Design thinking in social organizations: Understanding the role of user engagement

Design thinking has recently gained significant attention as a potential approach to address major global problems. Although its practice is proven to contribute to advance organizational efficiency and address user needs, lack of understanding about its practice in social organizations limits our understanding about its social context. With this background, we study how users persuade social organizations to adopt design thinking. We conducted a qualitative study in four social organizations in India during 2008–2013 and interviewed 38 respondents to answer our research question. Our results indicate that the designer roles are blurred when social organizations adopt design thinking, where users in the form of interconnecting agency reduce the gap between designers and communities.