Do you want to apply the design thinking framework to your next design challenge? Here are 9 tools to help you at every stage.
When it comes to solving tricky problems and coming up with robust, user-friendly solutions, design thinking is one of the most effective approaches you can take. This helps you get a rich and nuanced understanding of your users, consider complex challenges from multiple angles, and generate fresh and creative ideas.
If you want to get maximum value from the design thinking process, you need the right tools on hand. We’ve rounded up 9 of the best design thinking tools to help you every step of the way—check them out.
Contents:
- What is design thinking?
- The 5 steps in the design thinking process
- Why are design thinking tools important?
- The 9 best design thinking tools to use in 2026
- Learn more about design thinking
What is design thinking?
Design thinking is a problem-solving framework that encourages you to prioritize the end user, think outside the box, and come up with novel solutions.
It’s firmly rooted in empathy, collaboration, and experimentation, allowing you to explore and test a variety of ideas before you settle on one. This has many advantages within the UX design process, helping to:
- Keep the end user in focus at all times, leading you to ideas and solutions that effectively address users’ needs, pain points, and expectations
- Spark creativity and innovation by encouraging you to come up with and explore many different ideas
- Test and validate ideas and solutions before they’re developed—saving time, money, and resources in the long run
That’s design thinking in a nutshell. Next, let’s outline the key stages in the design thinking process.
The 5 steps in the design thinking process
The design thinking process comprises five key phases:
- Empathise: Getting to know your target users and understanding their needs, goals, expectations, and pain points.
- Define: Identifying and articulating the specific user problem you want to solve.
- Ideate: Brainstorming a wide range of ideas and potential solutions to your previously-defined user problem.
- Prototype: Creating physical or digital models, sketches, or mock-ups that visualise and represent your ideas. You can learn more about design thinking prototypes in this guide.
- Test: Putting your prototypes in front of real users (or research participants) to gather feedback.
This loop continues, encouraging you to refine and iterate on your ideas until you arrive at an effective, user-friendly, rigorously tested solution that’s ready to be developed and launched.
Why are design thinking tools important?
When it comes to applying the design thinking framework, the right tools will help you to optimize the process and get the best possible results from each stage.
Design thinking tools are essential for:
Collaboration and communication
Throughout the design thinking process, it’s important to facilitate smooth collaboration amongst team members and stakeholders. With specialist tools built for teamwork and communication, it’s much easier to get everybody aligned on who you’re problem-solving for and what problem you’re trying to solve.
Documentation and organization
As you move through the various phases of the design thinking framework, your ideas will evolve from half-formed concepts to fully-fledged solutions, gradually increasing in detail and complexity.
Design thinking tools enable you to document the evolution of your ideas and to keep track of all the insights and feedback you gather along the way. This is useful for logging the history of your product and informing future design decisions.
Creativity and experimentation
Design thinking is all about being creative and experimenting with different ideas and solutions—and the right tools will help you to spark inspiration and think outside the box.
Whether it’s facilitating collaborative ideation sessions or providing templates for creative exercises, there are many design thinking tools out there that are invaluable when it comes to brainstorming and exploring novel solutions.
Creating design thinking artifacts and deliverables
At almost every stage in the design thinking process, you’ll be creating something—be it empathy maps, user personas, low-fidelity wireframes, or fully interactive digital prototypes. For many design thinking artifacts, you’ll need specialist tools and software to speed up the process and make sure your work can be easily shared and viewed.
Testing your ideas and gathering feedback
To get real value from the design thinking process, you must test your prototypes on real people. Feedback and testing tools enable you to connect with a broad and diverse pool of users and test participants—and make it much easier to collect, organize, and analyze the data you gather. When conducting remote tests, using a free VPN App can help protect participant privacy and ensure secure data transmission.
Ultimately, you can’t successfully follow the design thinking process without the right tools in place. So what are the best design thinking tools to add to your stack? Let’s find out.
For a deeper understanding of how design thinking tools are applied, check out the UX Design for Task-Based Application project by AND learner, Shrikant Subramaniam.
