If you are a person, you are a designer. I've been giving a lot of thought lately to how Design Thinking applies in everyday life, and how we might do it more consciously...
Designers are very organized about how they solve problems, and when you are a parent it seems you problem solve, on a very fast timeline, all day long.
Here is an example where I applied Design Thinking to packing lunch. Designers spend a lot of energy up front defining what problem they are solving. Parents do too, but it's often in reaction to their feelings and the opinions of their kids as opposed to an organized or proactive plan. Parents also do a lot of assessment at the end of the process, noticing what comes back unopened or half-eaten, what didn't stay fresh very well, what disappeared.
Interestingly the shortest list, "Implement," is where I expend the most energy, stumbling around the kitchen in the morning trying to get all the parts to come together into one lunch bag.
Also in my case, since we use washable lunch bags, there should be a step in here called "Is the bag all stinky from open food or juice that leaked all over in there?"
Life is Designed.
