Design Thinking: How to Think Like a Product Manager

From user pain to real solutions: how Design Thinking helps you build products people actually want.

Hey, Dmytro here — welcome to Atomic Product.
Every week, I share practical ideas, tools, and real-world lessons to help you grow as a product thinker and builder.

If you're new here, here are a few past posts you might find useful:

• Double vs. Triple Diamond — why two aren’t always enough

• What is Product Management all about?

• B2B or B2C PM? Take the checklist and choose your side

• User Interviews: How To Understand Users And Avoid Building The Wrong Product

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Imagine you’re building your own product — say, a mobile app that helps people learn to play guitar. How do you make sure users don’t just download it because “a friend said it was cool,” but actually find real value in it?

That’s where Design Thinking comes in. It keeps you from building something no one needs — and instead guides you toward the right insights from real users. So today, let’s talk about what Design Thinking is, where it came from, how it works, and why every successful product manager should know how to use it.

What is Design Thinking?

The concept of Design Thinking dates back to the 1960s, but it really gained traction in the 1990s thanks to IDEO (one of the world’s top design consultancies) and Stanford professors like David Kelley and Terry Winograd. The core idea? Solve problems that actually matter to users — by deeply understanding their needs and pain points.

Design Thinking is especially powerful for product teams because it:

• Helps you test ideas quickly without massive budgets.

• Leads to solutions that people actually want.

• Encourages cross-functional collaboration within the team.

Plenty of well-known companies rely on this approach. For example, Airbnb used Design Thinking to uncover why users weren’t booking places to stay — and revamped the search experience accordingly. IBM baked the method into their company culture to create more intuitive user interfaces. And Apple? They’ve made Design Thinking a standard part of how they improve product experiences.

Bottom line: Design Thinking is now used across industries — from tech and fintech to healthcare and beyond.

Design Thinking vs. Double Diamond

Some product managers might confuse Design Thinking with frameworks like Double Diamond or Triple Diamond. While all of them are about solving problems, they focus on different things.

Double Diamond is a structured, linear process: research → define the problem → generate ideas → implement. Triple Diamond adds a scaling phase to that process.