The 9 best design thinking tools to use in 2025
1. Hotjar
Hotjar is a web analytics and feedback tool that enables you to understand how people navigate and interact with your website.
When to use Hotjar during the design thinking process:
- Empathise: Observe user behavior through heatmaps and session recordings, helping you to understand your users’ needs and frustrations.
- Test: Evaluate the usability and user-friendliness of a new design, and validate changes to an existing product or idea.
Key features of Hotjar:
- Heatmaps: Visualise where users click, move, and scroll when interacting with your website or app.
- Session recordings: Record and playback real user interactions and see where usability issues arise.
- Surveys and feedback widgets: Gather ongoing feedback and data to continuously learn about your users’ needs and experiences.
How much does Hotjar cost?
- Basic Plan: Free, track up to 35 daily sessions and get unlimited heatmaps
- Plus Plan: Starts at $32/month, can track up to 100 daily sessions
- Business Plan: Starts at $80/month, tracks 500 daily sessions
Learn more about Hotjar here.
2. Lookback
Lookback is a user research platform designed for qualitative research, including usability testing and user interviews. You can use it to observe and analyze how people interact with your products and prototypes, to organize and document your research insights, and to speak with your users one-on-one.
When to use Lookback during the design thinking process:
- Empathise: Conduct user interviews to learn about your users’ needs, preferences, and pain points.
- Test: Run usability tests to evaluate product prototypes and identify design flaws and usability issues.
Key features of Lookback:
- Moderated and unmoderated usability testing: Conduct and observe usability tests, or run unmoderated tests and watch them back later.
- Real-time observation: Watch participants interact with your product live
- Video recording: Capture user sessions, including screen, voice, and facial expressions.
- Highlight reels: Create shareable video clips of key moments from user sessions.
- Transcription services: Automatically transcribe sessions for easy analysis and sharing.
- Unlimited collaborators: Invite team members to participate in user research.
How much does Lookback cost?
- Freelance Plan: $25/month (billed annually) for 10 sessions per year, access to core features, and a 60-day free trial.
- Team Plan: $149/month (billed annually) for 100 sessions per year, unlimited collaborators, and a 60-day free trial.
- Insights Hub Plan: $344/month (billed annually) for 300 sessions per year, priority support, and a 60-day free trial.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for unlimited sessions and dedicated support.
Learn more about Lookback here.
3. Miro
Miro is a virtual whiteboard tool built for collaboration and creativity. This versatile tool is useful throughout the design thinking process—from synthesizing research insights as part of the ‘Empathise’ stage to holding creative ideation sessions and building prototypes.
When to use Miro during the design thinking process:
- Empathise: Create user journey maps and personas to understand user needs and experiences.
- Define: Organise research findings and synthesize insights using affinity diagrams and mind maps.
- Ideate: Facilitate virtual brainstorming sessions and organize ideas visually.
- Prototype: Develop low-fidelity wireframes and mockups collaboratively.
- Test: Gather and organize user feedback on prototypes.
Key features of Miro:
- Infinite canvas: Work on an expandable digital whiteboard with no space limitations.
- Real-time collaboration: Work simultaneously with your team members and key stakeholders on the same board (ideal if you’re part of a remote or distributed team).
- Template library: Access a wide range of pre-built templates for various design tasks and deliverables, such as creating user journey maps or wireframes.
- Presentation mode: Present your work directly from the Miro board.
- Voting and timer features: Facilitate decision-making during workshops and sprints.
How much does Miro cost?
- Free Plan: Basic features for small teams, up to 3 editable boards.
- Starter Plan: $8/month per member (billed annually) for unlimited boards and access to all core features.
- Business Plan: $16/month per member (billed annually), with access to advanced features and security.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for large organizations with specific needs.
Learn more about Miro here.
4. Stormboard
Stormboard is a virtual collaboration and brainstorming tool ideal for the ideation stage of the design thinking process. Use templates, sticky notes, and images to bring your ideas to life and explore different concepts with your teammates.
When to use Stormboard during the design thinking process:
- Ideate: Run collaborative brainstorming sessions with your teammates, or visualize your own concepts before sharing them for review.
