Design Thinking Skill

A Claude Code skill that guides users through the Stanford d.school design thinking framework: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype, Test.

Installation

npx (recommended)

npx skills add Whyme-Labs/design-thinking

Or install globally (available in all projects):

npx skills add -g Whyme-Labs/design-thinking

Manual (git clone)

User-level (available in all projects):

mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/Whyme-Labs/design-thinking.git ~/.claude/skills/design-thinking

Project-level (available only in this project):

cd your-project
mkdir -p .claude/skills
git clone https://github.com/Whyme-Labs/design-thinking.git .claude/skills/design-thinking

Claude Code will automatically discover and load the skill.

Usage

Simply describe your problem and the skill will be invoked:

I want to use design thinking to explore how we can improve our onboarding flow

The skill will guide you through all 6 phases interactively, one step at a time.

Requirements

• Claude Code with Agent tool support
• WebSearch access (for the critic's existing solutions research)

Architecture

This is a pure markdown orchestrator skill (no code, no Worker). The orchestrator protocol lives in SKILL.md, which dispatches subagent prompts from prompts/ and references techniques from reference/.

design-thinking/
├── SKILL.md                  # Orchestrator protocol (main entry point)
├── prompts/                  # Subagent prompt files
│   ├── critic.md             # Adversarial reviewer (runs every phase)
│   ├── persona-interviewer.md # Simulates user interviews (Phase 1)
│   ├── creative-lens.md      # Parallel ideation lenses (Phase 3)
│   ├── prototype-builder.md  # Builds low-fidelity prototypes (Phase 4)
│   └── persona-tester.md     # Simulates usability testing (Phase 5)
├── reference/                # Technique reference files for subagents
│   ├── thinking-frameworks.md # First Principles, Socratic Questioning, Occam's Razor
│   ├── empathy-techniques.md
│   ├── ideation-techniques.md
│   ├── testing-heuristics.md
│   └── dschool-framework.md
└── templates/
    └── design-document.md    # Living document template

Phases

Phase	Name	Description
0	Frame	Scope problem, classify type, propose personas, initialize living document
1	Empathize	Parallel persona interviews, empathy map synthesis
2	Define	POV statements, HMW questions, design principles
3	Ideate	Three creative lenses in parallel, idea shortlisting
4	Prototype	Low-fidelity prototype (HTML, Mermaid, or narrative)
5	Test	Persona usability testing, final adversarial review, handoff

Thinking Frameworks

Three cross-cutting reasoning frameworks are woven throughout all phases:

• First Principles Thinking -- decompose problems and assumptions to fundamental truths, strip away conventions, rebuild from bedrock constraints
• Socratic Questioning -- structured probing at every user gate and in the critic subagent to surface hidden assumptions and deepen understanding
• Occam's Razor -- prefer the simplest solution that serves evidenced needs; complexity must justify itself

Key Design Decisions

• User gates between every phase -- no auto-advancing
• Critic subagent runs in every phase -- adversarial review is not optional
• Cross-cutting thinking frameworks -- First Principles, Socratic Questioning, and Occam's Razor applied throughout
• Non-linear loopback from Phase 5 to any earlier phase, preserving all artifacts
• Hard gate on implementation -- no code until Phase 5 is approved
• Living document as single source of truth, updated after every phase