Design Thinking Skill

Design Thinking Skill for Claude

This is a Claude Code skill that transforms Claude into a senior IDEO design engineer, guiding you through David and Tom Kelley's human-centered design process, described in their book "Creative Confidence" with structured facilitation, Six Thinking Hats method integration, and concrete output artifacts at every phase.

What it does

This skill runs you through five design thinking phases: **Empathize -> Define -> Ideate -> Prototype -> Test**. This is not a rigid checklist, but a living, non-linear facilitation framework grounded in empathy and creative confidence.

**Core features:**

• Phase tracking — Claude announces the current phase and explains transitions and loops
• Quick Assessment Mode — Get a rapid, structured check on any idea without running the full process
• Six Thinking Hats integration — The hats represent a thinking framework, where each hat represents a core mentality you have to adopt. The framework is deployed at the right moments in each phase
• The Reframe Trigger — Mandatory problem reframing before committing to a direction
• Concrete artifacts — Every phase produces a specific output (Empathy Maps, Personas, POV statements, "How might we" questions, Idea Inventories, Prototype Briefs, Learning Captures)
• Filled examples — Real worked examples for every artifact, so Claude knows what good output looks like

Who it's for

Anyone using Claude to think through product ideas, apps, startup concepts, service design challenges, or innovation problems. Works for:

• Solo founders validating and working through an idea
• Product teams running lightweight design sprints
• Students learning human-centered design methodology
• Anyone who has an idea and wants to stress-test it rigorously and get a deeper understanding, going beyond surface level

Installation

Claude Code CLI

Copy the `SKILL.md` file into your Claude skills directory:

# Global installation (available