Key features of Stormboard:
- Digital canvas: Collaborate on an expandable virtual whiteboard.
- Pre-built templates: Use customizable templates to structure your brainstorming and ideation sessions.
- Multimedia support: Add images, videos, and documents to bring your ideas to life.
- Real-time collaboration: Work together with other team members, no matter where you’re located.
- Voting and commenting: Gather feedback and prioritize ideas through interactive messaging features.
- Export options: Instantly export your work in PDF, Word, PowerPoint, or Excel format for easy sharing.
How much does Stormboard cost?
- Personal Plan: Free forever for individual users or teams of up to 5 people.
- Business Plan: $8.33/user per month (billed annually), includes unlimited open Storms, unlimited users per Storm, and up to 10 guests.
- Enterprise Plan: Custom pricing for organizations needing advanced features and support.
Learn more about Stormboard here.
5. FigJam
Similar to Miro, FigJam is another collaborative whiteboard tool. It’s part of Figma (which features at number 6 on our list of design thinking tools). FigJam is ideal for brainstorming, digitally sketching, and visualizing your ideas, as well as collaborating in real time through virtual workshops.
When to use FigJam during the design thinking process:
- Empathise: Use FigJam to capture user research insights and create deliverables such as user journey maps and empathy maps.
- Define: Run a collaborative FigJam session to collate your user insights and define a clear problem statement.
- Ideate: Hold collaborative brainstorming sessions to come up with ideas and solutions.
- Prototype: Sketch out low-fidelity wireframes and prototypes to visualize and communicate different ideas and concepts.
- Test: If you want to gather stakeholder feedback on a particular concept or design, run a session in FigJam to collect votes and insights in real time.
Key features of FigJam:
- Collaborative digital canvas: Work together with your teammates on a virtual whiteboard to share ideas and collectively explore different concepts.
- Template library: Choose from an extensive variety of pre-built templates.
- Sticky notes and drawing tools: Easily jot down ideas and visualize concepts.
- Voting and timer features: Foster alignment and facilitate decision-making during workshops and brainstorming sessions.
- Integration with Figma: Seamlessly transition from brainstorming in FigJam to designing in Figma.
How much does FigJam cost?
- Free Plan: Basic features for individuals and small teams.
- Professional Plan: $5 per seat/month, including unlimited FigJam files.
- Organization Plan: $5 per seat/month, including additional collaboration tools and custom templates.
- Enterprise Plan: $5 per seat/month, including dedicated workspaces and advanced design systems.
Learn more about FigJam here.
6. Figma
Figma is one of the most popular tools in the industry, and it’s a staple for anyone following the design thinking process. Figma is primarily used for creating wireframes and prototypes—allowing you to visualize your ideas and share them for feedback.
When to use Figma during the design thinking process:
- Ideate: Use Figma to digitally sketch out initial ideas and concepts during the ideation phase.
- Prototype: Create mid and high-fidelity prototypes that simulate how the product might look and function.
- Test: Download or share your prototypes for testing and gathering feedback.
Key features of Figma:
- Interactive prototyping: Create clickable prototypes to simulate user experiences and interactions.
- Design systems: Maintain consistency with reusable components and styles across projects.
- Version control: Track changes and revert to previous versions easily.
- Plugins and integrations: Enhance functionality with a wide range of plugins and connect with other tools.
How much does Figma cost?
- Free Plan: Basic features for individuals and small teams, including 3 collaborative design files.
- Professional Plan: $15 per seat/month, including unlimited Figma files, team libraries, and advanced prototyping features.
- Organisation Plan: $45 per seat/month, including enhanced security and team management tools.
- Enterprise Plan: $75 per seat/month, including access to advanced design, Dev Mode, and admin features.
You can learn more about Figma in this guide: What is Figma? Uses, Benefits, and Key Features.
7. Justinmind
Justinmind is among the most popular wireframing tools, used for creating both low-fidelity wireframes and high-fidelity prototypes. This design thinking tool comes in especially useful during the prototype and test phases, allowing you to visualize your ideas and dial up the detail and complexity as they evolve.
