Contents
Design Challenge	Your framed opportunity
Point of View	User-centered problem statement
User Insights	Empathy findings and personas
How Might We Questions	Reframed problem as opportunity
Solution Concepts	Generated ideas with rationales
Prototype Designs	Testable artifacts and mockups
Test Plan	How to validate with real users
Iteration Roadmap	Next steps based on learning

Example

You: /cis-design-thinking
Maya: 🎨 Tell me about your design challenge, friend.
     Who are the humans we're designing with?
You: We need to redesign onboarding for our analytics tool.
     Users are dropping out during setup.
Maya: Ah, first impressions! Let's start with empathy.
     What do we know about these humans?
You: [Share user research, pain points]
Maya: [Guides through empathy mapping]
     Now let's craft our Point of View...
     "New analysts need to feel capable, not confused"
     [Frames How Might We questions]
     [Generates solution concepts]
     [Creates low-fidelity prototype]
     [Plans validation approach]

Tips

Best Practices

• Bring user data — Even informal insights help ground the work
• Prototype rough — Sketches and role-plays beat pixels at this stage
• Embrace failure — Negative test results are valuable learning

Avoid Common Mistakes

• Don’t solve before empathizing — Maya will redirect you
• Don’t fall in love with your first idea — divergence creates better options
• Don’t skip prototyping — thinking something works doesn’t make it true

Next Steps

After design thinking:

• Use storytelling (/cis-storytelling) to craft user narratives
• Apply innovation strategy (/cis-innovation-strategy) to assess business viability
• Run brainstorming (/cis-brainstorm) if you need more solution options

Providing Context

For best results, provide user research via the --data flag:

workflow cis-design-thinking --data /path/to/user-research.md

Maya will use this context to ground the empathy and definition phases in real user insights.