Design Thinking: First Steps is a guide that approaches Design Thinking from a current perspective, where generative AI has shifted the bottleneck of product development: building is no longer the obstacle, but deciding what deserves to be built and for whom.

The document goes through the five phases of the process in detail. Each phase includes practical recommendations to avoid common mistakes and a clear signal that the phase is complete.

Beyond the process, the document devotes chapters to evaluation through process and outcome indicators, to operational integration with Scrum, to the contexts where Design Thinking is not the right answer, and to the most relevant criticisms with an honest response to each of them.

The final chapter places Design Thinking in the AI era as the non-automatable competency of product work: the discipline of understanding people, defining the right problem and validating with evidence before committing resources to building.