18 Creative Exercises That Hone Tech Pros’ Design-Thinking Skills

Design thinking is an iterative problem-solving framework that puts users’ needs at the center of every tech solution. However, developing that mindset across a technology team takes more than understanding the theory; it requires hands-on activities that foster out-of-the-box thinking and strategic risk-taking.

Exercises in creative exploration can help tech team members consider challenges from multiple new angles and build products that truly resonate with a wide audience. Below, members of Forbes Technology Council share some creative activities a tech leader can implement to broaden their team members’ perspectives and strengthen their design-thinking skills.

1. Constraint-Driven Innovation Challenges

Tech leaders can introduce innovation challenges that are “constraint-driven”—teams are required to design a solution with extreme limitations, such as an app with just one button or a UX for visually impaired users. This forces creativity within strict boundaries and pushes teams to think outside the box and find minimalist solutions.

2. Gen AI-Based Design Activities

I would recommend introducing design challenges in which teams use GenAI tools to brainstorm, prototype and refine solutions. This is a good way to teach your team members to be creative while also helping them acclimate to working in tandem with AI. This approach allows them to both develop a design-thinking mindset and grow their AI literacy in a practical manner.

3. Cross-Functional Events And Workshops

Create opportunities for cross-functional engagement through strategic seating, social events and workshops. For example, mixing engineers with designers at team dinners fosters diverse problem-solving perspectives. These interactions broaden engineers’ focus beyond technical execution, enhancing their understanding of the user experience and strategic design and developing their design-thinking skills.

4. Teamwide Hackathons Focused On A Real-World Problem

Tech leaders could organize a managed hackathon for the whole team that’s focused on a real-world problem statement. Such an exercise encourages brainstorming, prototyping and rapid iteration. This boosts team members’ design-thinking skills by integrating diverse skills and encouraging solutions with a deep focus on users, and it can lead to the development of inventive solutions in a minimal amount of time.

5. Reverse-Engineering Bad Ideas

Instead of asking team members how to solve a problem, ask them how to make it worse. Then, reverse-engineer those ideas into innovative solutions. This method forces teams to rethink their assumptions and explore unconventional angles.

6. Silent Brainstorming And Vision Mapping

Tech leaders can foster design thinking by using silent brainstorming and vision mapping, ensuring quieter voices are heard. Team members first jot down ideas individually, then group them on a shared board to spot patterns. Instead of immediate discussion, they provide written feedback, refining concepts objectively. This ensures unique ideas get recognized, fostering collaboration and innovation.

7. Preliminary One-Pagers

Before a single screen gets drawn, force the team to write a one-pager: who’s in pain, what they’re trying to get done, what’s broken in their world, and what won’t be solved. No mockups. No stack talk. Just brutal clarity. Most product teams don’t need better design; they need to think harder before building.

8. Role-Reversal Workshops

Tech leaders can use workshops featuring role reversal, where developers play the users and designers play the engineers. Switching places is an innovative way for team members to gain new perspectives, which helps enhance their problem-solving and design-thinking skills and their understanding of other people’s feelings and thought processes.

9. AI Tool Deconstruction Exercises

Tech leaders can develop design-thinking skills in their teams through a reverse AI hackathon—an exercise that reimagines AI-driven tools with a human-centered approach. This activity encourages teams to deconstruct an existing AI tool, map the user journey, identify friction points and redesign it for fairness, usability and transparency.

10. Employeewide Mini Hackathons

Host mini hackathons that extend beyond developers to include all employees. These events challenge everyone to identify opportunities and solve real problems in processes, products and customer experiences. Bringing diverse perspectives together fosters design thinking across the organization while generating practical innovations that directly impact your business and customers.

11. Adopting A Different Team’s Persona

Ask your team what they would do or how they would behave in specific situations if they were members of a different team. For instance, how would a software engineer solve an issue faced by an account manager? Such an approach helps enhance team members’ creativity, gives them some new knowledge and, sometimes, helps them find the optimal solution to a problem.

12. Paying Closer Attention To Customers

Prioritize customer obsession, asking the right questions and listening. One of the most critical ways to hone design-thinking skills is by truly empathizing with customers and understanding their needs. Ask the right questions and listen—never lead the customer to an answer. Explore responses by asking “why,” embrace uncomfortable silence and be curious.

13. ‘User Safari Challenges’

Launch a “User Safari Challenge”—pair team members with real users so they can observe them in action, capture pain points and rapidly prototype solutions. In quick debriefs, they can share insights and refine ideas. This fosters empathy, boosts collaborative creativity and strengthens design thinking with tangible, real-world impact.

14. Whole-Team Whiteboarding

We do tons of whiteboarding. I love to establish a problem, include as many people as possible to brainstorm solutions, then narrow submissions down to the top three best ideas. The strategy is that no idea is a bad idea when you’re brainstorming; it leaves so much more room for innovative ideas you never would have thought of before!

15. In-Person Social Events

Don’t underestimate the power of getting together in person and doing something enjoyable together that is not work-related. Especially in a remote world, just being together and interacting with one another’s energy—not through a screen—can be a game-changer when it comes to sparking creativity and thinking through design-related problems in real time.

16. ‘Solution Sprint Relays’

Host a “Solution Sprint Relay” in which team members tackle real-world problems by rapidly brainstorming ideas, sketching prototypes and rotating to build on each other’s solutions. It promotes empathy, iterative thinking and agile innovation—sharpening everyone’s design-thinking prowess.

17. Observing The Business Team

Technical people should be paired up with and closely observe business team members so they can understand problems from the business team’s standpoint. This will ensure technology teams are more customer-centric, rather than tech-focused, and design user-centric solutions.

18. Solving ‘Everyday’ Problems

One creative weekly activity is to ask your team to fix an “everyday,” nontechnical problem. Pick a broken everyday experience—like airport security lines or finding parking. These activities are low-stakes and fun, and they encourage team members to practice empathy, ideation and iteration without technical pressure. They quickly build empathy and reveal blind spots related to the user experience and other areas you’d never catch otherwise.