Design thinking is non-linear, iterative process teams use to understand users, challenge assumptions, redefine problems, and create innovative solutions to prototype and test. It’s a solution-based approach to solving problems. It is most helpful in tackling issues that are ill-defined or unknown.
The design thinking process involves five stages:

Empathize: This is the first stage where you gain an empathetic understanding of the problem you’re trying to solve, typically through user research.

Define: In this stage, you’ll organize the information gathered during the Empathize stage. You’ll analyze your observations and synthesize them to define the core problems you and your team have identified up to this point.

Ideate: During the third stage of the design thinking process, designers are ready to generate ideas. You’ve grown to understand your users and their needs in the Empathize stage, and you’ve analyzed and synthesized your observations in the Define stage and ended up with a human-centered problem statement.

Prototype: This is an experimental phase. The aim is to identify the best possible solution for each problem found during the first three stages. The answers are implemented within the prototypes, and, one by one, they are investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined, or rejected based on the users’ experiences.

Test: In this stage, you rigorously test the complete product using the best solutions identified during the prototyping phase.

This process is flexible and can be iterated until an acceptable solution is found. It’s important to note that these stages are not always sequential — they do not have to follow any specific order. They can often occur in parallel and be repeated iteratively.

That being said, the model does provide a valuable framework for understanding the design thinking process.