When to use Justinmind during the design thinking process:
- Ideate: Visualise early-stage ideas and concepts through low-fidelity wireframes.
- Prototype: Create detailed, high-fidelity prototypes that emulate the final product.
Key features of Justinmind:
- Advanced interactions: Create complex interactions and animations without coding.
- Responsive design: Design for multiple devices and screen sizes.
- UI kits and templates: Access pre-built components and templates to speed up the design process.
- Real-time collaboration: Work together with team members on the same prototype in real time.
- Integration with user testing tools: Connect with popular testing platforms such as Hotjar (number 1 on our list of design thinking tools).
How much does Justinmind cost?
- Free Plan: Basic features for individuals and small teams.
- Standard Plan: $9/month per user (billed annually), includes access to advanced interaction design and collaboration features.
- Professional Plan: $19/month per user (billed annually), includes access to advanced features and unlimited projects.
- Enterprise Plan: $39/month per user (billed annually).
Learn more about Justinmind here.
8. Framer
If you’re looking for an advanced, all-powerful prototyping tool to bring your ideas to life, look no further than Framer. With Framer, you can create fully interactive, high-fidelity prototypes in next to no time—no coding skills required.
When to use Framer during the design thinking process:
- Prototype: Create high-fidelity, interactive prototypes that closely mimic real user experiences.
- Test: Easily share your prototypes for user testing and gather feedback to refine your designs.
Key features of Framer:
- Visual design tools: Design on a user-friendly canvas with a variety of layout, styling, and text features.
- Interactive prototyping: Create complex interactions and animations without coding.
- Responsive design: Design for multiple devices and screen sizes with built-in breakpoints.
- Smart components: Use and customize pre-built, interactive components to speed up the design process.
- Real-time collaboration: Work together with team members on the same project simultaneously.
- AI-powered features: Leverage AI for content generation, layout suggestions, and design enhancements.
How much does Framer cost?
- Free Plan: Basic features for individuals and small teams.
- Basic Plan: $15 per website per month.
- Pro Plan: $30 per website per month.
9. Pens, paper, and sticky notes
Not all of the best design thinking tools are digital. Oftentimes, your most creative ideas will come to you when you’re working with good old-fashioned pen and paper. And, if you want to run hands-on, screen-free workshops where everybody is entirely focused, these will be the only tools you need.
When to use pens, paper, and sticky notes during the design thinking process:
- Empathise: Use sticky notes to capture user research insights and organize your findings into meaningful groups and categories.
- Ideate: Run hands-on ideation sessions where everybody is encouraged to jot their ideas down onto sticky notes and then share them with the rest of the group.
- Prototype: Use pen and paper to sketch out low-fidelity wireframes and visualizations of your early ideas.
Learn more about design thinking
We hope you’ve enjoyed learning about design thinking tools. Next time you’re tackling a tricky design challenge, refer back to our list and select two or three tools to try out as you apply the design thinking process.
Keen to learn more about design thinking? We think you’ll like these guides:
- A Step-by-Step Guide to Ideation in Design Thinking (and Techniques You Can Use)
- 7 Examples of Design Thinking in Practice (And What We Can Learn From Them)
- The 10 Best Design Thinking Courses and Certifications To Take
Next Steps
We hope this comprehensive guide to design thinking has given you a better understanding of this exciting discipline with myriad applications.
If you are interested in learning more about the field of user experience design, where design thinking is applied very heavily, here are some of the resources you might find useful:
- Watch this session by Shiva Viswanathan, Design Head of Ogilvy Pennywise, and Naman Singh, Product Experience Designer at RED.
- Talk to a course advisor to discuss how you can transform your career with one of our courses.
- Pursue our UI UX Design courses – all courses are taught through live, interactive classes by industry experts, and some even offer a Job Guarantee.
- Take advantage of our scholarship and funding options to overcome any financial hurdle on the path of your career transformation.
Note: All information and/or data from external sources is believed to be accurate as of the date of publication.
